French Actor Valentine Monnier Accuses Roman Polanski of 'Violent Rape'

Convicted child rapist Roman Polanski has been accused of “violently raping” another woman, totaling at least six allegations of sexual assault from women who were teenagers and/or minors at the time of the attack. According to the New York Times, French photographer Valentine Monnier says Polanski attacked her in 1975 at his ski chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland when she was just 18 years old. Polanski has “firmly denied” the accusation.

Monnier detailed the accusation in a letter published in the French newspaper Le Parisien on Friday. She describe a ski trip she took with a group of friends, wherein Polanski propositioned her and she declined. Later, she says, he asked her to join him upstairs; when she arrived where he was standing in the nude. She says he hit her, knocked her down, ripped off her clothes and raped her. In the New York Times translation of an accompanying interview, she admits to fearing for her life. “I said to myself, this is Roman Polanski,” she said. “He can’t take the risk that this would be known, so he will have to kill me.” Friends and family of Monnier have since corroborated her story.

According to the Guardian, Polanski has threatened legal action over her allegations. Switzerland’s statute of limitations on rape is 20 years, so Monnier will be unable to pursue prosecution, Variety reports.

As you recall, in 1978, Polanski fled the United States after pleading guilty to raping 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. He is still wanted in the U.S., where he left before sentencing, but has been living in France, a country that does not extradite citizens. In the time since, Polanski has been accused of assaulting a 16-year-old girl in 1986 and of sexually assaulting a woman who chose not to identify herself and claims to have been a minor at the time of the attack. British actor Charlotte Lewis has alleged Polanski sexually abused her in 1983, when she was a 16-year-old star on the set of his movie Pirates. In 2017, German actor Renate Langer accused director Roman Polanski of raping her in Gstaad when she was 15. Days later, artist Marianne Barnard accused Polanski of raping her at age 10 during a photo shoot.

A week later, Cinémathèque Française held a celebratory retrospective of his work, despite protests.