Roman Polanski to face civil trial next year in Los Angeles for allegedly raping teen in 1973

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/celebrity/roman-polanski-to-face-civil-trial-next-year-in-los-angeles-for-allegedly-raping-teen-in-1973

Gloria Allred is representing the plaintiff, a Jane Doe accusing the fugitive filmmaker of giving her alcohol and sexually assaulting her at his home.

A woman is suing the fugitive filmmaker Roman Polanski, alleging that he raped her in his Los Angeles home in 1973, when she was underage, and a judge has set a trial date for next year.

Gloria Allred, the prominent women's rights attorney, held a press conference Tuesday with the plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, and said the trial is slated to start Aug. 4, 2025.

Doe's complaint, which was initially filed in June and later amended to name Polanski, 90, as the defendant, alleges that the incident occurred after she had met Polanski at a party a few months prior, and subsequently accepted his invitation to dinner. She claims that Polanski knew she was a minor and plied with her alcohol at his Benedict Canyon home and a restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard before she became ill. She allegedly passed out and woke up to find herself in Polanski's bed, not knowing how she got there.

"He told her that he wanted to have sex with her," the complaint states. "Plaintiff, though groggy, alleges that she told defendant 'No.' She told him, 'Please don’t do this.' He ignored her pleas. Plaintiff alleges that defendant Polanski removed plaintiff's clothes and he proceeded to sexually assault her causing her tremendous physical and emotional pain and suffering."

Doe, who first went public with her allegations against Polanski in 2017, said in a statement Tuesday, "I have waited a long time to file this case against Mr. Polanski, but I finally decided to file it in order to obtain justice and accountability."

An attorney for Polanski, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, said in a statement to EW that his client "strenuously denies the allegations made against him in the lawsuit and believes that the proper place to try this case is in the courts, and not in press conferences."

This is not the first time Polanski has faced allegations of sexual abuse. The Rosemary's Baby and The Pianist director, who lives in France, has remained a fugitive from the United States since 1978, when he fled the country to avoid sentencing after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

Between 2017 and 2019, four women accused Polanski of sexually abusing them in the 1970s, three of them as minors. Polanski has denied the allegations.

Polanski is currently on trial in France over allegations that he defamed a British actress who accused him of sexually assaulting her in the 1980s.

>Pizzagate is real

Ex-border officer pleads guilty to smuggling migrants into US, accepting bribes

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ex-border-officer-pleads-guilty-to-smuggling-migrants-into-us-accepting-bribes

A former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer who worked at a Texas port of entry has pleaded guilty after being accused of smuggling migrants into the U.S. and accepting bribes to allow what he thought was cocaine to enter the country, authorities said Monday.

Emanuel Isac Celedon, 36, of Laredo, worked at the Lincoln Juarez Port of Entry in Laredo, where prosecutors said he told smugglers what lane he was assigned to in advance and let them through without inspection or documentation of passengers at least nine times between September and November 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas said in a statement.

During at least two of these occasions, prosecutors said that Celedon falsely entered information into a CBP database to avoid sending the driver to a mandatory secondary inspection.

>Investigators determined that Celedon asked others to advertise his role in the human smuggling effort to Mexican smugglers and assure them he was "doing his part," prosecutors said.

Celedon was found with $1,980 in cash at the time of his arrest, which he told authorities was payment for human smuggling.

In a separate drug case, Celedon had agreed to smuggle what he believed were kilograms of cocaine from Mexico through his assigned lane at the Laredo Port of Entry twice in October 2023, the statement said.

Celedon was caught in an undercover investigation that showed him express interest in smuggling cocaine into the U.S. for payment, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He provided his duty schedule and told others to direct certain vehicles into his lane so that he could allow them to cross safely.

Prosecutors said Celedon was paid $6,000 after the vehicles with fake cocaine crossed the port of entry.

Celedon faces up to 80 years in prison on the four counts of bringing an undocumented alien to the U.S., along with the bribery and drug charges.