Fourth woman publicly accuses Roman Polanski of rape

A former German actress has told police in Switzerland that Roman Polanski raped her in the 1970s when she was 15.

Renate Langer spoke to The New York Times on Tuesday and becomes the fourth woman to publicly accuse the French-Polish director of rape.

Langer claimed the assault took place at a house in the expensive resort of Gstaad, Switzerland, in 1972. She was a model in Munich and travelled with the director after he expressed the possibility of a film role.

The former actress said that after the incident, Polanski apologised and offered her a small part in the film Che? She flew to the production in Rome after Polanski said he would not touch her again, however she claimed that one night he raped her again.

Langer said she had been too ashamed to tell anybody besides a boyfriend several years later, and was only coming forward now because her parents were no longer alive.

Swiss law does not place statutory term limits on claims in child sex abuse cases. A police officer said in an email seen by The New York Times that prosecutors in Bern were looking into the claim.

Polanski’s attorney Harland Braun declined to comment. The director, now 84, pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with Samantha Geimer when she was a teenager in the most infamous of the accusations.

Another woman came forward in August and told a press conference that Polanski had raped her in 1973 when she was 16. British actress Charlotte Lewis claimed in 2010 that the filmmaker raped her when she was 16.

Polanski lives in exile after fleeing the US in 1978 before sentencing in the Geimer case. In the summer, Geimer asked a US judge to drop charges against the director, only for her plea to be rejected.