# Please explain to me why Roman Polanski isn't a bad guy **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 31, 2014, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126 "2014-10-31T15:14:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![HelenGawn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@HelenGawn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HelenGawn)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/101 "2014-11-02T03:13:58Z")
The french maid is the only one shown that doesn’t blatantly sexualize a common figure in children’s play. Even Peter Pan, which tells tomboys it’s time to stop hanging out with the guys and start seducing them. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/102 "2014-11-02T03:34:06Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > And the law says he wasn’t her father, step-father, nor adoptive father. Your personal opinion of the matter does not negate the legal fact, especially as Miss Previn was not adopted by Allen. I already stated that yet it sailed over your head. He was the father figure in her life. That you can’t acknowledge the moral aspect of this is really beyond discussion. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/103 "2014-11-02T04:18:09Z")
No, Andre Previn was her father and father figure. Woody Allen is creepy enough without making shit up about him. Woody Allen was the man dating her mother who had children with her. And it is fucking creepy. Overstating it, simplifying and summarizing it in a way that is not correct weakens the argument that dating your children’s sister, who happens to be unrelated to you, is really fucking creepy. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/104 "2014-11-02T04:48:34Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > No, Andre Previn was her father and father figure. Woody Allen is creepy enough without making shit up about him. Woody Allen was the man dating her mother who had children with her. And it is fucking creepy. Overstating it, simplifying and summarizing it in a way that is not correct weakens the argument that dating your children’s sister, who happens to be unrelated to you, is really fucking creepy. Woody Allen sucks, I don’t think there’s anything else to say. As I’ve said before, if he wanted to date a 19 year old Korean woman, there about 470,000 in the world who aren’t the adopted sister of his children. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/105 "2014-11-02T05:15:52Z")
It’s not true that the majority of people in Europe are defending Polanski. Polanski knows that he can’t go to certain countries in Europe because the governments in them are likely to extradite him to the U.S. He’s not even that popular in France. Polls there show that 65% to 70% of the population want to send him back to the U.S. It’s not clear why France won’t send him to the U.S. It may be that they do it just to annoy the U.S.: > **[Roman Polanski sexual abuse case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski_sexual_abuse_case)** > > On March 10, 1977, then-43-year-old film director Roman Polanski was arrested and charged in Los Angeles with six offenses against Samantha Gailey (now Geimer), a then-13-year-old girl – unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, a lewd and lascivious act upon a child under the age of 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. At his arraignment, Polanski pleaded not guilty to all charges but later accepted a plea bargain whose terms in Polans... ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/106 "2014-11-02T08:52:19Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > No, Andre Previn was her father and father figure. Woody Allen is creepy enough without making shit up about him. Woody Allen was the man dating her mother who had children with her. Dating? they were living together during this time. Unless Previn was in the next room fathering her Allen was the defacto adult male in the house. I over-simplified nothing. He’s a skeevy POS pedophile. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/107 "2014-11-02T11:55:20Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > I already stated that yet it sailed over your head. He was the father figure in her life. That you can’t acknowledge the moral aspect of this is really beyond discussion. 1. It didn’t “sail over” my head. Rather, your contention was right around ground level. “Father figure” is, essentially, meaningless. What matters is what the law is. 2. Different people have different moral systems. Again, what matter is what the law is. One might even assert that’s the reason for the laws in the first place. 3. Allen broke no law and is getting condemned roundly and, yet, Polanski actually did commit crimes and is living free. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/108 "2014-11-02T12:00:56Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Yeesh. Can’t argue much with that, though like the author of that piece you kinda gotta wonder about who all the parents are that are buying all of these French Maid outfits for their twelve year-olds. Maybe it was [this upstanding family](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/dozen-relatives-busted-months-long-pedophile-ring-centered-missing-alabama-teen-article-1.1537473). ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/109 "2014-11-02T12:03:36Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > It’s not clear why France won’t send him to the U.S. It may be that they do it just to annoy the U.S.: It’s very clear why. He’s a French citizen and France doesn’t extradite her citizens. He could have been tried in France for what he did in the USA, but I guess the statute of limitations hit long ago (I think it’s 20 years for rape, not sure). I had wondered in fact why he never had been tried after I heard about what he did (on the SDMB, never had heard about it before), but from a single sentence I read somewhere, apparently simply because neither the victim nor American authorities had complained. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/110 "2014-11-02T12:12:16Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I guess the statute of limitations hit long ago (I think it’s 20 years for rape, not sure). Just checked. It’s 30 years now for the rape of a minor, but it was indeed 20 years at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/111 "2014-11-02T14:03:09Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > It’s very clear why. He’s a French citizen and France doesn’t extradite her citizens. He could have been tried in France for what he did in the USA, but I guess the statute of limitations hit long ago (I think it’s 20 years for rape, not sure). > > I had wondered in fact why he never had been tried after I heard about what he did (on the SDMB, never had heard about it before), but from a single sentence I read somewhere, apparently simply because neither the victim nor American authorities had complained. Wouldn’t a prosecution in France by French authorities have required the cooperation of the American authorities who were (and still are) pursuing extradition instead? ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/112 "2014-11-02T14:43:54Z")
> [@ZPG\_Zealot](#): > > Everything about her actions that day raise red flags to me and indicate she shouldn’t be trusted. Why was she there alone? She couldn’t drive herself there. Her mother had to have deliberately left her there alone. Why didn’t she or her mother report the alleged rape immediately? Why didn’t her mother immediately take her to a medical doctor to gather evidence of the alleged rape? Or at the very least to begin the process of STI testing? They didn’t have the morning after meal in the 1970s, but people did know about sexual transmitted infections. All that argument tells me is that maybe her mother ought to be prosecuted along with him. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/113 "2014-11-02T14:59:14Z")
clairobscur writes: \> He’s a French citizen and France doesn’t extradite her citizens. I just checked a bunch of websites and found that, although France doesn’t extradite anyone to another country if they are a French citizen, they will consider trying them in French courts for the crime that they are accused of. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/114 "2014-11-02T15:22:40Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > 1. It didn’t “sail over” my head. Rather, your contention was right around ground level. “Father figure” is, essentially, meaningless. uh huh. In some states there are no laws that say someone has to help you if you’re in medical distress. Yet is is meaningful of someone stops and helps. It’s the morally right thing to do. Allen is a pig. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/115 "2014-11-02T15:57:24Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Dating? they were living together during this time. Unless Previn was in the next room fathering her Allen was the defacto adult male in the house. I over-simplified nothing. He’s a skeevy POS pedophile. In the interest of facts, Woody and Mia never lived together. Woody never lived in the same house with Mia and Soon-Yi. But don’t let the facts get in the way of your hate. Carry on. Abuse the term “pedophile” like you accuse Woody of abusing Soon-Yi, who was not pre-pubescent at the time. And I am not defending Woody’s actions. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/116 "2014-11-02T16:55:51Z")
Wikipedia is wrong about the date of Allen’s first marriage and thus wrong about the ages. He was twenty when he was married. Harlene Rosen was 17. I just checked though some biographies. The marriage was March 15, 1956. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/117 "2014-11-02T17:04:52Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > In the interest of facts, Woody and Mia never lived together. Woody never lived in the same house with Mia and Soon-Yi. They adopted children together. Dylan Farrow accused him of molesting her. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > But don’t let the facts get in the way of your hate. Carry on. Abuse the term “pedophile” like you accuse Woody of abusing Soon-Yi, who was not pre-pubescent at the time. His first wife was 16 when they were married. Add in a normal dating time frame. He liked young girls at the age of 19. This is not a normal healthy relationship. Didn’t realize the definition of pedophile had a cutoff date of 13. OK, he likes teenage girls who are nowhere near adulthood. He’s a pig. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > And I am not defending Woody’s actions. uh huh. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/118 "2014-11-02T17:09:07Z")
Is Wiki also wrong about Ms. Previn’s age when the romantic relationship with Allen began? [It says](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Allen#Marriages_and_romantic_relationships): > [@](#): > > In 1991, when the relationship began, Allen was 56 and Previn around 19. BTW, wasn’t there another thread not so long ago about Farrow’s dishonesty and, shall we say, lunacy in her attacks on Allen? ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/119 "2014-11-02T17:15:08Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Wikipedia is wrong about the date of Allen’s first marriage and thus wrong about the ages. He was twenty when he was married. Harlene Rosen was 17. I just checked though some biographies. The marriage was March 15, 1956. Feel free to cite it. But unless she bumped into him at the magistrate’s office and decided to marry him on a whim it’s still a 19 year old dating at 16 year old. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126/120 "2014-11-02T17:19:07Z")
Magiver, look at my post. Rosen was 17 when they were married. It’s impossible to know for sure, but they may both have been virgins when they got married. Allen was a naïve nerd at the time, not some confident playboy. Incidentally, they got married in California, where Allen was writing for a television show. Rosen flew out there to marry him. It appears that Rosen was living with her parents up to the point that she got married. They had been dating for over a year when they got married. Allen was 18 when they began dating, and Rosen was 15 or 16. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-to-me-why-roman-polanski-isnt-a-bad-guy/703126.md?page=7)