Oscar Winner Roman Polanski Avoids Trial in Alleged Sexual Assault of Minor

Roman Polanski just got a major legal break. The Oscar winner will no longer face trial over an alleged assault of another minor. In the latest case, the incident in question reportedly occurred in 1973. Due to the statute of limitations, a civil trial was upcoming in Los Angeles next August. It has since been withdrawn. 

His attorney, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs said in an email the case has been “settled in the summer to the parties’ mutual satisfaction and has now been formally dismissed.” 

Polanski is accused of taking the then-teenager, listed as a Jane Doe in the suit, to dinner at a restaurant in Los Angeles in 1973. He’s accused of giving her tequila and, when she began to feel dizzy, drove her to his home, where he forced himself on her.

“She told him: ‘please don’t do this,’” her lawyer Gloria Allred told reporters in the spring. “She alleges that he ignored her pleas. She also alleges that defendant Polanski removed plaintiff’s clothes and he proceeded to sexually assault her, causing her tremendous physical, emotional pain and suffering.”

The civil suit asked for unspecified damages and was filed last summer just before the expiration of a California law that allowed for an extended window for claims against the alleged perpetrators of sexual crimes. Court papers reveal a “conditional” agreement had been reached.

Allred confirmed to CBS News in an email that “a settlement of claims was agreed to by the parties to their mutual satisfaction.”

Polanski has long been accused of being a sexual predator. He admitted to the statutory rape of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in a plea bargain in 1977. After serving a brief stint in prison, he fled to France the following year out of fear that a judge would reconsider his release. He rarely speaks to the media.