MAINSTREAMING CHILD-RAPE:

Justice for Polanski (Gerald Posner, 9/28/09, Daily Beast)

Back in March 1977, when Polanski was arrested at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and charged with six felony counts—two charges of rape, sodomy, oral copulation, child molestation, and furnishing drugs (Quaaludes, the 1970s’ version of a date rape drug), to a 13-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer—the prosecutor’s case seemed ironclad.

But even those familiar with the details seem to have long since forgotten them.

Nearly two years after Polanski’s wife Sharon Tate was killed by Charles Manson’s cult followers, the director met Samantha’s mother and arranged for the girl to visit him alone, ostensibly to pose for French Vogue. At their first meeting, Polanski took pictures of Samantha, including some of her topless. At the second get-together, two weeks later, at Jack Nicholson’s empty Bel Air home, he gave her champagne and a Quaalude, and then had sex with her. By the time she returned home from that encounter, Samantha’s mother had discovered the topless Polaroids. After her mother quizzed her, the child broke down in tears, confessed the details of the attack, and her mother called the police. [...]

Polanski faced up to 50 years in prison. But he pleaded guilty, on August 8, 1977, to a single count of unlawful sexual contact with a minor: “I had sexual intercourse with a female person not my wife, under the age of 18,” he told the court. Many people concluded somehow that the prosecutor’s case was weak and that Polanski pleaded guilty only to get rid of the matter. In fact, the transcript from his guilty plea shows that only reason the prosecutors agreed to the arrangement was that Samantha and her parents were desperate to avoid the publicity of a full-blown trial. The press had kept Samantha’s identity a secret (years later, she herself disclosed it).

“Of course, if there were to be a trial in this case, the anonymity of my clients would be at an end,” said their attorney, Lawrence Silver. “[M]y view, based upon advice from experts, and the view of the girl’s parents, is that such a trial may cause serious damage to her.”

Because of the massive publicity, Silver argued that the harm to Samantha might be greater than the crimes committed against her, and said “a stigma would attach to her for a lifetime.” [...]

[H]ours before he was to be sentenced, Polanski fled to Paris. He was “exhausted,” said his friends, from the battery of psychiatric tests. “I’ve been tortured by this for a year and that’s enough,” he told the BBC.

That’s how it mostly remained—unfinished justice, Polanski a fugitive. [...]

Hollywood is split over Polanski. In 2002, he was awarded an Academy Award for directing The Pianist. And while some celebrities believe he has suffered enough by his three-decade ban from the U.S., others think he has never paid for his original crime. Polanski, for his part, has let it be known through friends that he thought the U.S. statutory rape laws are puritanical at best and utterly stupid at worst. The victim was, he is said to have told his closest friends, a temptress in the mold of Nabokov’s Lolita.

Just some facts to keep in mind when we see folks defending him....

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 28, 2009 6:24 AM