The guy who killed Polanski’s mother at Auschwitz-Bierkenau for one.
Ah, and the singer whose followers held Polanski’s wife down and stabbed her full-term pregnant stomach repeatedly and said “I have no mercy for you bitch” as she pleaded for her wife. Oh, and they also butchered his friends in a crime so barbaric that it became world famous.
Such a panzie little candy ass Polanski: “Wah wah wah, the Nazis took me to a concentration camp and killed my mommy and the Mansons wrote things in my wife and fetus’s blood… and killed my friends and then laughed at me in the courtroom and were on the news non-stop for a decade” and he can’t cope and gets thoroughly fucked up in his head. Some people just are weak I guess.
The victim wants it buried: she for some reason doesn’t relish the thought of her name and likeness being projected and opined on by Nancy Grace’s dumbass smirking chimp face and other shows 24/7 due to something that happened 3/4 of her life ago. Polanski, judging by his behavior for 31 years, seems to have excorcised his demons and has harmed nobody. His incarceration would benefit nobody, it would protect nobody, and it would cost millions of dollars to a bankrupt state.
OF COURSE HE SHOULD BE ARRESTED! To think otherwise is to support child rape, and why have any mercy on a man just because he’s old and has endured enough to snap anybody’s mind five times over?
To clarify, he did two different photo shoots. She was not assaulted on the first one, but “felt uncomfortable”. But her desire to appear in the French version of Vogue overwhelmed those fears, so she went back for a second session, again without her mother or any other chaperon. What the fuck was wrong with this girl’s mother? I wouldn’t lend someone my cat for a photo shoot without my being there.
I blame both Polanski and Samantha Gailey’s mother.
Take that with as large of a grain of salt as you see fit. The fact that it happened right after the big UBS settlement has not escaped attention in many quarters.
From the NY Times Article…
Anyone else’s irony-o-meter explode with this remark? The French love nothing more than intense, lengthy discussions about fine points of law that do not take into account equity or humanity… I would say that the French courts are more formal than almost any other.
Why is Mr Polanski the victim here? What about that poor girl with the crappy parents?
Many people have awful childhoods. An awful childhood or even a terrible adulthood is not an excuse to drug and rape someone. Whether or not the state of California is broke has very little do with whether or someone gets to escape responsibility for raping a child.
As for the the victim wanting it dropped – she’s not in charge of our justice system. They could take her wishes into account when it comes to sentencing, I imagine (victim impact statements?) But she has no say in who we prosecute.
Otherwise, you could have people say, “Well, I want to forgive the murderor of my brother – it was a long time ago, I’m at peace with it now.” (If you caught said killer years later.)
Another fact: think of how Norma McCorvey aka “Jane Roe” wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned. Should we revisit the case based on her wishes?
He isn’t a victim, despite the attempts of some oppositional-defiant misfits and losers to paint him as such. He’s a child rapist and I hope very much to see him die in prison.
The only paragraph in this post that is remotely relevant is the fourth one. There’s some persuasive arguments in it (especially the part about the victim being opposed to prosecution), but unfortunately they’re weakened by the rest of the post.
The victim’s statement is irrelevant except during sentencing. Besides which, how are we to know whether or not Polanski paid her off?
Another fuck you goes out to Hollywood for giving the creep an Oscar.
And Sampiro, would you advocate “get out of jail-free cards” for all convicted criminals who have shitty pasts? Once again, mitigating circumstances are irrelevant except during the sentencing phase.
I don’t even care if he goes to prison. In a perfect world, all his assets accumulated post-conviction would be seized and the profits allocated to foundations supporting rape victims.
He will certainly get a new judge, considering that the old one dies.
Was the entire plea agreement rejected by the judge, or did he accept the plea but not the proposed sentence?
How would the sentence be fixed? California sentencing for rape at the timeranged from one to fifty years, the wide range presumably corresponding to the wide range of things included in the term rape. Presumably in a case of consensual sex between an adult and a minor of seventeen years, the adult would have gotten the lightest sentence. With this case involving a victim who was only thirteen, the judge may have felt that the plea agreement was unjust. But to equate this with violent forcible rape would be ridiculous. Now, IIRC, CA penal statutes call for a low, medium, or high sentence depending on the circumstances, giving the judge far less flexibility.
If there is absolutely no reason to believe the crime will happen again, there is reason to believe that horrible events caused a state of insanity, and the victim- of her own free will- says “let him go”, I would consider it, absolutely.
In your opinion.
We’re not talking about your run of the mill “my sister wears a moustache and my brother wears a dress” shitty past: Auschwitz and Manson! Ask any random group of 50 people to name the ten most horrifying people of the Twentieth Century and those two names would probably come up more than any other, and they both profoundly affected his life. His wife’s murder was world famous, and they also lost their baby and several of his closest friends- fathom that there are MOVIES AND BOOKS AND MINISERIES made about his wife’s murder.
Does this give him carte blanche for the rest of his life? Of course not and I’ve never claimed it did. But why is it so impossible to accept that these things- which happened just a few years before the rape and which were frequently in the news at the time (Squeaky Fromme is arrested- cue Manson/Tate footage; Leslie Van Houten is released for a new trial- cue Manson/Tate footage; major miniseries made about the murders- cue Manson/Tate footage, etc.) all following a life that had already been pretty horrible could contribute to a post traumatic disorder that would completely send somebody over the edge and turn them to drugs which work with the already wildly out of sync mental state to, if you’ll pardon the technical jargon, royally fuck up one’s sense of right and wrong?
Is it not conceivable that this man- who never did anything like this before to anyone’s knowledge and who has never done anything like it since- was crazed?
And again, just how arrogant is it to say to the rape victim who for 31 years has been dealing with this and who wants to get on with her life “Fuck you, we know what’s best… we’re starting this lynch mob for your own good and don’t try to stop us… Nancy Grace is on line one btw, wants to know if you’ll bring the kids when she does her ‘Raping Children is Evil and I’m Not Gonna Support It!’ special.”
Again and again, I’m not saying Polanski shouldn’t have been arrested. In 1978 I’d have convicted him; I’d also have listened if a mental hospital was suggested over a prison. But 31 years later it does nobody any good to have him incarcerated, it protects nobody to have him incarcerated, it will cost a fortune that doesn’t exist to incarcerate him, and all to avenge somebody who doesn’t want to be avenged. This is stupid.
He drugged a young girl, then forcibly performed oral sex on her, as well as vaginal and anal intercourse. DESPITE her repeated pleas of “no”. Sounds like “forcible rape” to me. :mad:
Have you read the transcript of the grand jury? Probably not, otherwise you wouldn’t have posted something so fucking stupid. He refused to take her home, kissed her after she said “no”, went down on her after she said “no”, asked if he could take her anally, she said “no”, and he did it anyway. This is NOT simply statutory rape. O.K. so he never violently punched her, but he did force a thirteen your old girl who said “no” to have sex with him.
I honestly - and I am not just being an ass here and I am not just being contradictory and I do actually think your arguments above have some amount of merit-- but I am honestly not sure that he hasn’t been raping 13 year old French girls for the last three decades. And no, I am not kidding. People don’t seem to do these kinds of things as isolated incidents.
I understand that he was subjected to psychological exams, which seem to have come to the conclusion that he was sane at the time of the crime.
Who, exactly, has been carrying this on for so long? Roman Polanski. It would only take a moment of clarity and a 10 hour plane flight to cleanse himself of this 30 year wronging of not just that woman, but our justice system.
Had he not been a child molesting scofflaw prick, he probably could have spent a small time in prison (given the forgiveness of the victim) and had this all long behind him by this time. He chose to hide like a coward, shielded by a perverted, unconscionable policy of one of our allies to protect a child rapist for three decades.
It’s called justice for a fugitive. This isn’t about whether or not victims have the right to give forgiveness, it is about whether criminals can hide from their due punishment long enough to escape it.
If his case is truly as compelling as you make it out, he can apply to the governor for leniency or a pardon. He’s a Hollywood type, I hear.