The Debate on Roman Polanski

For the first time ever, I find myself disgusted and in shock over Whoopi Goldberg's opinions on The View, and in total agreement with Joy Behar.

The Hot Topic subject matter: Roman Polanski.

How anyone, let alone a mother and grandmother as Goldberg is, can even suggest that this man should not be returned to California to face his crimes is beyond me.

For the sake of argument, let's break down the many reasons that have been proposed on-line and in television programs by many different people as to why Roman Polanski should uniquely be absolved of his crimes.

He had a hard life. True. According to the book, "Roman Polanski Interviews," Polanski endured the Krakow ghetto while his parents were sent to separate concentration camps. His father, a Polish Jew, survived the Mathausen-Gusen concentration camp. His mother perished at Auschwitz.

In 1969, his wife, Sharon Tate, and their unborn child were two of the victims of the undeniably horrific bloody melee committed in Los Angeles by the Charles Manson "family".

While these events in his life are irrefutable and tragic, they are not a defense against what he did to this girl.

Roman Polanski, a 43-year old man at the time, was staying at Jack Nicholson's home (Nicholson was not home when the crime took place.). At the home, he raped and sodomized a 13-year old girl. He plied the child with champagne and Quaaludes during a purported photo shoot for French Vogue. She repeatedly pled with the man to let her go. He forced anal, vaginal, and oral sex on the child for four hours.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, in his past justifies the atrocities he committed on this innocent child.

Polanski is a brilliant director. True. Polanski has helmed such cinematic classics as "Rosemary's Baby", "Chinatown", and "The Pianist".

I still don't understand this defense. Since when does your professional success give you a pass on any type of criminal offense - let alone such a heinous crime? Let's be real here, folks, he didn't run out on a few parking tickets - he violated a child.

As Behar said on The View, would Debra Winger, a jury member at the Zurich Film Festival, where Polanski was to have received a lifetime achievement award, be as quick to come to his defense if he were a plumber?Winger's statement that his is a "three-decades-old case that is dead but for minor technicalities" is a conclusion that she seems unqualified to make. Personally, I believe that, even if Polanski were the most magnificent plumber on the planet, her opinion might, just might, be a little different.

Polanski has paid for his crime. Not sure what to make of this defense when I hear it, and even his victim has said it.

Monetarily, Polanski did settle a civil suit with Samantha Geimer (née Gailey) and paid her an undisclosed amount of money. Giving money to the victim does not eliminate the fact that a crime occurred.

If the reasoning is that he has paid through his 31 years of exile from the United States, I'm dumbfounded. He has lived and traveled throughout Europe practically unencumbered. (He has, intentionally, avoided travel to most countries where he feared the possibility of extradition.) He has continued to work, earning a reputation as an acclaimed film director and amassing a respectable amount of wealth.

There were improprieties in the original case. Unknown. The original judge is now deceased. The facts that are known are these: Polanski was allowed to go to Europe between his conviction and his sentencing. Polanski somehow "heard" that the judge was going to renege on a plea deal, which his lawyers claim traded his admission of guilt on the one charge for the 46 days Polanski had already served for a psychiatric evaluation. Polanski decided he wasn't going to take his chances with the American legal system, so he opted to head to France, where he held citizenship and where the extradition treaty is limited.

Since when is it excusable to flee the country because you don't like the punishment you are about to receive for a crime you admitted committing?

His crime was not rape. Somehow some, including my fallen hero Ms. Goldberg, have distinguished Polanski's crime as some sort of "non-rape".

Under what circumstances can forced sexual relations between a 43-year old man and a 13-year old girl who has been drugged and forced to consume alchol not be considered "rape"? Legally, the term may be "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor", but let's not sugar coat it. He raped an underaged girl.

The victim has forgiven him. True. While I hope Ms. Geimer has, indeed, forgiven him for her own well being, her forgiveness is immaterial.

Remember, she has forgiven him, not recanted her testimony as to what happened to her.

While Ms. Geimer did, in fact, petition the Los Angeles courts in January to dismiss the case, she refers to her original allegations this way "true as they may be". She has never, in any way, insinuated that the original charges were made up or embellished.

To put her feelings about making this "go away" in perspective, read the following excerpt from an interview she gave People magazine back in 1997:

Reporters and photographers came to my school and put my picture in a European tabloid with the caption Little Lolita. They were all saying, "Poor Roman Polanski, entrapped by a 13-year-old temptress." I had a good friend who came from a good Catholic family, and her father wouldn't let her come to my house anymore. It was even worse for my mother because everyone was saying it was her fault. ... Twenty years ago everything said about me was horrible.

If this was the treatment she received immediately after being so violated by this man, is it any wonder that she does not want to go through the possibility of these humiliations being repeated?

She also mentioned in the petition that the continued publication of the details of her case will cause additional harm to her husband, her three children, and her mother.

While, again, I sympathize with Ms. Geimer, unfortunately, the secondary crime most perpetrators inflict on their victims is that the event must be rehashed in order to bring justice.

Justice is, unfortunately for Ms. Geimer, still due in this case.

Regardless of the hardships he has personally endured, regardless of whatever his skills as a filmmaker might be, regardless of his years of exile from America or the fact that he has financially compensated his victim, regardless of his feelings towards the handling of the trial, regardless of whether or not the legal term used is "rape" or not, and, certainly, regardless of the fact that his victim has forgiven him and wants to move on, Roman Polanski is not above the law.

Roman Polanski should be made to pay the legal price for his actions and should universally be recognized as the criminal he has admitted to being.