But did you look at my link? The first footnote mentions the Texas “promiscuity defense” was abolished in 1994!
That’s the point of a plea bargain. You agree to plead guilty to a lesser crime.
Polanski may have claimed the sex was consensual at the time. But he has since admitted it was not.
The victim has consistently said it was non-consensual all along. She said so on the day of the crime and reported it to the police. And she still says it was non-consensual even though she now says she doesn’t want Polanski to be prosecuted for it.
Its a fair comparison. I mean Nazi courts did probably prosecute rapists and absconders at times.
We understand it was a different time. But I still reject your minimizing his conduct and the way it would have played at that time.
He has one version of the story and she has hers. If you believe what he agreed to in the plea deal, it was statutory rape. (Or it wasn’t “rape rape” as Whoopie would say). While some would have just chalked that up to it being cool that an old dude was scoring a 13 year old child (seems to be your take), I’ll continue to maintain that the majority of Americans wouldn’t have viewed it that way. It was certainly just after Nixon was elected twice by the silent majority of (conservative) Americans. I’ll continue to believe that the good people of the mid-west in the mid-1970s wouldn’t have thought that was cool.
They certainly wouldn’t have that if they believed her side of the story. That she was drugged and actively said “no!” at each stage of the rape. No amount of 70’s hipness would have washed that away to the majority of Americans.
Anjelica Huston was in the home and began to intervene as one point, only to leave at Polanski’s behest. Some argue she should have indeed intervened, stopped what ever type of rape that you categorize this to be, and failed to do so. Her subsequent statements seem very self serving to me.
You’re fighting to hard to be on the wrong side of history as they say.
Do you have a cite? I hadn’t heard that before.
The majority of conservative Americans would have viewed a 13 year old that went alone to a topless modeling shoot as a teenage slut, a “bad” girl who had no right to complain if someone got “a little rough” during sex that everyone would have assumed was consensual based on the alleged victim’s previous sexual history. If Polanski had been an auto worker rather than a Hollywood celebrity whose prosecution would add to the prestige and reputation of both the prosecutor and judge, the alleged victims would have been laughed out of the police station.
Gonna disagree with that. Sex with a 13 year old wouldn’t be laughed at by nearly any police chief or D.A. in the country.
If the 13 year old was considered “promiscuous”, sex with her, consensual or not, was a non-crime in many law authorities’ eyes. Of course, they only mirrored the larger society in that. Opinions about sexuality were different.
ZPGZ does have a point that as late as the 70s, yes, even in US statutory cases the condition of “good moral reputation” of the victim could still be brought into discussion – not an *automatic *GOOJF card but something that could weigh on a jury’s minds or a prosecutor’s discretion.
Right. It is an entirely unreasonable demand on the part of Polanski, the court *must *reject such kind of terms. Even if the intention all along were to show favorable treatment, the court can not signal that.
In a plea deal, the court wants to see the convict act duly chastened. All signs point to that Polanski to this day believes he did nothing wrong and would seek to project a slap-on-the-wrist zero-discomfort sentence as a vindication, and even more so a dropping of the case as an admission that it was a witch hunt all along.
All of that still amounts to latitude towards rape. The France case falls to preferring to have a rapist than to extradite a citizen. The Swiss and Polish case are both situations where it was a judgment call, meaning they didn’t even have that excuse.
He pled guilty. He’s admitted it was not consensual. No evidence is needed. And he’s not going to get the death penalty, so claims about it not being safe are farcical on their face.
Punishing an admitted rapist should be more important than any of this bureaucratic nonsense. Anything less is giving rape latitude.
Golly, only America has a real legal system then? Thanks for dropping that knowledge on us.
So you have a cite for this admission? Little Nemo made the same claim earlier but I’ve never seen this news.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
I admit there is/was some element of “she had it coming” or “she shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” But this wasn’t some drunk, 23 year old barfly. This was a 13 year old child who stated the anal rape wasn’t consensual.
Where I grew up (New England) and where I’ve lived once (the mid-west) that would not have been waived away. They would have been disgusted that a rich adult did this to a child.
You’re painting with too broad a brush, and giving our parents and grand parents too little credit.
Reading up on the caselaw presented by CarnalK it appears to have mixed up two separate points. Admissibility of previous sexual activity by the minor and whether such evidence would vitiate a conviction.
The case cited is only evidence for the first, that sexual history was admissible, not that it provided an escape for the accused. Indeed the fact that consent was immaterial in such cases is accepted in the authority presented.
This was an already sexually active 13 year old that went alone to a topless modeling shoot. She would not have been considered a child by the standards of behavior at the time. Where I grew up (the South in the 70s) and lived for too much of my childhood this would have been immediately waived away as the actions of a disgruntled “slut”. People would have been disgusted that the courts wasted time on the matter.
It wasn’t waved away; Polanski attacked the child on 10 March 1977 and was arrested the next day. Whether or not she consented is irrelevant - children under fourteen cannot consent to sex and therefore any sex with a 13 year old is rape in CA.
Can you mention a few of the other times someone drugged and sodomized a thirteen year old and it was dismissed as the actions of a disgruntled slut?
Regards,
Shodan
More incidents than I can count occurred (and probably still do occur) among the Southern white, working poor I encountered in the 1970s. And I imagine, people being people, incidents among Black and Hispanic communities probably occurred in similar numbers.
And once again for the historically impaired while consent may not be a factor in current age of consent law because the promiscuity defense has been legally eliminated (though it no doubt remains as a cultural force), it was a factor in the 1970s.
Then why was he arrested the day after he attacked the child?
It doesn’t seem to have been a factor.
Regards,
Shodan
I would say because some people in the Los Angeles law enforcement and legal communities wanted to make names for themselves.
If they wanted to make a name for themselves, why would they choose a case most people would consider a waste of time?
Regards,
Shodan
Law careers can be made on prosecuting celebrities and hard to win cases. Polanski was famous. His name brought notoriety and it’s not beyond the pale that some of his professional rivals in Hollywood might have encouraged things.