Case of Roman Polanski
(AKA: Raimund Liebling)
Filmmaker - Los Angeles, CA
Filmmaker - Paris, France
Convicted sex offender who fled the United States following his conviction in which he plead guilty to having sexual intercourse with a minor. According to reports he also drugged the 13-year-old girl back in the 1970's. The assault occurred in the home of actor, Jack Nicholson.
Prior to sentencing, the trial judge indicated that he had changed his mind and hinted that he might jail Polanski for up to 50 years. It was at that time that Roman Polanski fled to Paris and has never returned to the United States.
Originally, the grand jury indited Polanski on charges of giving a drug to a minor, committing a lewd act upon a person less than 14, rape of a minor, rape by use of a drug, oral copulation and sodomy.
Polanski's mother died in a Nazi concentration camp. His wife, Sharon Tate, was 8-months pregnant when she was murdered by the Charlie Manson cult back in 1969.
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Table of Contents:
General
- Bio - Roman Polanski
Timeline
1977
- Polanski Named in Rape Charge (03/13/1977)
- Polanski Indicted on Drug, Rape Charges (03/26/1977)
- Personalities Column (08/10/1977)
- A 90-Day Psychiatric Study for Roman Polanski (09/20/1977)
1978
- A Roman in Paris (02/03/1978)
- Polanski Sentencing (02/15/1978)
1989
- Judge Can't Wait for Polanski, Retires (07/01/1989)
1990
- Lawsuit: The Fugitive Director Can Be Defended Against a Civil Suit Filed by a Woman, Then 13, He Had Intercourse With in 1977 (08/22/1990)
1997
- Deal Will End Roman Holiday for Polanski (8/22/1997)
2000
- The NYT hustles for Roman Polanski (02/11/2000)
- Paris Still Home to Polanski (03/08/2000)
2003
- The Kinsey-Polanski story (01/31/2003)
- Polanski's Academy Award: Round 3 (02/27/2003)
- Rape victim backs Polanski (03/03/2003)
- The Geimer Grand Jury Transcript In The Case Against Roman Polanski (03/11/2003)
2005
- Roman Polanski Wins Magazine Libel Suit (07/22/2005)
2010
- Roman Polanski living a charmed life under house arrest in luxe Swiss chalet as he awaits his fate (05/28/2010)
2011
- Roman Polanski makes public apology to woman he raped when she was 13 (09/28/2011)
2014
- Emails Raising Questions About the Polanski Case (01/15/2014)
- Conduct of judge in Roman Polanski statutory rape case questioned (01/17/2014)
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Roman Polanski
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| Roman Polanski |
Roman Polanski: AKA Raimund Liebling
Born: 18-Aug-1933
Birthplace: Paris, France
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Film Director
Nationality: France (Fled the US to avoid prison)
Father: Ryszard Liebling ("Ryszard Polanski", d. 1984 cancer)
Mother: Bula Katz (d. Nazi concentration camp)
- Stepmother: Wanda Polanski (stepmother)
Second Wife: Sharon Tate (m. 1968, d. Aug-1969 murder)
Education: Lodz Film School, Poland (1959)
Awards:
- Oscar for Best Director The Pianist 2003
- Golden Globe Best Director, Chinatown 1974
Director of Films
- Oliver Twist (11-Sep-2005)
- The Pianist (24-May-2002)
- The Ninth Gate (25-Aug-1999)
- Death and the Maiden (23-Dec-1994)
- Bitter Moon (23-Sep-1992)
- Frantic (26-Feb-1988)
- Tess (25-Oct-1979)
- Le Locataire (26-May-1976)
- Chinatown (20-Jun-1974)
- The Tragedy of Macbeth (13-Oct-1971)
- Rosemary's Baby (12-Jun-1968)
- The Fearless Vampire Killers (13-Nov-1967)
- Cul-de-Sac (7-Nov-1966)
- Repulsion (Jun-1965)
Actor
- Le Locataire (26-May-1976)
- Chinatown (20-Jun-1974)
- The Magic Christian (12-Dec-1969)
- The Fearless Vampire Killers (13-Nov-1967)
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Polanski Named in Rape Charge
The Washington Post - March 13, 1977
LOS ANGELES, March 12, 1977 — Polish film director Roman Polanski, widower of murdered actress Sharon Tate, was free on bond today on charges of luring a 13-year-old girl to the home of Jack Nicholson under the pretext of photographing her, then drugging and raping her.
Polanski, 43, was arrested by police to Beverly Wilshire Hotel Friday night following the incident Thursday night at Nicholson's Bel Air home.
In addition to the rape charges, Polanski also was booked on suspicion of sodomy, child molestation and furnishing dangerous drugs to a minor. He was released on $2,500 bond pending his arraignment March 18.
Nicholson was reportedly out of town at the time. A spokesman for the district attorney's office told reporters that Polanski recently met the girl's mother and arranged for the girl to pose for some photographs for the French edition of Vogue magazine.
He said Polanski took some pictures at a first photographic session two weeks ago, and among these pictures was one of the girl nude from the waist up.
He said the mother became angry when she saw the picture and questioned her daughter when she returned home from the second photographic session Thursday night. Officers said the girl told her mother that Polanski had given her a tablet of the powerful tranquilizing drug Quaalude.
The director then raped the girl and forced her to commit various sex acts with him, police said.
Polanski made no public comment on his arrest. He surrendered peacefully when he was taken into custody at the hotel.
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Polanski Indicted on Drug, Rape Charges
The Washington Post - March 26, 1977
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| Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate (1965) |
A grand jury has indicted Roman Polanski, director of "Rosemary's Baby" and other macabre movies, on six counts of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl at actor Jack Nicholson's home.
Conviction on the charges lodged Thursday could send Polanski to prison for up to 50 years. Polanski, 43, remained free on $2,000 bail and was given until Tuesday to surrender in Superior Court. Prosecutors said Polanski's attorney told them he would appear before then.
The grand jury indictment superseded charges brought March 11 when the director was arrested in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel where he was staying.
The grand jury charged Polanski with giving a drug to a minor, committing a lewd act upon a person less than 14, rape of a minor, rape by use of a drug, oral copulation and sodomy. All the charges are felonies.
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Personalities Column
by Stephanie A. Lewis
The Washington Post - August 10, 1977
Movie director Roman Polanski was ordered to undergo examination by two court-appointed psychiatrists in Los Angeles to determine if he should be institutionalized as a "mentally disordered sex offender" for allegedly having sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.
Polanski, 43, pleaded guilty to one of six charges facing him, thereby avoiding a trial.
The movie director was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor at the request of the girl's mother, who wanted to protect her daughter from the publicity expected to accompany such a trial.
The prosecution agreed to dismiss five other charges, including two more serious counts—furnishing drugs to a minor and rape by use of drugs.
The results of the psychiatric examinations will help determined whether Polanski will be deported as an undesirable alien.
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A 90-Day Psychiatric Study for Roman Polanski
The Washington Post - September 20, 1977
Movie director Roman Polanski, who had pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl, yesterday was ordered imprisoned for a 90-day psychiatric study to help the judge decide his sentence.
Polanski had contracted to photograph the girl for a French fashion magazine. Prosecutors said he took her to the home of actor Jack Nicholson while Nicholson was away, fed her champagne and Quaaludes, then committed numerous sex acts with her.
The probation report indicated that she consented. The judge said it made no difference.
The technical effect of the judge's decision will be for Polanski to spend some time in prison without having the record of a prison sentence against him unless he is eventually placed behind bars under a formal sentence.
Among the problems Polanski faces is possible deportation. However, the law provides automatic deportation only for those convicted of crimes of moral turpitude who are sentenced to one year or more in prison.
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A Roman in Paris
By Jura Koncius
The Washington Post - February 3, 1978
Film director Roman Polanski arrived at his Paris apartment yesterday (after a stop in London) having fled the United States just hours before he was to have been sentenced in a California court for his admitted unlawful sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl last March.
Polanski, 44, a French citizen, was said by friends to be exhausted by the 42 days he spent undergoing psychiatric tests.
Polanski's probation report said he was profoundly affected by the brutal murder of his wife, actress Sharon Tate, in 1969. Court sources said the film director, imprisoned in Auschwitz by the Nazis during the World War II, was repelled by the thought of possibly serving more time behind bars.
The British Broadcasting Corp. quoted Polanski as saying by telephone, "I've been tortured by this for a year and that's enough."
The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office announced yesterday it will seek to have Polanski extradited from France.
However, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice in Paris reaffirmed that French citizens may not be extradited under any circumstances although, he added, French judicial authorities could decide to try the case in France.
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Polanski Sentencing
The Washington Post, February 15, 1978
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The "in absentia" sentencing of Roman Polanski was postponed indefinitely yesterday when the film director's lawyer charged that the judge in the case was prejudiced and demanded that he be disqualified.
Polanski, 44, fled to Paris Feb. 2 rather than accept an indicated further prison term on his plea of guilty to "unlawful sexual intercourse" with a 13-year-old girl.
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Judge Can't Wait for Polanski, Retires
Los Angeles Times - July 1, 1989
The Los Angeles judge who once vowed to remain on the bench until Roman Polanski returned for sentencing retired Friday, saying, "I can't wait that long," and turned in his gavel.
Superior Court Judge Laurence J. Rittenband, the 83-year-old "judge of the stars" whose legal career spanned 60 years, presided over Elvis Presley's divorce, Marlon Brando's child custody battle, a paternity suit against Cary Grant and the "Billionaire Boys Club" murder trial of Joe Hunt. Rittenband, with his colorful vocabulary and outspoken style, said because of his age it was time to "let someone else do it."
He has fond memories of Elvis and Priscilla Presley who came to his court for a divorce in 1973.
"Elvis was a nice man," he said.
His memories of Polanski are not as fond, he said.
Rittenband issued an arrest warrant for Polanski in 1978 when the director fled to France rather than appear for sentencing after he had been convicted of having unlawful intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.
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Polanski Can Fight Sex Case, State Court Says
Lawsuit: The Fugitive Director Can Be Defended Against a Civil Suit Filed by a Woman, Then 13, He Had Intercourse With in 1977
Los Angeles Times - August 22, 1990
A state appeals court says film director Roman Polanski, a fugitive since 1977 when he admitted having sex with a 13-year-old girl, can be defended against a civil suit she has filed.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 2nd District Court of Appeal said Polanski did not forfeit the right to defend against civil claims through his attorney by his "reprehensible, irresponsible and unlawful absence."
A lawyer for the woman said the ruling, handed down Monday, would be appealed to the state Supreme Court. Polanski pleaded guilty in August, 1977, to one charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, in an incident at the home of actor Jack Nicholson. Polanski fled before being sentenced and now lives in Paris.
The civil suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in December, 1988, when the woman was 25, claims assault, battery, false imprisonment and seduction. The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, seeks damages for physical and emotional distress.
Polanski's lawyer filed papers denying the allegations. But Jane Doe's lawyers asked for a ruling declaring Polanski liable by default and barring his lawyer from taking part in the damage proceedings. They argued that a fugitive from justice should not be allowed to use the courts to defend himself.
Superior Court Judge George Dell denied a default and was upheld by the appeals court.
Justice Robert Devich, in the majority opinion, said a fugitive may be denied the right to pursue an appeal of a criminal conviction or to sue for damages. But since it was Jane Doe who took Polanski to court in the civil suit, he can defend himself through his lawyer, Devich said.
He also said Polanski's absence had suspended the normal legal deadline for the woman to file her civil suit, which otherwise might have been dismissed as being late.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Meredith Taylor, assigned to the court for the case, joined Devich's opinion. Justice Rueben A. Ortega dissented from the decision allowing Polanski to defend, saying a court "should not bow to the flagrant demands of a fugitive who refused to acknowledge its authority."
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Deal Will End Roman Holiday for Polanski
By Michelle Caruso in Los Angeles and Helen Kennedy in New York
Daily News (New York) - October 1, 1997
Twenty years after he fled to Europe to escape punishment for raping a 13-year-old girl, fugitive director Roman Polanski will surrender in Los Angeles, sources confirmed yesterday.
Under a deal worked out in two secret meetings between the judge and Polanski's lawyer, the 63-year-old director won't serve any time in jail, sources said.
(Name removed), who lives in Hawaii with her husband and three sons, went public in March to say she forgave Polanski for drugging her and raping her when she was a starstruck kid. She told London's Mail on Sunday that he should be pardoned. It was not immediately clear when Polanski, director of "Chinatown," "Rosemary's Baby," and "Frantic" might return to Los Angeles.
Since he left Hollywood, his once-bright career has dimmed. He hasn't had a hit since 1979's "Tess," which was shot in France instead of England because he feared being extradited by the British.
The Polish director, whose mother died in a Nazi concentration camp, has had a life as violent as his movies. His 8-months pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson cult in 1969.
Polanski fled to Paris after being indicted in 1977 on six counts of drugging, raping and sodomizing (Name Removed), whom he lured to Jack Nicholson's empty house.
Polanski told the girl he wanted to photograph her for Vogue, but instead gave her Quaaludes and champagne and took her to bed. He maintained she was a Lolita who knew all about sex and drugs.
Facing up to 50 years in prison if convicted at trial, Polanski pleaded guilty to one count of statutory rape. The other five counts were dismissed.
Polanski spent 90 days under psychiatric observation. But just before sentencing, facing a possible 50 years in jail, he jumped bail.
The original judge on the case, Superior Court Judge Laurence Rittenband, died several years ago and the case was reassigned to Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler.
In December, Polanski's lawyer, Douglas Dalton, 69, began meeting with Fidler and Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson.
But under the law, the judge has final say on penalties.
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Paris Still Home to Polanski
By Bruce Kirkland
The Toronto Sun - March 8, 2000
Despite a flurry of new rumours, Roman Polanski says he has no plans to try to return to the United States, which he fled 22 years ago after being convicted of "unlawful sexual intercourse" with a 13-year-old girl he was photographing.
"I don't know if it's resignation or a lack of interest or a fear of the media circus that would happen," Polanski said in a telephone interview from Paris. The rumour mills are just speculation, he says. "Every now and again they propose the notion that I am doing something about it. Then there is a new round of articles about my possible return. There's nothing!"
Polanski left the U.S. in February, 1978, after serving 42 days in jail for psychiatric evaluation prior to final sentencing. He had plea-bargained and pleaded guilty to the least of six charges against him in the case. Reports that the judge was going to put him away for years inspired his flight. The girl is now a housewife in Hawaii and has never been identified.
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The NYT hustles for Roman Polanski
World Net Daily - February 11, 2000
By Judith A. Reisman, Ph.D. and Eunice van Winkle Ray
New York Times weeps for a famous American felon, Roman Polanski, on the lam "at a corner table at Il Matriciano, one of his favorite haunts" in Italy. Many parents will remember Polanski, the artsy filmmaker-pedophile ("Repulsion," "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown"), convicted of drugging a 13-year old child with pills and champagne and then raping her in a hot tub.
Leading media types -- like the chief of the Rome bureau of the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley, who wrote the article -- find it appalling that Mr. Polanski can't come home again. She despairs that Polanski cannot make major movies in the United States due to America's stuffily puritanical view of child molesters. Ms. Stanley provides a gushing, fawning paean to Polanski's boundless self centered "artistic" perversity in her yarn, "Polanski, the Once and Future Auteur" (NYT January 16, 2000, p. 9).
"Auteur," for you rednecks out there, is French. It means a "filmmaker, usually a director, who exercises creative control over his or her works and has a strong personal style." The talented, according to Ms. Stanley, are royalty. Thus, Mr. Polanski should be called back to his Hollywood home-town. He should be pardoned for fleeing the country to avoid prison, because America needs more of his special brand of demonic artistry in our entertainment diet.
Ms. Stanley doubtless plays to the coastal New York/Hollywood literati with her groveling, full-color, full page tract, datelined (gosh), "ROME." Alongside a worldly photo of our bantam (ummm, lets not say, child rapist) hero, Ms. Stanley says the sooo talented director just "wants nothing more than to make important films." This estrogen-enhanced bureau chief makes her point, and that of a growing number within the media, that due to a few meddlesome taboos still left on the American moral landscape, her sad Auteur remains an exile.
Open the prison gates! Ms. Stanley is enraptured. She says of his latest film, "The Ninth Gate," that Mr. Polanski worries that "it doesn't make any important statement." Well, let's see. "The Ninth Gate," like many Polanski films, says Ms. Stanley, is "an occult thriller ... that features satanic rituals ... gruesome deaths." It is, laughs Polanski, "... an advertisement for hell." Truth be told, glamorizing hell seems like a pretty "important statement." One could argue that promoting the virtues of demonic conduct has been Polanski's lifetime personal and cinematic theme.
Mr. Polanski, (he reminds us often) is a child of the Jewish, Polish ghetto. And like other big moguls he just naturally wants to weigh in with his own film in the Holocaust genre. Some World War II propagandists portray all Jewish Holocaust survivors as innately noble souls, deserving reflexively of sainted reverence. Israel, watching out for its young, refused Polanski entry when he announced a plan to film in that country. But, Polanski says, filmmaker Steven Spielberg offered the Auteur pedophile the chance to direct Schindler's List, a story of bravery in the midst of leftist, National Socialist (Nazi) brutality.
Said Mr. Polanski, it was "... a very generous offer but not right for me." True. But ironically neither Spielberg nor Polanski seem to know why it was not "right" for Mr. Polanski -- a cowardly child rapist -- to direct a film about a mass movement of cowards, bullies and rapists. This causes one to wonder if either celebrated "Auteur" ever understood the meaning of the "Holocaust" beyond its use as a profit venture?
The permissive Ms. Stanley could not wholly avoid the child rape conviction. After all, that is why, as an escaped felon, Mr. Polanski can't come home. She does not report the well-documented, vicious details of the rape, saying only that, "... after a statutory rape charge drove him to become a fugitive from American justice in 1977" poor Mr. Polanski filmed in France. "Twenty years have passed, and the girl ... now 35," thinks poor Mr. Polanski might be allowed to return, says Ms. Stanley. Really?
But, tsk, tsk, Ms. Stanley it seems, can not add. It is now the year 2000. In 1977, Polanski's victim was barely 13, not the 15-year-old Ms. Stanley calculates. Her report has Mr. Polanski sounding like one of Dr. Kinsey's "technically trained" pedophile aides, who insisted when children screamed, "No, No, No," they really meant "Yes, Yes, Yes." For, Auteur Polanski, like so many in the media/entertainment field today, "... couldn't equate what happened that day with rape in any form." Drugging a child and having sex with her unconscious body is not rape for Mr. Polanski. So much for repentance. "Mr. Polanski served six months in prison under psychiatric observation, but fled while awaiting sentencing." The judge delayed prison to allow Polanski to finish his film. Wellll, the Auteur promised to report for prison duty upon completion of his great artistic labor. Oh, just imagine the judge's shock when Mr. Polanski skipped town!
The moral to this story is simple. America has been moved over the past fifty years by Kinsey's 1948/1953 fraudulent "anything goes" sex reports to eliminate our civilizing taboos that once protected children from sexual predators, even the more fancy ones like Mr. Polanski. The fact is, while sexual crimes against children are pandemic, the media stumbles about in an elite fog, promoting men like Polanski and cursing "puritanical" limitations on their creative appetites. Does talent trump the law today? Is there a special royal media class reigning to whom us common folk are expected to sacrifice our young? I am afraid, if you ask media mavens like Ms. Stanley, the answer is bad news for America's innocents.
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The Kinsey-Polanski story
By Judith Reisman
World Net Daily - January 31, 2003
Editor' s note: The following column contains language that may be offensive to some readers.
The year 2003 may just be the year Hollywood pedophiles come out of the closet to launch their national offensive.
In March, MGM / United Artists and Francis Ford Coppola Jr. begin shooting a film starring the admired Liam Neeson as Alfred Kinsey – the single most sadistic scientific pedophile propagandist in history. Is it prophetic that the Kinsey film follows on the heels of mass media kudos for Roman Polanski's "sensitive" film "The Pianist"?
The film is clever by half with Polanski staking his Yankee rehabilitation on a Holocaust story. If you missed the publicity spin, Roman lived through the Holocaust. The film allegedly has no sex and our hero is aided by a Godly Christian.
That said, for the price of a ticket to "The Pianist," we are supposed to forget Polanski's notorious brutality and pedophilic crimes.
But lest we forget, let's take a quick turn down memory lane.
Thomas Kiernan's biography, "The Roman Polanski Story" was published in 1980, just three years after Polanski fled the United States following his arrest for drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl.
Kiernan's smooth biography is candid about the legendary tyranny, sadism and pedophilia that led to Polanski's rape conviction.
Said Kiernan, "Roman just couldn't understand why screwing a kid should be of concern to anyone. He's screwed plenty of girls younger than this one, he said, and nobody gave a damn."
The child "had practically begged him" – "to f--k her," he said. "So I f--ked a chick," he exclaimed. "So what?"
After the charges of raping the unconscious girl were established, and it was clear that Polanski would go to prison, he fled to England. When in France, he arrogantly displayed pubescent girls under his spell who were used and discarded, shouting "I love young girls ... very young girls.
Articles in the French press echoed Polanski's whine.
He was victimized by America's "excessively prudish petite bourgeoisie."
Now, while few can deny Polanski is a fugitive child rapist, some argue that his crime was a reaction to the brutal murder of his lovely young wife, Sharon Tate.
Except, notes Kiernan, that six weeks after their marriage, Roman found "a whole new field of girls that interested him." Although Sharon was reputed to be highly traditional in her mores, Kiernan reports that:
Polanski and Sharon celebrated their love affair by consenting to have some nude pictures of the actress – taken by the director during the shooting of their movie – appear in the March 1967 issue of Playboy.
Ah, young love. Sharon was now part of Roman's stylish Hollywood druggie crowd.
[She] went along with [Polanski] in some of his more bizarre sexual practices – allowing him for instance to videotape the two of them making love and then sitting by quietly while he screened the tapes at parties.
Young love shared.
After finding videos of Roman engaging in sexual variations with other women in their bed, Sharon planned to divorce him – until she "found out she was pregnant."
Kiernan describes Polanski's abuse of his distraught and vulnerable wife, no longer girlishly slender:
[Roman] was bored with her being pregnant ... He treated her like she was a piece of excess baggage. He was even pointedly cruel to her in front of others at times, calling her a dumb hag and criticizing her whenever she expressed an opinion.
The hostile father-to-be sent his wife to California while he partied in London with Arab sheiks who preferred boys. Roman instead used "a series of girls." He is quoted as saying:
I can't stand seeing Sharon blown up the way she is. This pregnancy has made her such an insecure, nagging b--ch.
Kiernan reports that Polanski secretly planned to remain in Europe until the baby was born. "Then maybe I could go back and find Sharon the way she used to be."
He was with some, friends, "sipping champagne, passing a marijuana cigarette around ... when the phone rang" in his London flat. His wife and unborn child were just stabbed to death in a gory satanic ritual in California.
The grieving husband now rushed home and, "posed at the entrance of the death house for Life magazine a week after the slaughter. He charged Life $5,000 for this picture."
Polanski didn't miss a beat after Sharon's horrifying killing in 1969.
It bears repeating that Polanksi's reputation for seducing very young girls was legendary in Hollywood and Europe.
That reputation preceeded and followed both the barbaric massacre of his wife and her unborn child and his callous rape of an unconscious child.
Pray that our memories are not so cynical and our understanding so enfeebled that the dazzle of Polanski's Holocaust Pianist "art" cleanses the cruelty of its creator. And, beware Neeson's upcoming portrayal as, says the National Review, the "big daddy of pedophile chic," Alfred Kinsey.
2003 may just signal the entertainment industry's support of a pedophile-rights movement.
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Polanski's Academy Award: Round 3
World Net Daily - February 27, 2003
I have long intended to write a book entitled "Pedophiles in Power." So, back to Round 3 of the Roman Polanski story, as Roman rides the Holocaust trail into glamorous Hollywood for its coveted Oscar.
Picture it folks. See all of filmdom's "beautiful people," the glitterati, as they sashay into the Academy Awards. Resplendent will they be in their cut-n-pasted faces, partly-there gowns, dazzling jewels, shiny tuxedos and bottled tans.
Once known as an egocentric, cut-throat, brutal profession, now, because of little Roman, they'll all stand tall, shoulder to shoulder, united as one, together at last – their finest hour. The camera gives us a far shot of Roman's cast of comrades, compassionate, reflective, rising in a wave of forgiveness, showing pity and compassion they clap for him, cheer him on, show him – their love.
After the stirring clip from Roman's film "The Pianist," the Academy camera will come in for close ups as his fellow artistes sigh, shaking their saddened heads left, then right, they are stirred, moved, touched. Their collective gaze conveys profound sincerity. Here and there, one notes a tear-filled eye.
"Ahh, there but for the grace of God ..." "Ah, good Roman, it is time. Come home Roman, come home – back to us, your loyal and sensitive friends. Let him return, let the wandering Roman come home."
Let's recap. In 1977, filmmaker Roman Polanski, an infamous Hollywood pedophile, got caught. He was stunned at his arrest, shocked, outraged. After all, he'd done nothing more than drug, rape, sodomize and almost kill a 7th-grade girl he'd tricked into a hot tub. Based on his sadistic sexual history, there was nothing new in that.
It was just a little "romp in the hay," someone wrote to me. "She consented." "It was her mother's fault." "He's so old." "Hasn't he suffered enough?" And, "She forgives him."
(Name Removed), the 13-year-old who was attacked by the doped-up Polanski, was then hounded for years by a disbelieving and vicious "entertainment" press. Now married and the mother of three sons, Mrs. (Name Removed) told Larry King Live and the Los Angeles Times that she wanted Roman to come home.
After all, an Oscar is waiting for him. "Inside Edition" reported in 1997 that "Polanski and his Hollywood pals are probably heartened by (Name Removed)'s remarks ... His fugitive status has made headaches for studios doing business with him."
Well, that's tough. So Hollywood coos, Come home Roman. We'll give you an Academy Award for your long–suffering exile. Great flick, "The Pianist." Deep. Penetrating. Sensitive. Suffering. Such genius. A pioneer. And so forth.
In 1948, before Alfred Kinsey strategized with his American Law Institute cohorts to gut our sex-law penalties, half the states in this great nation offered the death penalty for the plain old rape of an adult. By 1977, having been convicted of a ruthless child rape-sodomy-drugged-near-murder, Mr. Polanski might spend some 90-odd days in rehab, then probation. That could work.
When the pitiless judge told Polanski he'd serve 50 years – figuring he'd get parole certainly – Roman fled to France where he continued his avid career as a lionized pedophile filmmaker.
Now, as the Roman steps up to claim his Oscar, please picture this.
According to his friendly biographer, Thomas Kiernan, "Before getting out his cameras, Polanski broke open a bottle of champagne ... The youngster hesitated, telling him that the last time she had drunk champagne it had made her violently ill. She was asthmatic, she said that the bubbly had brought on an asthma attack."
Polanski reassures the 13-year-old child, saying French champagne "could never hurt you." She takes a glass to please him. She is waiting to see Jack Nicholson. Soon "she felt her lungs beginning to constrict." Polanski says "jump in hot tub ... It make you feel better."
"I really don't feel good," she said. "I knew I shouldn't've had champagne ... She complained again about her dizziness and shortness of breath ... He gave her a tablet and told her to take it, assuring her that it would counter the effects of the champagne."
According to the police report, "dutifully, the girl swallowed the tablet ... Polanski had also neglected to tell her that the tablet was not an antiasthma pill ... but a high-potency [illegal] Quaalude from his own pocket ... The girl was in a deep champagne-Quaalude daze ... slipping into unconsciousness."
"She was shivering and ashen and weeping ... I'm sick," she mumbled drunkenly. I want to go home ... my father ... gasping for breath in shrill, raspy heaves. Mucus spilled from her nostrils."
Polanski was suddenly concerned. The child had lost control of her bladder. "It would be unspeakable for him to be involved in the death of a naked American teenager ... He realized [she] was in the throes of a potentially fatal seizure".
She was feverish. Polanski "wondered whether he should call an ambulance or the police. He decided to wait, more out of his own drug-induced panic than considered judgment."
Shortly thereafter, the skillfully manipulative Polanski brutally cursed as he painfully sodomized and then raped the sick and half unconscious girl. "With her breathing still impaired by the effects of the Quaalude and champagne, she immediately gagged and retched. She tried to scream but couldn't produce a sound."
I have redacted the most evil of Polanski's atrocities.
In his Feb. 24 television interview, a neutral and distant Larry King asked (Name Removed), "All you did was say, 'no.' You didn't struggle?"
Despite (Name Removed) reasonable desire to forget her brutal battering and to avoid additional years of scornful media harassment, most Americans are loath to send the message that our legal system provides special child-assault privileges for the media's pedophile elite. Even artsy French ones.
Hollywood has an opportunity to show some honor by candidly rejecting the artistic "product" of a ruthless and evil creator. For, should they reward Polanski in any manner, they will prove, without question, that he has always been one of them.
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Rape victim backs Polanski
By Duncan Campbell
The Age - March 3 2003
The woman who, as a schoolgirl, was the victim of a statutory rape by film director Roman Polanski has told Academy members in Hollywood that they should feel free to give him an Oscar for The Pianist.
Polanski fled the United States in 1977 and is still on the FBI's wanted list. He has been nominated for the best director award at this month's Oscars.
Samantha Geimer, now 38 and living in Hawaii with her husband and three sons, made her plea in an article in the Los Angeles Times, in which she urged Academy voters to choose Polanski and his film, The Pianist, as Oscar winners despite his crimes. She said that what the Polish director did to her 25 years ago should not affect their judgement.
Geimer was 13 when Polanski, then 44, told her mother he wanted to take pictures of her for a French magazine at a photo session in Los Angeles. He gave her champagne and a drug that causes drowsiness, then had sex with her at a house owned by Jack Nicholson on Mulholland Drive.
"It was not consensual sex by any means," wrote Geimer in her article. "I said no repeatedly but he wouldn't take no for an answer. I was alone and I didn't know what to do. It was very scary and, looking back, very creepy."
Polanski was arrested and charged with several sex offences. He was detained in a secure unit for psychiatric evaluation. Eventually, the district attorney, his lawyers and Geimer's lawyers reached an agreement whereby he would enter a guilty plea and be sentenced to time he had already served.
However, just before sentencing, the trial judge indicated he had changed his mind and hinted that he might jail Polanski for up to 50 years. The director fled and has never returned to the US. He now lives in France.
Now Polanski is up for an Oscar for The Pianist, about the Holocaust and the Warsaw uprising in Poland, which has been nominated for best film. Last week in London, it took the equivalent award at the BAFTAs. But in LA, some Academy members have indicated they would be reluctant to award an Oscar to a convicted sex offender - particularly one whose victim was a 13-year-old.
"I believe that Mr Polanski and his film should be honoured according to the quality of the work," wrote Geimer. "What he does for a living and how good he is at it have nothing to do with me or what he did to me . . . I think Academy members should vote for the movies they feel deserve it. Not the people they feel are popular." She added: "I don't have any hard feelings toward him, or any sympathy either. He is a stranger to me."
Geimer also said Polanski should be allowed to return to the US because the longer he remained a fugitive, the longer she had to deal with the issue.
"My attitude surprises many people," she wrote. "They don't know how unfairly we were all treated by the press. The press made that year a living hell and I've been trying to put it behind me ever since."
She said the cases of many other victims were ignored because they were not the victims of celebrities. The LA district attorney is less forgiving. A spokeswoman said: "As far as we are concerned, Mr Polanski is still a fugitive and he would be treated as such if he ever tried to return.
Polanski has declined to discuss the issue and made it clear he has no intention of returning for the ceremony in Hollywood on March 23.
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The Geimer Grand Jury Transcript In The Case Against Roman Polanski
MCN Perspective On The News - March 11, 2003
The transcripts of Samantha Geimer's grand jury transcript in the Roman Polanski case hit the web today. It is news, so Movie City News is obliged to offer it to you.
The entire event is troubling. No matter which way you cut it, a 43-year-old professional filmmaker had sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. Beyond legality, the moral and ethical issues are overwhelming.
Words and actions have been used as tools on every side of this issue. Was it "sex with a minor" or "child rape?" Had Polanski "plied her with Champagne and a Quaalude" or did the child choose to have champagne when offered it rather than asking for the juice or soft drinks that she saw in the refrigerator and did she take a third of a Quaalude knowing more about the drug's effect than Polanski, who seems to have stumbled on the single tablet in Jack Nicholson's bathroom? Was Polanski a predator who cleverly inquired whether Ms. Geimer was "on the pill," and asking her, "When did you last have your period?" or was he a guy who stupidly, suddenly considered birth controls issues while actually in the midst of penetration?
People have to answer these questions for themselves. The issue can provoke hours of debate, even between people whose feelings about what happened are not far separated.
None of this, however, makes the appearance of this transcript during the heat of an Oscar campaign any less suspicious.
For 25 years, this transcript was sealed. Suddenly, it was "quietly unsealed four months ago by a Los Angeles judge." Why? In who's interest? By who's urging?
The Smoking Gun, which characterizes Polanski in as harsh a light as possible, does not say. Nor does it name the judge who unsealed this document.
The mystery of Samantha Geimer's sudden reappearance just a few weeks ago remains a mystery. The least conspiracy minded still believe that she was just using Larry King Live and the Los Angeles Times as tools to get rid of all the pesky questioners who turn up whenever a Polanski film gets a lot of attention. Others feel that Focus Features, which has done everything it can to assure the media that it was not behind her appearance, brought her out to combat anti-Polanski feelings. Others still, citing the fact that her appearance got a higher percentage of people discussing Polanski's perversions, suggest that Miramax was behind the media tour.
The answer to that mystery will someday be part of history. The truth is that the gambit seems to have retrenched those who were against Polanski's nomination as well as those who were willing to consider it and had little effect on those still deciding.
The timing of the release of this transcript a week before Oscar ballots are due in and just days after Martin Scorsese did not win the DGA Award and neither Miramax film won at the WGA, is very, very suspicious. The likelihood is that Chicago is the sure winner at the Academy Awards. But the only real threat, by the consensus of serious Oscar watchers, seems to be The Pianist. And this graphic description of the events of that evening, told by Ms. Geimer, under the supervision of the District Attorney, untested by cross-examination and presented by a prosecutor who soon after offered Polanski a sentence of time-served, could siphon off enough votes to remove even the minor threat.
If you choose to discuss this issue, we hope that you will read these transcripts and take all the circumstances into consideration.
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Roman Polanski Wins Magazine Libel Suit
People Magazine - July 22, 2005
Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski has won his libel suit against Vanity Fair magazine over an article that accused him of propositioning a woman while on the way to the funeral of his murdered wife, Sharon Tate.
In London's High Court on Friday, Polanski, 71, was awarded 50,000 pounds (equal to about $87,000) in damages.
Polanski Рwhose films include Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist, for which he was named Best Director Рsued Vanity Fair publisher Cond̩ Nast over a 2002 article that accused him of propositioning a woman while en route to the funeral of Tate, who was killed by followers of Charles Manson during the summer of 1969.
The article alleged that Polanski put his hand on the woman's thigh and promised her: "I will make another Sharon Tate out of you."
After the court's decision Friday, Polanski told reporters: "It goes without saying that, while the whole episode is a sad one, I am obviously pleased with the jury's verdict today. Three years of my life have been interrupted. Three years within which I have had no choice but to relive the horrible events of August 1969, the murders of my wife, my unborn child and my friends."
He added: "Many untruths have been published about me, most of which I have ignored, but the allegations printed in the July 2002 edition of Vanity Fair could not go unchallenged."
During its defense in the case, Condé Nast, accepted that the incident did not happen before Tate's funeral, but rather about two weeks later. It maintained that the article was substantially true.
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Roman Polanski living a charmed life under house arrest in luxe Swiss chalet as he awaits his fate
The Associated Press - May 28, 2010
The chalet doors and windows are wide open. Deck chairs are set up on the patio and the garden is strewn with daffodils and wild flowers.
Roman Polanski appears to be leading a charmed existence under house arrest in the luxury resort of Gstaad, as he awaits word from Swiss authorities on whether he'll be extradited to the United States for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
And he may not be going anywhere soon.
Eight months after his arrest, the Swiss Justice Ministry still won't say when it will decide whether the 76-year-old director should be sent back to Los Angeles to face sentencing for unlawful sexual intercourse. And officials won't even say what the holdup is.
For Polanski, confined since December to his Gstaad chalet and garden, life seems to be moving on as well as could be imagined when an electronic monitoring bracelet is wrapped around your ankle.
His critically acclaimed film "The Ghost Writer" continues its global rollout, and people close to the filmmaker say he's looking into directing a movie version of the Broadway show "God of Carnage" provided his legal situation clears up.
On a recent afternoon, his home was the very picture of Alpine calm as the wind swept through two sets of open double-doors to his backyard and another to a first-floor balcony. A pair of construction workers were busy on home improvements and the jangling of cowbells could be heard in the offing. The paparazzi were long gone.
A man who answered the doorbell from an intercom said Polanski didn't want to see anyone, and the presence of a reporter prompted someone to shut the chalet's doors and windows, and draw all the curtains. It looked again like the fortress he entered six months ago when the Swiss released him from jail on $4.5 million bail.
Folco Galli, a spokesman for the Swiss Justice Ministry, provided no timeline for a decision that might free Polanski or confirm his transfer to U.S. authorities. The director would in any case be allowed to appeal an extradition order to the Swiss courts, setting up months more of legal wrangling.
Earlier this month, Polanski's lawyers raised the prospect for the first time of the filmmaker returning voluntarily to California to fight his case. But the statement was couched in language that suggested this remained unlikely.
Polanski also recently ended months of silence to accuse the U.S. of demanding his extradition solely to serve him "on a platter to the media."
The Oscar-winning director of "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist" was accused of plying his victim with champagne and part of a Quaalude during a 1977 modeling shoot and raping her. He was initially indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molesting and sodomy, but pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse.
What happened after that is a subject of dispute. The defense says the now deceased judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, had agreed in meetings with attorneys to sentence Polanski to a 90-day diagnostic study and nothing more. The judge later changed his mind and summoned Polanski for further sentencing - at which time he fled to his native France, attorneys say.
Polanski was arrested Sept. 26 as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award at a film festival.
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Roman Polanski makes public apology to woman he raped when she was 13
Roman Polanski at the 2011 Zurich Film Festival, where he publicly apologized for a 1978 sexual assault.
By Adam Rathe
New York Daily News - September 28, 2011
Roman Polanski, brought to justice? Not quite.
The French-born director, who fled the United States in 1978 after a highly publicized sexual assault case, has for the first time publicly apologized to the victim of his attack.
"She is a double victim: my victim, and a victim of the press," the 78-year-old filmmaker said of Samantha Geimer, who was a 13-year-old model when Polanski, then 43, drugged and raped her.
When he made the declaration, Polanski was on camera. His confession was part of filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau's "Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir," a documentary that premiered Tuesday at the Zurich Film Festival, according to ABC News.
Zurich isn't known as a safe place for Polanski. In 2009 when he visited the Swiss city, he was arrested at the airport and placed under house arrest at his Gstaad home while Switzerland and the U.S. fought over extradition for his crime against Geimer.
Bouzereau interviewed Polanski on camera during this time.
Polanski has been on the run since 1978, when he fled the U.S. just hours before he was to be sentenced for his assault.
Switzerland rejected the U.S.'s plea for extradition in July 2010 and currently there are still charges pending against the director in the United States.
For her part, Geimer seems to have forgiven Polanski, even if she's upset by the continued coverage of her ordeal.
"I know that he didn't really mean to hurt me, and I know we were both going through a really hard time with the publicity and the courts, and nobody was getting treated fairly, and we were being used," she told "Good Morning America" in March.
On the same program, she revealed that Polanski had sent her a note apologizing privately for what he had put her through. The gesture, however small, was not lost on Geimer.
"I appreciated the apology," she said, "and it meant a lot to my mom."
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Emails Raising Questions About the Polanski Case
By Michael Ciepy
New York Times - January 15, 2014
LOS ANGELES — Internal court emails have raised new questions about the conduct of the judges in the statutory rape case against the film director Roman Polanski.
In the newly disclosed emails, one judge on the Los Angeles County Superior Court indicated that if Mr. Polanski, a fugitive, returned to the United States for a hearing, the judge might be compelled to free him because of the conduct of Laurence A. Rittenband, the judge who handled the case in the 1970s and who died in 1993. The judge expressing concern, Larry P. Fidler, also said he feared a public backlash if he ruled in Mr. Polanski’s favor.
“Since the law was on his side because of Rittenband’s conduct, I was convinced I was toast if he ever came back, and my career would be over,” Judge Fidler wrote to the court’s public information officer in a June 9, 2008, email obtained separately by The New York Times and by Mr. Polanski’s lawyers.
“I’ve told several judges over the years that I had pity for any judge getting that case,” Judge Fidler said, and called it poison.
A judge who later handled the case, Peter P. Espinoza, was copied on another 2008 email, in which the head of the court’s criminal division was said to have issued “marching orders” that Mr. Polanski not be sentenced without returning to the United States. Judge Espinoza later ruled that Mr. Polanski must appear for a sentencing to take place, though an appeals court had suggested otherwise.
After pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl, Mr. Polanski fled to France in 1978 after a psychiatric evaluation in prison and never returned. In 2009, the authorities in Switzerland placed him under house arrest for 10 months but refused to extradite him to the United States.
Douglas and Bart Dalton, the father-son lawyer team representing Mr. Polanski, said they have notified the Los Angeles state court and the district attorney’s office in Los Angeles of the emails and the expectation of renewed legal action in the case. The Daltons, who have represented Mr. Polanski in his effort to resolve the case without facing possible jail time, said representatives of the court and prosecutors’ office had yet to respond.
Mr. Polanski, reached via email, declined to comment.
The fresh assertions of unfair judicial treatment surfaced in dozens of emails centering largely on the court’s response in 2008 to a documentary, Marina Zenovich’s “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.” The film explored purported wrongdoing by Judge Rittenband that included telling the lawyers how he wanted them to argue the case and openly discussing the case with journalists. It led to an unsuccessful demand that the case be dismissedbecause of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.
In 1997, Judge Fidler joined talks that might have resolved the case, but they failed after word of them surfaced.
Asked whether Judge Fidler or others would discuss the emails, a court spokeswoman said that judicial ethics rules prohibited comment. A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office also declined to comment.
In a 2009 court filing, Mr. Polanski’s lawyers asked to disqualify the entire Los Angeles County Superior Court from hearing Mr. Polanski’s request for dismissal. The request was denied.
Scott Bice, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, said Judge Fidler’s musings about public opinion were a legitimate concern for Mr. Polanski’s legal team. “If I had been a lawyer at the time, involved in the question of whether or not he was getting appropriate treatment from the court, that would have been relevant,” Mr. Bice said. “I’d have wanted to know that.”
Mr. Polanski, 80, has continued to direct films. Some have been as successful as “The Pianist,” for which he won a directing Oscar in 2003, some as little-seen as the recent “Venus in Fur,” starring his wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, which has not yet been released in United States theaters.
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Conduct of judge in Roman Polanski statutory rape case questioned
By Ben Beaumont-Thomas
The Guardian - January 17, 2014
Emails from judges in 2008 reveal allegations of misconduct by judge in original case, and could potentially pave way for Polanski's freedom
Emails disclosed to the New York Times have revealed allegations of misconduct by a judge in the 1977 trial of film director Roman Polanski, when he was accused of the statutory rape of 13-year-old Samantha Gailey.
Larry P Fidlar, currently a judge on the Los Angeles County Superior Court, said that if Polanski were to return to the States for a hearing, it could well be ruled in his favour thanks to the misconduct of Laurence A Rittenband, the judge in the original case. Rittenband is alleged to have discussed the case with journalists as it was ongoing, and told lawyers the angle he wanted them to take – this information was uncovered by Marina Zenovich's 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
A hearing ruled in Polanski's favour could theoretically mean he would be free from the sentencing that he fled from following the trial. Believing he would be sent to prison after having pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a minor, he flew to Europe where he has stayed ever since. The closest he came to sentencing came in 2009 when he was placed under house arrest in Switzerland after entering the country for a film festival, but was not extradited to the US.
In the emails, Fidlar also wrote of the public backlash he feared were Polanski to be freed. "Since the law was on his side because of Rittenband's conduct, I was convinced I was toast if he ever came back, and my career would be over," he wrote. "I've told several judges over the years that I had pity for any judge getting that case."
Polanski's lawyers, Douglas and Bart Dalton, have notified the state court and district attorney's office of Los Angeles about the emails, and have said they expect renewed legal action as a result.
Polanski made films like Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion before his exile from Hollywood, but after some years returned with successes such as Oliver Twist, the recent Carnage with Kate Winslet, and The Pianist, for which he won an Academy Award for directing.
Gailey, now Samantha Geimer, revealed to the Guardian last year that she still occasionally emails the director, and that she felt he should be allowed to return to the US. Lasy year she published a memoir, The Girl, which explored the incident, the trial and its effect on her life.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." –– Margaret Mead
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