Roman in the Gloamin’ – Polanski’s Murky Friends

by Mary Jackson (December 2009)

 

Nobody listens to me, though. Nuance is all the rage, nothing is clear cut, and there must always be two sides to every story.

Kate Harding:

Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her…. [A]ccording to the victim’s grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, “No,” then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

 

Ms. Harding leaves one detail out: according to the grand jury testimony, on which Polanski was convicted, he asked her if she was on the pill, and only sodomized her when she said she wasn’t. How inconvenient it would have been for this great artist if his victim had got pregnant, and how thoughtful of him to ensure that she didn’t.

 

His thoughtfulness did not impress the Californian legal system. Polanksi was arrested in 1977, and a philistine Grand Jury, with scant regard for nuance, charged him with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under fourteen, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. To preserve the victim’s anonymity, her lawyer urged a plea bargain, and Polanski pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Fearing that the judge might “renege” on this plea bargain – in fact a judge is not bound by such an arrangement – he did what any transgressive artist would do, and transgressed over to France. There he has lived ever since, protected by from extradition by his French citizenship. Life has not been easy, as Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum points out. Read this and weep:

 

Polanski, who panicked and fled the U.S. during that trial, has been pursued by this case for 30 years, during which time he has never returned to America, has never returned to the United Kingdom., has avoided many other countries, and has never been convicted of anything else. He did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers’ fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film.

an interview with Martin Amis, are not common or garden remorse:

November 2009, and to hope he is soon behind bars. You would expect them to take the side of the pleading victim, rather than the man forcing himself on her. You would be wrong. The victim has been pushed out of the way in the stampede to forgive him.

 

[…]

He can be blamed, it is true, for his original, panicky decision to flee. But for this decision I see mitigating circumstances, not least an understandable fear of irrational punishment. Polanski’s mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later emigrated from communist Poland. His pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered in 1969 by the followers of Charles Manson, though for a time Polanski himself was a suspect.

I am certain there are many who will harrumph that, following this arrest, justice was done at last. But Polanski is 76. To put him on trial or keep him in jail does not serve society in general or his victim in particular. Nor does it prove the doggedness and earnestness of the American legal system. If he weren’t famous, I bet no one would bother with him at all.

That the crime took place in 1977 is said to mitigate it. 1977 is so long ago, Applebaum argues, that the girl is now forty-five. Yes, and it is also so long ago that she was thirteen when it happened. It is hardly ancient history, especially to the victim. Writing in the London Times, philosophy professor A. C. Grayling makes short work of the idea that time erases the crime:

Should the law still seek and prosecute people for crimes committed a long time ago? Let us first clarify one thing about the case of Roman Polanski: the film director was convicted of a crime, and skipped the jurisdiction before he could be made to pay the penalty for it. His is not a case where it is still moot whether he committed a crime or not: he pleaded guilty. Nor therefore is it a case where a “statute of limitations” might apply, that is, a statute saying that a prosecution can only be brought against a person within a certain period after a crime occurred.

In any case, statutes of limitations generally only apply to lesser crimes, called “misdemeanours” or summary offences, as opposed to more serious “felonies” or indictable offences. Polanski pleaded guilty to a felony, namely, the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. He is, in effect, an escaped prisoner who has not paid the penalty for a serious crime.

[…]

Rape, murder, child abuse, genocide and crimes against humanity are too serious to allow the mere passage of time to weaken a society’s stand against them.

[..]

Neither fame nor wealth, neither time nor distance, should render anyone immune to laws protecting against serious crimes against other human beings.

Huffington Post, writes:

“The 13-year old model ‘seduced’ by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies.”

And so he just had to do some thrusting of his own. Besides, is rape any less of a crime if the victim’s mother pimps her?

In case you think Shore’s is the most ridiculous argument a Polanski defender can come up with, read this, from Taki Theodoracopulos. Taki, the blot on the Spectator landscape, wins first prize for the most egregious Israel-related non sequitur I have seen in a long time:

Islamic. It might be interesting to see if the apologists for Polanski are also apologists for Islam, enemies of Israel, or both. The following examples are illustrative, rather than conclusive.

First, consider Gore Vidal, who, in an interview with The Atlantic, said of the child rape victim:

“The media can’t get anything straight … The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, ‘Polacko’ – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then … Anti-Semitism got poor Polanski.”

So what has this brave defender of Jews – Jewish child rapists, that is, – to say about Israel, their homeland:

In order to get Treasury money for Israel (last year $5 billion), pro-Israel lobbyists must see to it that America’s “the Russians are coming” squads are in place so that they can continue to frighten the American people into spending enormous sums for “defense,” which also means the support of Israel in its never-ending wars against just about everyone.

There is a religion that demands that its adherents make war on “just about everyone”, but it is not Judaism.

Another defender of Polanski is Woody Allen. Cynics have said this is unsurprising, given his inclinations towards very young girls; however, there is a world of difference between a dirty old man and a child rapist. (Polanski’s subsequent relationship with the then fifteen-year-old Natassja Kinski falls into the former category; the crime for which he is pursued is definitely in the latter.) And Woody Allen’s views on Israel? Here he is “taking a public stance” on the Intifada:

“I am appalled beyond measure by the treatment of the rioting Palestinians by the Jews… Perhaps for all of us who are rooting for Israel to continue to exist and prosper, the obligation is to speak out and use every method of pressure moral, financial and political to bring this wrongheaded approach to a halt.” 

It is good of Allen to allow Israel to exist – provided, of course, that she doesn’t defend herself.

A third supporter of Polanski is filmmaker David Lynch, who believes that the lesser Jihad against Israel – or “black clouds of negativity” as he calls it – can be cured by meditation:

“plight” moves artists to tears – the easy tears of sentimentality, of misplaced pity for a man who  lives in a “tiny” apartment with his twelve children, in a “refugee camp”. (The accommodation in those “camps” is luxurious compared to that of my grandparents, is often equipped with satellite TV, and

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