British actress who accuses Roman Polanski of raping her aged 16 ‘offered her story about life as a 14-year-old prostitute to a newspaper for £30,000’

A British actress who accuses Roman Polanski of raping her offered a narrative about her life as a 14-year-old prostitute for £30,000, a French court docket has heard.

The interview by Charlotte Lewis, who’s now 56, additionally contained lurid particulars about how she pursued the movie director romantically, with the intention of turning into his mistress.

The testomony is essential proof in a libel trial in opposition to Polanski, 90, who denies attacking Ms Lewis when she was 16, in 1986.

His legal professionals advised the Paris Correctional Court docket that Ms Lewis by no means reported the assault to the police.

As an alternative, she waited till 2010, when she made the declare throughout a press convention on the Cannes Movie Competition.

When, in 2019, Polanski defended himself in a Paris Match article, by portraying Ms Lewis as a liar and a former youngster prostitute, she sued him for libel.

Referring to the 1999 interview she offered to the now defunct Information of the World for £30,000, she advised the Paris court docket: ‘Folks believed what was written within the articles about me. They referred to as me a prostitute.’

However Stuart White, the British journalist who wrote the article, stated he stood by its accuracy.

Mr White, 77, advised the court docket that it was written with Ms Lewis’s full cooperation, and advised the story of how she grew to become ‘a luxurious name woman at fourteen’.

Mr White stated: ‘Ms Lewis and I mentioned at size how finest to disclose and write these new revelations.

‘Our intention, as I advised her, was to be as compassionate as attainable, and that I’d write the story accordingly.’

Mr White stated: ‘I do not forget that she was happy with the best way I had offered the story, making it clear she had been the sufferer of predators.’

In 2019, Ms Lewis requested Mr White to make a sworn assertion saying he had fabricated the prostitute story, however he refused.

Mr White recalled saying: ‘Charlotte, in case you suppose we fabricated this story, why did you wait twenty years to complain?

‘You would have sued Information of the World the next week.’

Ms Lewis replied that had solely learn the article 10 years – one thing Mr White described as ‘absurd and unbelievable.’

Mr White was the one witnessed summoned by the defence within the one-day libel trial, which ended near midnight on Tuesday.

It was the primary time that Polanski, a married father of two, has confronted court docket justice since working away from America in 1977 after pleading responsible to having illegal intercourse with a 13-year-old woman.

Regardless of this, he stayed away from court docket, as an alternative leaving his legal professionals to defend him in opposition to claims that he vehemently denies.

Polanski – whose hit motion pictures embrace Rosemary’s Child, Chinatown and The Pianist – used the 2019 interview with Paris March to explain the rape declare as a ‘heinous lie’.

He additionally produced a replica of the Information of the World article, which quoted Ms Lewis as saying: ‘I used to be fascinated by him, and I wished to be his lover.’

Polanski stays a fugitive from American justice after having intercourse with Samantha Geimer, 13, in Hollywood in 1977, after plying her with champagne.

He then fled to his dwelling nation of France, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the USA.

He’s now married to the actress Emmanuelle Seigner, 58, with whom he has two kids who are actually actors – Morgane Polanski, 31, and Elvis Polanski, 26.

The Polanski libel trial has now concluded, and judgement can be handed down on Could 14.