Roman Polanski Has Been Accused By French Actress Valentine Monnier Of Raping Her In 1975
It’s always nice to take a weekend off to rest and recharge. One expects to return to Dlisted to find oneself writing about such gaiety as Kanye West continuing to confuse himself with Aimee Semple McPherson and Keanu Reeves dating the American Helen Mirren. Unfortunately, the fates felt differently this morning. A French actress is accusing expatriate homunculus Roman Polanski of violently raping her at a Swiss ski chalet in 1975.
Variety reports that, in an interview with French daily Le Parisien on Friday, Valentine Monnier, 62, accused Polanski, 86, of raping her when she was 18 at a ski chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland. She says that she was motivated to speak out due to Polanski’s latest flick An Officer and a Spy opening in France next week.
Monnier told Le Parisien that she didn’t know Polanski personally when she agreed to go skiing at his chalet with a group of friends in the winter of 1975. After dinner one evening, she said Polanski called her upstairs. “Life had not trained me to be suspicious,” she told the paper.
Brace yourself for horrid details. Valentine says Polanski was naked when she got there. She claims he hit her and ripped off her clothes before raping her. She also says that he tried to force a pill down her throat.
She told the publication she remembers being afraid of dying. “I told myself: It’s Roman Polanski, he can’t risk this being known, so he’ll have to kill me.”
In the interview, Valentine talked about how what allegedly happened is always with her and how it’s fucked up that France’s 20-year statute of limitations means Polanski can’t be charged with a crime. By the way, Le Parisien spoke with witnesses who corroborated Valentine’s story, noting that she told them about the incident right afterward. Polanski’s French lawyer says that Roman “strongly denies the allegations.”
“Rape is a time bomb,” she told the publication. “The memory does not fade. It becomes a ghost and it follows you, and it changes you insidiously.”
“I denounce this crime knowing that there can’t be any punishment, in an attempt to end exceptions, impunity. Public figures are being considered as models. By idolizing the guilty ones, we prevent people from realizing the serious consequences of their acts,” added Monnier.
An Officer and a Spy is getting good reviews and won the Silver Bear at the Venice Film Festival. There’s been backlash seeing as Polanski famously fled to France in 1978 to avoid his sentencing for raping then 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in the same year as he allegedly raped Valentine. Much like other narcissistic creeps who don’t even have the decency to keep their creep mouths shut about their crimes (hi, Matt Lauer!), Polanski had this to say in a recent interview about his movie.
Comparing himself to his film’s protagonist, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the French-Jewish officer who was unfairly accused of spying for Germany in the late 1890s, Polanski said “I can see the same determination to deny the facts and condemn me for things I have not done.”
Captain Dreyfus just rolled over in his grave to ask to be excused from this narrative, merci.
Pic: Wenn.com