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PARIS, May 14. A Paris court on Tuesday acquitted Polish-French director Roman Polanski, whom actress Charlotte Lewis accused of libel in 2019, AFP reports. .
At the end of the hearing in the case in March, the prosecutor did not request a sentence for the famous director. 
On Tuesday, a court ruled that the director, facing justice for the first time since 1977, is not guilty of the charges. In 2010, British actress Charlotte Lewis, who starred in Polanski's 1986 film Pirates, alleged that the director raped her when she was 16 years old. Polanski, writing in Paris Match in 2019, called Lewis's accusations an “odious lie” and pointed out contradictions in her testimony. Lewis filed a complaint against him, accusing the director of defamation over her testimony against him.
As the agency notes, the 90-year-old director has never been tried in France in cases involving rape charges. He did not attend the hearing in this case in March; his interests were represented by a lawyer.
Polanski, who has dual Polish and French citizenship, previously pleaded guilty to raping 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977. He was taken into custody during the US investigation and spent 42 days in state prison before being released pending sentencing. Later, amid media pressure, the judge ordered Polanski to be sent back to prison for another 48 days, but the director fled from the United States to Europe.
In 2017, actress Valentin Monnier, 44 years after the incident, told the French publication Parisien that she was also abused by the director.
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