Apparently P. has a french citizenship and France never extradite french citizens.
Interesting note:
When Roman Polanski was announced as the winner of the Best Director, he received a standing ovation. When Elia Kazan was given a lifetime achievement award, many in the audience remained in their seats. Roman Polanski at the least committed the statutory rape of a 13-year old girl (I say “at the least” because some would say it was consensual, and I wasn’t there). Elia Kazan gave names to the government during the McCarthy era out of fear of losing his career - also, he had since left the Communist Party, apparently in some disgust. Why the double standard?
Of course, this is sheer speculation. I think it more likely that those who voted for Polanski were simply judging him as a director and not as a human being.
Roman Polanski may have negatively affected a life (to what degree, we can’t tell).
Elia Kazan ruined many lives.
I don’t think the idea is that he should get a free pass. I think the idea is the sentence should be adjusted to community service or somesuch. That doesn’t seem unreasonable - or unprecedented. And to clarify, the charge is not rape, it was something like unlawful sex with a minor. Legally, that’s not a small difference.
Interesting factors:
- Polanski (who had worked as a fashion photographer before) was approached by the girl’s parents. (There’s no reason to doubt the general theory that her older sister was past her prime and they needed another meal ticket. There was also some scuttlebutt about a blackmail effort preceding the charges.)
2)Many people in law enforcement feel that, without Polanski offering a reward, Manson would never have been caught.
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“Rosemary’s Baby” was a huge, controversial hit and scared the heck out of people. “Chinatown” was a huge, controversial hit, and dealt with the creepy subject of incest.
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The girl’s family made a serious effort to have the initial charges reduced, and crusty old Los Angeles gossips have told me this was because they feared that all the semi and nude photos of their older daughter (taken when she was a minor) would hurt the case and perhaps cause trouble for them. Gossip is gossip, but it’s not disputed that the older daughter had been a model.
These politically loaded aspects of the case, and the horror of Sharon Tate’s murder, made the outcome of a court case a real crap shoot. (It’s not discussed too often in this decade, but one of the murder victims was gay, and Sharon Tate was considered a perve for having a gay man in her house. There was a certain amount of “those movie stars and their orgies brought this on themselves” chatter at the time, despite the fact that Doris Day’s son was the intended target.) Most Friends of Polanski think that what he had been through with the police after Sharon’s murder, and his, ahem, views of American puritanical attitudes motivated his flight.
IMHO, the girl didn’t look older than she was, and if I remember correctly, Polanski was in fact aware of her age. He certainly never denied that anything took place.
Whether or not the girl thinks he should be given a free pass is not relevant - I am certain that many drug buyers feel their dealers should not be prosecuted. 
We prosecute crimes because we, as a society, have decided that certain behavior is not appropriate, not because any particular person was a victim.
If you want to talk about artists and rape… Charlie Chaplin had a real problem with little girls, as did Errol Flynn. The history of Rock and Roll is… well, there does seem to be something about famous men and underage girls. (Maybe it’s just because they’re all 5’2"!)
Speaking of double standards, every time I watch a “Behind the Music,” white musicians talk about doing illegal drugs. We don’t prosecute them. We applaud them for overcoming addiction.
Historically, there are certainly plenty of cases where a crime long in the past, with no ill feelings remaining, was made to go “poof.” Although, I’ve just now realized that mandatory sentencing, which has exploded in the past decade, may make it difficult to accept his plea and not make him serve time.
IMHO, look!ninjas, I believe the girl was trying to go along with what was expected of her… but she was only a girl. Even if she knew full well what she was doing, went home and called up all her friends and said, “Whoo hoo, I had sex with Roman Polanski and I’ll be on the cover of French Vogue,” that doesn’t make it okay for a man of 40+ to have sex with her.
A couple of elderly Jews I used to know never, ever trusted the police. I’ve never read anything about Polanski claiming his experience with the Nazis made him fear the courts and jail, but he’s notoriously quiet about his childhood. Naturally, having suffered doesn’t entitle anyone to a free pass on a later crime, but the whole idea of the judge and jury system is that we are supposed to look at details like this, and consider all charges on a case-by-base basis.
I haven’t read up on this, but did Polanski actually force himself on the 13-year-old girl at the time of the incident? I mean, IIRC, the charge is statutory rape; if the now-grown-up-and-forgen woman hopped into bed with him willingly, that’s a bit different than if he had grabbed her out of a crowd and assaulted her.
Sure, if you think a thirteen year old mixing alcohol and qualudes can give informed consent to sex.
Apparently, that’s how Mr Polanski thinks (or at least thought).
:wally
Yeah, no kidding. I think statutory rape should be abolished. Taking these things on a case-by-case basis would surely be more effective than locking them all up. I mean, depending on states and countries and whatnot, does an 18 year old deserve to go to jail for sexing up his 17 and 3/4 year old girl/boyfriend? And it’s pretty stupid to pretend that minors don’t engage in sexual activity. Oh, whoa, this 16 year old MUST have forced himself on the 14 year old, for sure. Wouldn’t employing psychologists and other experts to determine whether the sex was really consensual be a better idea than saying, “Oh, whoops, it’s against the law to make love to this person 'cause she’s three months or a year younger than you. Enjoy jail you rapist pervert”. I think so.
What I’m saying is that even in the instance of a 13 year old girl and a 21 year old guy, she could be gagging for it, with the knowledge and the emotional maturity that exactly zero guys her own age have (some might even argue the emotional maturity of a 21 year old guy doesn’t match the 13 year old girl), and the 21 year old guy thinks - grass on the field, let’s play. I’m not saying that all 13 year old girls should be out having sex with older men, but I am saying that it shouldn’t be the case none of them are legally allowed to.
Thank you, Mr. Polanski. (Just kidding.) There’s also a gender bias which goes along with this as well. If the genders had been switched in this case (i.e. a 13 year old male being seduced by an older woman), it’s highly unlikely there would have been any persecution at all. Indeed, the older woman would have been looked on as remarkable woman by many of the males of this society, and the male “victim” would be seen as one lucky SOB.
Problem is that it would be too difficult to apply it on a case by case basis. Drawing an arbitrary line in the sand seems to be the simplest way of doing things.
Even if it was consensual, he committed a crime - but this has already been discussed.
Either way, he shouldn’t have fled, but he did. Pile that on the list of his offences.
You mean, it might actually take more effort to look at each case’s circumstances and decide which people deserve to be locked up, than to simply ignore the facts and throw 'em all in jail based on some arbitrary standard? Who would’ve guessed! :rolleyes:
The pursuit of justice is more important than saving a few dollars or man-hours.
I agree with Mr2001 in the general sense, although I’ve found the standard to be largely acceptable in terms of great age seperation (i.e. a 40 year old and a 13 year old), where one can reasonably expect an older person to act according to the law(I can’t do it with 13 year olds no matter how old they look, why should they?), and of course I’ve lived by that quite well.
But, for the younger group (I am not old, 23), I think it is unfair to screw all the HS seniors out of the possibility of dating underclassmen/women. In this case, being in the same social environment and the same(Kind of) age makes an attraction natural and acceptable, and HS kids are going to have sex. It is kind of stupid to bust an 18 year old senior for doing it with a 16 year old classmate.
I would say it would be better to have a ‘gateway’ clause for late teens(18-19), where they can screw around to an extent, but when they hit 20 restrict them to the adult end of the scale. By that age, it begins to get creepy to be trying to get into a 15 year old’s pants. (There was a thread on this not too long ago)
A victims forgiviness, or anyone’s forgiviness, is beside the point. Our justice system isn’t based on forgiving or not forgiving acts committed. It is based on the idea of equal treatment for all people based on the acts they have committed that society does not want to tolerate the commision of. That applies to great directors and scum alike. I certainly think a case like this can raise a lot of troubling questions about how that system measures up to real human beings and real lives, but it would be wrong to break the system for Polanski and not for anyone else, just because of who he is. That’s not one of those a “legitimate issues.”
Tuckerfan, are you aware of the Mark K Letourno case (horribly mispelt, but say it out)? She went to jail for her relationship with a young male student: even though she was carrying his child.
Mary Kay Letourneau?
A tragic miscarriage of justice, IMO.
After the show Ford told reporters: “Having sex with a girl thirty years younger than you is the act of a sick immoral pervert. Naturally, having sex with a girl twenty five years younger than you is an entirely different matter.”
If I recall the story correctly, Kazan told the government not just about people who were making salon talk about “Das Kapital” or socialized medicine. He informed on people dedicated to communist revolution.
The communists have “ruined many lives,” as well, I believe.
I don’t recall ever hearing a case of one minor being prosecuted for statutory rape of another minor.
I have heard horrifying cases of children very young forcing or coercing other children. That’s a crime because it is not consensual. But kids do “play doctor.”
It does strike me as a miscarriage of justice to prosecute a 19 year old man (boy?) for sex with a 17 year old, legally minor girl. Not that I’m cheering for it, but it doesn’t strike me that the boy is a criminal, and considering that teens can get married, I believe as young as 16 in some U.S. states with parents’ consent.
And I can’t recall any case, ever, of a 19 year old female prosecuted for sleeping with a 17 year old boy.
I do not judge people forever by the worst act they have ever committed. I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either, just how remorseful Polanski is. But we do know that his victim seems to have forgiven him, so who are we to do less?