Raping 13-year-olds is now okay. Thanks, Roman!

The New York Daily News recently published this article: ‘Wanted’ man Roman Polanski dodges legal bullet. Let me translate some chunks for you.

Polanski was, and remains, a brilliant film director. But to many people, particularly in America, he is most famously remembered for fleeing the country after pleading guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse” with a 13-year-old girl who was modeling for him.

In case you’re wondering, the pedophilic rapist in question only pled guilty to this “crime,” and it doesn’t matter anyway, since he’s good at his normal job.

The original judge, Laurence Rittenband, was a publicity hound and celebrity sniffer who cared more about how he looked in the press than what happened to either Polanski or the 13-year-old girl.

Both the lead prosecutor and the defense attorney explain in great detail how the case was about to be resolved, with a guilty plea and no hard jail time. But Rittenband thought that might make him look bad, so he ignored judicial protocol and went back on his own promises, declaring instead he wanted Polanski in prison.

Ordinarily society will let someone who’s good at his normal job off the hook for raping a 13-year-old, but one judge decided a rapist of young girls should get some kind of actual punishment. He must have ulterior motives for doing so.

The fact that this film focuses more on the court than the crime will understandably bother some viewers, since offering drugs to naked 13-year-olds and having sex with them is conduct the average American finds repugnant.

Perhaps to balance this, the film talks extensively with the victim.

Her biggest frustration, she says, is that no one believed her, or that people felt she or her mother, who set up the photo session, must have done something wrong.

Yet the case clearly didn’t break her. She’s frustrated with the system, but she settled a civil suit against Polanski and publicly forgave him. She’s a mother of three who’s been married for 18 years. She seems OK.

In case you’re tempted to have a normal reaction to this horrendous crime and don’t really care for Roman Polanski’s films, let me try to justify the crime. It’s not really a crime. After all, the supposed victim seems okay. Life went on. It’s not like she committed suicide or anything. Geez.

It does note, however, that many of his greatest films, like “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” suggest there sometimes is no justice. Which would be a curiously dispassionate coda to a case and a life marked by so much fire.

C’est la vie.

Poor, poor brilliant pedophile rapist filmmaker. No justice for him. People should just leave the poor guy alone.

If you’re a rapist, you’re a rapist. If you’re a pedophile rapist, you’re a pedophile rapist. Or that’s the way it should be. Perhaps we should go find all the sex offenders in prison and see which ones of them might be brilliant performing musicians or innovative entrepeneurs if we just let them out of prison. After all, their victims might seem okay. Their victims, after thirty years, might be married and have kids. Right? And the judges in their cases might have had ulterior motives for sending them to prison. After all, raping 13-year-olds isn’t an offense that warrants a prison term… at least not for people who are good at their jobs.

Let’s take a look at the girl Polanski raped thirty years ago. From a 2003 article:

“Everything was going fine; then he asked me to change, well, in front of him,” she says. “It didn’t feel right, and I didn’t want to go back to the second shoot. But I didn’t at that time have the self-confidence to tell my mother and everyone, ‘No, I’m not going to go.'”

During that second shoot, Polanski’s motives became apparent.

“We did photos with me drinking champagne,” Geimer says. “Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn’t quite know how to get myself out of there.”

Polanski sexually assaulted her after giving her a combination of champagne and Quaaludes.

Let’s see. It didn’t feel right, but she lacked the self-confidence to refuse (maybe this is why statutory rape laws exist?), and then he gave her alcohol and drugs and sexually assaulted her. What’s not wrong about this? Seriously.

I’m a male who is more than a decade younger than Polanski was at the time of the rape. I’m not a brilliant film director, but I’m pretty good at my job. I work in an admission office at a high school. Can you imagine if I told a 13-year-old applicant to take off her clothes, gave her drugs and alcohol, and then raped her? That would be awful. Since I’m not an Academy Award-Winning director, I’ll tell you what would happen. I’d be fired immediately, or at least temporarily suspended pending further investigation; ostracized from my church, family, and friends; given divorce papers immediately by my wife; and probably sent to prison for over a decade if not several decades, during which time I’d be tormented and raped by other prisoners. Yes, that’s what happens to pedophile rapists. And I doubt anyone would believe my defense if I said, “Uh, she seems okay now.”

Much as I loved Death and the Maiden, I can’t believe that not only is Roman Polanski walking free, but the the media is defending him. Yes, of course, the woman he raped when she was only 13 has been unbelievably strong and managed after thirty years to move on with her life, but that doesn’t make what he did any less wrong.

9 comments

  1. Excellent post! It’s a sad fact that in America rape isn’t taken seriously as a crime, whether of adults or children. (More of that insidious sexism, maybe?) You do harder time for non-violent drug offenses, thanks to mandatory minimums.

    (BTW, we use Ubuntu, too! And hubby knows Python and is using it for all sorts of nifty things.)

  2. thank you. i wrote about this myself–
    http://kmareka.com/?p=1869
    i remember the press coverage at the time, and one of the most damaging things was that girls were being shown that reporting a crime would get you publicly criticized while the rapist got sympathy.
    if he had knocked her teeth out and she had dental implants and looked just fine would that make it okay? her life was thrown off balance and remains distorted by what he did to her. read where she mentions having to explain it to her sons. he should publicly admit that he did wrong, apologize, and face justice here or stay the hell in france and stop whining.

  3. I suppose he’s getting this kind of treatment because people want to reconcile the fact that he’s a rapist with their love for his films.

    “He’s Roman Polanski! She’s okay now! Everything is fine!”

    I get the impression that the fellow that wrote that article will eventually experience cognitive dissonance and come to regret it.

  4. Thank you for bringing this kind of thing to light. It is both sad as well as sickening.

    Thank you too for visiting my blog and taking the time to leave a comment. I appreciate the suggested reading.

    And one last thanks for all your Ubuntu articles! They’ve been very useful to me.

  5. I think all rapists should be hanged…What right do they have to play with lives of girls ? They must be made to run naked on the streets..

  6. “It’s a sad fact that in America rape isn’t taken seriously as a crime, whether of adults or children. (More of that insidious sexism, maybe?)”

    Uh, hello, Europeans are getting all pissy b/c american ARE taking rape laws seriously. Have you read this? It’s feminists such as Debra Winger, who’s always moaning about ageism in Hollywood supporting this evil child sodomizing dwarf. Remember in the ’90s how feminists treated the women Clinton sexually exploited?! Do you possess ANY critical thinking facilities?

    Someone in Time actually explained how the French just don’t get why an elite like Polanski shouldn’t be above the law.

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