Swiss probe old rape claim vs. Polanski

GENEVA — A Swiss prosecutor’s office says it has jurisdiction in the complaint of a German woman alleging Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski raped her in an Alpine resort town when she was a teenager 45 years ago.

A regional office in Bern says it relayed the issue to local prosecutors in the Bernese Highland. The case was transferred from St. Gallen, where Renate Langer, 61, filed the complaint last month alleging Polanski raped her at his Gstaad chalet in 1972.

Polanski lawyer Herve Temime declined to comment. Langer spoke publicly in a New York Times interview.

Polanski, 84, has been a fugitive from U.S. justice since fleeing to France in February 1978, hours before he was to be sentenced for having unlawful sex with Samantha (Gailey) Geimer, then 13, during a Vogue photo shoot in California.

The “Rosemary’s Baby” director was arrested in September 2009 in Switzerland, but police refused to extradite him and he was released from house arrest in July 2010.

British actress Charlotte Lewis has said Polanski “forced himself” on her when she was 16. Another woman, identified as Robin, said she was “sexually victimized” by him, also at 16.

Polanski’s second wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by madman Charles Manson’s followers in 1969.