A woman, identified only as Robin, has said she was ‘sexually victimized’ by the film director in 1973, when she was 16 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A third woman came forward Tuesday to accuse Roman Polanski of sexual assault when she was a minor, 40 years after he went on the run for raping another girl.

The woman, identified only as Robin, told a news conference in Los Angeles she was “sexually victimized” by the legendary French-Polish film director when she was 16, in 1973.

“The day after it happened, I did tell one friend that Mr Polanski had done that to me,” she said, reading from a prepared statement.

“The reason, with this exception, that I kept it to myself is that I didn’t want my father to do something that might cause him to go to prison for the rest of his life.”

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Robin said she was prompted to come forward after the victim at the center of a rape case against the famed director recently urged authorities to put the case to rest.

Gloria Allred, the lawyer representing the victim, said the incident happened in southern California but added that her client would not be going into any further detail.

Although the statute of limitations has expired on her case, she could be called to testify in a future trial, the lawyer said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robin and her attorney Gloria Allred hold up a photo of Robin when she was 16, at the time of the alleged assault. Photograph: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

The director of Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, who turns 84 on Friday, was accused of drugging Samantha Geimer when she was 13 before raping her at Jack Nicholson’s house in Los Angeles in 1977 while the film star was away.

Polanski admitted statutory rape after a number of more serious charges were dropped, and spent 48 days in custody to undergo psychiatric evaluation before being released.

According to court documents filed by his lawyer Harland Braun, Polanski was promised by the judge overseeing the case that the seven weeks he spent in custody would be the only time he would serve.

But in 1978, he left for France after becoming convinced the judge was going to scrap his plea deal and send him to prison, possibly for decades.

The director – who is married to the French actor Emmanuelle Seigner, with whom he has two children – has since refused to return without assurances that he would not serve additional time in prison.

He was hit with fresh sex crime allegations in 2010, when the British actor Charlotte Lewis claimed the director “forced himself” upon her just after her 16th birthday.

Polanski’s attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.