Top nominee Polanski to skip French Oscars after rape claim

Filmmaker Roman Polanski is skipping the awards ceremony for France's equivalent of the Oscars where his latest movie leads this year's nominations because of protests prompted by a new rape accusation against him.

Women's rights activists have called for a boycott of Friday's Cesars ceremony in Paris, and plastered anti-Polanski banners and graffiti at the event venue and the Cesar academy headquarters.

The entire male-dominated leadership of the Cesars stepped down recently amid a spat over its byzantine decision-making structure and over how to deal with the Polanski problem.

In a statement Thursday provided to The Associated Press, the Paris-based Polanski said the ceremony was turning into a "public lynching." Addressing the new accusation against him and other allegations over the years, he said: Fantasies of unhealthy minds are now treated as proven facts."