BREAKING: Latest Polanski Accuser Speaks Out In Extensive Interview

In 1983 when Charlotte Lewis says Roman Polanski “sexually abused me and manipulated me in the worst way,” she was one month into her 16th year.

He was 50.

Charlotte Lewis and Roman Polanski in 1986

Since this story broke yesterday a lot of speculation’s been flying about questioning Ms. Lewis’ willingness to make “Pirates” in 1986 with a man who she says sexually abused her in 1983. The AP put it this way: [emphasis mine throughout]

Los Angeles County prosecutors have met with a British actress who claims she was sexually abused by director Roman Polanski in his Paris apartment when she was 16 — years before she appeared in one of his movies.

Leave it to the incurious, unskeptical leftist media to attempt to plant that talking point seed in the opening paragraph. Anyone interested in offering a little context would take the time to explain that a production the size of “Pirates,” a debacle so bloated it killed off the genre until “Pirates of the Caribbean” seventeen years later, can easily take three years from start of pre-production to release. You have rehearsals, the building of massive ships, the shoot (which is rumored to have taken nearly a year), and post-production.

This must-read Mail Online interview with Ms. Lewis backs up this fairly obvious scenario. She explains that the abuse occurred when she first met Polanski to try out for her eventual role in the film. In other words, the spin Polanski’s apologists are tossing out — the idea that Ms. Lewis escaped the fugitive rapists clutches only to return willingly for a starring role in “Pirates,” just isn’t that simple.

She says: ‘The very first thing he asked me was, “How old are you?” I told him I was 16, but only just. This was in September and I had turned 16 that August.’

After dinner Polanski checked the girls out of the hotel room that he had dismissed as substandard and took them back to his apartment. While her friend retired to a neighbouring flat, Charlotte stayed chatting with the director on the sofa in his living room.

‘We were drinking Moet and Chandon, I’ll never forget that, and I still can’t drink that champagne to this day. He told me he wanted me to stay the night with him and then he made a pass at me. He tried to kiss me and touch my breasts. I pulled away and told him that I had a boyfriend, which wasn’t true. It was an excuse, but he didn’t care.

‘He just said very coldly, “If you’re not a big enough girl to have sex with me, you’re not big enough to do the screen test. I must sleep with every actress that I work with, that’s how I get to know them, how I mould them.”

‘I was shocked and got very upset and started to cry. I said I didn’t want to sleep with him, he was 50 and I found him disgusting.’

But as she recalls this today, Charlotte admits that she felt conflicted. ‘I saw this opportunity slipping away,’ she says softly.

‘My mother who had been working as a legal secretary had just been made redundant and although I was doing a lot of modelling I didn’t have a lot of money. I saw this film as my chance to make it. All these things were going through my head and I was getting more and more upset. I told him I didn’t want to sleep with him and I left.

‘I went to the other flat to see my friend and tell her what had happened.’

Charlotte says that, in her naivety and confusion, she became concerned that she was letting a professional opportunity of a lifetime pass her by, so returned to the director’s apartment.

‘Roman opened the door and led me to the bedroom,’ she recalls.

She has described exactly what she alleges happened next to the Los Angeles’ prosecutors, who are expected to investigate. …

She claims that a further incident took place before she left for home.

A fifty year-old man with the power to lay the brass ring of the whole world at the feet of a young, impressionable, impoverished girl? Is this really all that hard to believe?

From here the question becomes, why did she stay on to do the film? To her credit, Ms. Lewis is quite forthcoming about this. But this piece of information also appears to help make sense of that:

I had turned 17 and Roman had been told by the producer Tarak Ben Ammar and MGM to stay away from me.

This is an important detail. Obviously, at the very least, Ms. Lewis knew that going forward she was safe from Polanski’s abuse:

Some might find it difficult to square her allegations of an ordeal that she claims was terrifying with her decision to return to Paris two weeks later for the Pirates screen test. But she did return and she got the part that would launch her career.

‘I never told my mother what had happened,’ she said. ‘I was just too ashamed. I needed to do this movie, the money was good – I was being paid 1,200 a month. My mother and I were living in housing association accommodation and this was a life-changing amount of money.’

Too ashamed to tell her mother. Anyone can understand that and this detail might further explain more than initially meets the eye. Ms. Lewis says, and there’s no reason not to believe her, that this opportunity was too good to turn down for a girl in her struggling situation. But it’s important to also keep in mind that a decision to walk away would’ve required her to explain why and therefore put her in a position where what she was so ashamed to speak of might be discovered.

Since she no longer had to worry about another attack, it’s not far-fetched to imagine a 16 year old girl deciding that the easy way out of being put into a situation where she might be cornered into revealing her shame, was to make the movie and thereby avoid all the complications that would arise from pulling out.

In the coming weeks, as you watch this story unfurl in the rest of the mainstream entertainment media, the important thing to keep in mind is that this second accuser has done something much more serious than to just make life more difficult for Leftist Hollywood’s favorite child rapist. Ms. Lewis is also a threat to the reputations of those superstars and media types who have stood by Polanski from the beginning. It is in their selfish interest to destroy her credibility through innuendo and otherwise.

Be sure to read the full interview. Over the years, Ms. Lewis has made some conflicting statements; once while she was still on Polanski’s payroll and a second time where she claims she was misquoted. What is clear is that the more she speaks the more credible she sounds.

More to come…