French actor accuses Oscar-winner Roman Polanski of sexual assault

French actor Valentine Monnier has accused Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski of sexual assault.

The actor has claimed that the 86-year-old director had violently raped her about three decades ago in 1975, when she was just 18.

"In 1975, I was raped by Roman Polanski. I had no connection to him, personal or professional, and barely knew him. This didn't happen in the fracas of a party (there were no drugs, no alcohol). This was an extreme act of violence after we went skiing at his chalet in Gstaad," The Hollywood Reporter quoted her as saying in a statement given to a French publication - Le Parisien.

 

While detailing the attack, Monnier added, "He hit me, ripped off my clothes until I surrendered and made me submit to a number of unpleasant acts. I had just turned 18 years old."

However, the charges have been denied by the director's attorneys in a statement given to Le Parisien.

"Roman Polanski strongly denies all accusation of rape. On a personal note, I can't help but add that the alleged action took place 40 years ago. That they were never, throughout all these long years, brought to the attention of a judiciary authority or to Mr. Polanski. Under these conditions, I strongly protest the release, on the eve of the film's release, of these accusations," the attorneys said.

Monnier in her statement has further questioned the French title and topic of Polanski's latest feature 'J'Accuse' (An Officer and a Spy is the English title), which pictures the wrongful imprisonment of French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus, accused in 1894 of being a German spy.

In the statement, the French actor has argued that Polanski has tried to "whitewash" his own history by the film.

"'Separate the art and artist,' we've heard in the last few years, and yet Polanski himself transposes the history that he has tried to overcome over the course of many years repeatedly into the film, pushing his own history closer to that of Dreyfus, to the point where he poses as a victim of the same fury of mendacious trials and media," she wrote.

She added that she remained tight-lipped until now for she felt cautious and young and was filled with a sense of powerlessness.

This isn't the first for Polanski and the director had pleaded guilty of raping a minor in 1977. However, he left the USA the following year to escape the sentence.