GENEVA, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- Swiss prosecutors said Wednesday they will not prosecute Polish-French film director Roman Polanski after a German woman alleged that he raped her when she was a teenager 45 years ago.
Prosecutors in Bern said that the statute of limitations for the alleged crime of sexual actions with children had long since expired, the Neue Zurcher Zeitung newspaper reported.
The statute of limitations on the period in which a charge had to be made was 15 years at the time.
The 61-year-old woman in September submitted claims that she was raped in 1972 by Polanski in a Gstaad chalet, in the Swiss canton of Bern.
Christof Scheurer, information officer of the Bern prosecutor general's office, said the woman can appeal the decision to a higher court,
The plaintiff was the fourth woman to publicly accuse Polanksi of rape.
Polanski has once admitted to sexual intercourse with a minor as part of a plea bargain in 1977 in the United States.
In 2009, Polanski was detained in Switzerland following a warrant by U.S. justice authorities to extradite him. He was put under house arrest for ten months before he was released.
