Roman Polanski, on civil trial in Los Angeles for alleged rape in 1973

(AFP) The French-Polish director Roman Polanski, who is being sued by a woman who accuses him of raping her when she was a minor in 1973, will have to face justice for that case in August 2025 in the American city of Los Angeles, the plaintiff's defense reported Tuesday.

"The judge gave us a date for August 4, 2025 at 10:00 am for a ten-day jury trial," assured Gloria Allred, a famous Hollywood lawyer who has represented women in similar accusations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, in the eye of the #MeToo movement's hurricane, and the actor Bill Cosby.

Polanski, 90, has been considered a fugitive in the United States since 1978, when he fled after being accused of having sexual relations with a 13-year-old minor, named Samantha Geimer.

Because of this, Allred emphasized that, although his presence in California is unlikely, since this process is a civil case, "he does not have to appear."

Her client, with whom she held a press conference, claims that Polanski invited her to dinner in 1973, when she was a minor, and took her to a restaurant where he ordered her two shots of tequila. She says she began to feel dizzy and that the famous director took her to his home in Benedict Canyon, an exclusive neighborhood in Los Angeles, where he forced her to have sex. "She told him, 'Please don't do this,' and he ignored her pleas," Allred said.

The woman first accused the famous filmmaker in 2017, in a media appearance with Allred in which she identified herself as "Robin." The lawsuit was filed in June 2023 before the US courts.

Polanski faces another trial in France accused of defamation by British actress Charlotte Lewis, who also claims to have been a sexual victim of the director in 1983, when she was 16 years old.

The filmmaker of the award-winning films The Pianist, Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby ( The Devil's Seed, in Spain) refuted this and other sexual allegations that he has been the subject of during his career.

Samantha Geimer, at the center of the 1977 accusation in the United States, has publicly supported him and even photographed herself next to him last year in a photo she published on her social networks.