'Chinatown' director Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to rape for unlawful sex with a minor, but fled the US for France and has remained a fugitive
Controversial director Roman Polanski reunited with Samantha Geimer, the woman he pled guilty to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor more than 40 years ago.
Geimer was 13 years old at the time Polanski – who was in his 40s – was arrested and charged with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, providing controlled substances to a minor, and lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 14.
Following his guilty plea in 1977, Polanski fled the country and became a fugitive, first finding refuge in London and then settling in France.
While Polanski has never stepped foot on U.S. soil or any country that would extradite him to the United States, he has still created films and won the Academy Award for best director in 2002 for "The Pianist."
In the Instagram photo shared from Geimer's private account to Polanski's wife Emmanuelle Seigner's profile, both Roman and Samantha smiled for the camera.
"Thank you Samantha," Emmanuelle captioned the shot with a few heart emojis.
She added David Geimer for the photo credit and tagged the magazine that published a recent chat between Geimer and Seigner.
"Let me be very clear: what happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me," Geimer told Seigner in the French publication per IndieWire. "I didn’t even know it was illegal, that someone could be arrested for it. I was fine, I’m still fine."
She added, "The fact that we’ve made this [a big deal] weighs on me terribly. To have to constantly repeat that it wasn’t a big deal, it’s a terrible burden."
"Everyone should know by now that Roman has served his sentence. From my side, nobody wanted him to go to jail, but he did and it was enough. He paid his debt to society. There, end of story."
"Anyone who thinks that he deserves to be in prison is wrong. It isn’t the case today, and it wasn’t the case yesterday."
In August 1977, Polanski pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor as part of a plea bargain dismissing five other charges. Geimer had testified that Polanski gave her champagne and a sedative during a photoshoot and proceeded to have sex with her despite her objections.
The sexual assault happened at Jack Nicholson's mansion. He was not home when the encounter occurred.
Forty years later, Geimer appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom pleading for a judge to officially dismiss the case so that her family could move on. The judge denied the request months later.
A California appeals court in July ordered the unsealing of a conditional deposition transcript from former prosecutor Roger Gunson to be opened in the criminal case against director Polanski. Gunson retired in 2002.
"This case has been described by the courts as ‘one of the longest-running sagas in California criminal justice history,’" Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón said in a press release. "For years, this office has fought the release of information that the victim and public have a right to know."
In 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to kick Polanski out and subsequently defended its decision by saying he was given a fair opportunity to challenge the Academy's ruling.
Polanski sued the Academy the following year on the grounds that the group had failed to follow its own procedures when it voted to kick him out. He was expelled alongside Bill Cosby for violating the organization’s standards of conduct.
In its response, the Academy said the board considered voluminous materials submitted by Polanski on appeal, including more than 400 pages of exhibits and a detailed memo from his attorney. Polanski also recorded a videotaped statement directly addressing the board of governors.
The level to which this sickens me is hard to express....
ReplyDeleteThat type of stuff may be acceptable across the pond. But here in America, we frown on buggering the teenagers.
ReplyDeleteSt. Circumstance said...
ReplyDeleteThe level to which this sickens me is hard to express....
I'm finding it difficult to feel any other way.
It doesn't really matter if Sam Geimer says it was never a big deal for her and that Polanski shouldn't have been jailed ~ the law has in mind the millions of 13 and 14 year olds that it would not be OK with and whose lives would be dented {and worse} adversely, if males felt there was a green light by the back door to behave in this way.
ReplyDeleteThere was absolutely no difference in the way Roman Polanski acted with her from the way Charles Manson acted with Ouisch or a number of other underage girls.
The most telling aspect of the whole event is that he drugged her ~ not something you do generally with a willing consenting partner, even if they are a young teen.
Just putting aside the essential creepiness of this incident for a second, the real question (to me) has always been "Who had Polanski pissed off so badly that the Hollywood establishment allowed the bust to happen in such a public manner".
ReplyDeleteI mean... lets face it, the LA cops & media have always been pretty tight with the studios... and Polanski certainly wasn't the first (or last) Hollywood icon to take advantage of an under-age girl. Usually there was some kind of system in place to stop this kind of behaviour going much further than a quick pay-off to the victim and a water-tight non-disclosure agreement (or the 70s equivalent thereof). But in this particular case, the bust was orchestrated to the point where the media was ready and waiting wth cameras a'blazing as Polanski was led out of the hotel where he was arrested. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not justifying or diminishing Polanski's actions in the slightest. It's just that it's always struck me as odd that of all the teen-raping celebrities that hung around tinsel-town for the previous 50 years (and since), Polanski was the one that got hung out to dry. Curious.
Peter said...
That type of stuff may be acceptable across the pond. But here in America, we frown on buggering the teenagers
Ya might wanna talk to Jerry Lee Lewis about that. :-)
There's a reason 13 year olds don't get to decide what is a crime and isn't.
ReplyDeleteNow, decades later, you would think that Geimer would have accumulated the sense to realise that condoning Polanski's behavior potentially does immeasurable harm to kids today. She's entitled to her view of course, but when it completely contradicts the law, just keep it to yourself.
She really just comes across as a bit stupid - "I didn't even know it was a crime/nobody wanted him to go to jail."
Uh, yeah, we did.
Polanski always seemed like a creep. Ms. Geimer should also realize that it is the People v. Roman Polanski, not Geimer v. Polanski. No matter how the victim feels, the State is obligated to prosecute.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame that poor Sharon ever entered into his orbit.
As a victim of sexual grooming and abuse as a teen in the late 1970s-early 1980s, I'm not really surprised by her attitude, but I'm saddened by it. Not surprised, because it's ground into females to be assertive to a certain point but not too much; you can't run with the big guys if you're too "pushy" (which has a moveable goal post, natch!).
ReplyDeleteSaddened because even though I consciously worked at staying a virgin (which I've since found is a negative cultural construct, natch!) until I was 16. And then I said "yes" - to a guy in his 30s. I mean, WOW an older guy interested in me when guys my age wouldn't give me the time of day? What gal wouldn't be thrilled, who didn't know any bloody better? Who was raised, like the rest of us, to believe in love at first sight and all that other happy-crappy?
I can't help but think she's in deep denial. The fact that he's famous and critically acclaimed might help her keep it together. She doesn't look happy though, and I don't mean just because she's "tired" of all the hoopla. Hell, I'm 58 years old and I still have flashbacks to when I was 15-18 years old and I just...cringe and want to go back and tell myself, "These guys are for shit! Run!"
I mean, it's like she's condoning rape. And to be catty (and probably in poor taste) - at least it wasn't Bill Cosby.
ReplyDeleteAnd I every time I see that mention of Jack Nicholson's house, I remember reading that he was the first man to have sexual intercourse with Drew Barrymore when she was 13 (I think it was 13). SIGH.
Young Loves and Hollywood have a long tradition. From the unpublished biography of Judy Garland:
ReplyDelete“Between the ages of sixteen and twenty, Judy herself was to be approached for sex – and approached again and again. ‘Don’t think they all didn’t try,’ she said. Top on the list was (MGM studio head Louis B.)Mayer himself. Whenever he complimented her on her voice – she sang from the heart, he said – Mayer would invariably place his hand on her left breast to show just where her heart was. ... That scenario, a compliment followed by a grope, was repeated many times..."
(from the trial transcript)
ReplyDeletePolanski then asked her, Gailey recalled, "Would you want me to go in through your back?" before he "put his penis in my butt."
I actually don't have a problem with Samantha Geimer forgiving Roman Polanski and taking the view that for her it's no longer a big deal. I'm a Christian, I believe in forgiveness. Forgiveness has been a genuine {and difficult} way of life for me since 1985.
ReplyDeleteI place her in the same place as I place Suzan LaBerge, Rosemary LaBianca's daughter, who herself succumbed to Christ and learned the difficult road of forgiveness and went on to forgive possibly the worst, certainly the most hated, person in TLB, Charles Watson. I think in both cases, that was not only admirable, but right.
But one can forgive and still go on to be wrong.
Suzan coming out to bat for Tex and advocating his release on parole back in 1990, in my opinion, was wholly wrong. 19 years in jail for 7 murders was honestly a mockery, regardless of the changes Watson had gone through. And I have no doubt that he had gone through important changes. But God had a far more thorough work to do in Charles Watson. And prison was to be the place where that work was to achieve its full effectiveness. I understand why Suzan acted as she did and as I've said before, her heart was in the right place, but her maturity in Christ had yet to emerge and catch up.
With Sam Geimer, it seems to me that, understandably, she has been thinking of herself but not thinking of how actions go beyond oneself and into the wider society. Regardless of whether she was a sexually active {mature ?} teen, for the very simple reason that maturity comes to males and females at such different ages, one has to look at the teens who are not mature. Those that are ripe for exploitation. And even she had quibbles at the time with what Polanski was doing, that a woman of Polanski's age would have been way better equipped to deal with.
She's right to forgive a specific act. She's not in any way right to advocate that Roman {and thousands like him} should be enabled, by escaping societal sanction {ie, punishment}, to potentially screw up other people's lives, which is what often happens when "mature" adult men have their one-night stand adventures with 13 and 14-year-old girls. It's not like most of them are waiting around to offer them life partnership as wives or important significant others.