As you may know, Oscar winning director Roman Polanski, a man who is no stranger to controversy, having had his mother murdered in Auschwitz and his wife and unborn child murdered by the Manson family, was arrested for having sex with a 13 year old girl in 1977, and on his sentencing in 1978, skipped off to France, evading the law for the last 31 years rather than go to jail for his crime. Currently his defense attorneys seem to be using what I consider to be the ridiculous “why now” defense, stating that because they didn’t capture this fugitive for 31 years, they must not have been trying (never mind that he was sharp enough to take refuge in countries that won’t extradite).

Now, I’m sure he has a lot of admirers and colleagues who respect him for what he has done, and I would not take away from that, but everyone from Martin Scorcese to Woody Allen (OK, perhaps a bad example when talking about someone who should know that there are boundaries around sex with children) to David Lynch and 100 others are rallying for his release, as are the French government. Even his victim (who for what it’s worth walked away with an “undisclosed sum”) has forgiven him and doesn’t think he should be held (of course she may not be the best judge of things either, being that she admitted at age 13 to have already been familiar with drinking, taking qualudes and having sex on multiple occasions before her rape, and considering that being raped when you’re 13 might tend to change your sense of acceptable behavior just a tiny bit, one might say that she didn’t make the best decisions to begin with and that circumstances might have tended to warp her sensibilities).

What troubles me about this is that his plea was guilty to “unlawful sexual contact with a minor under the age of 14,” which has been read in the press and popular culture as “statutory rape”, while in reality, there was nothing statutory about it. In fact, as this girl as I’ve said, had already had consentual sex by age 13, it is not at all inconceivable that although it is still quite sleazy, a 13 year old could give consent to a 44 year old man (though a 44 year old man should know that a 13 year old is really a bit too young to fully comprehend what consent means), but this was not the case. So for years, I thought that’s what the whole Polanski thing was…he had CONSENTUAL sex with a 13 year old girl. In fact, I mistakenly believed (and I’m sure I heard this somewhere which is the only reason I can imagine for having believed it) that the reason he was busted for statutory rape was that he was romantically linked to 15 year old Nastassja Kinski (something current media reports don’t even touch on…I mean first he rapes a 13 year old then a couple years later he’s dating a 15 year old…this is NOT a mistake, this is a sick fuck), indeed he was involved with her, AFTER he raped a 13 year old, but this is not what got him in trouble.

So, I thought, not knowing that we weren’t talking about an older man having sex with a willing but too young girl, OK, what exactly is so big that the US government is going after him after 3 decades? Well, I found the sworn testimony of the girl he raped. Basically, and the media probably won’t tell you this, but it was not in any way shape or form consentual. This guy took a 13 year old girl to Jack Nicholson’s seemingly empty house, had her scared to death, gave her champagne and qualudes, and basically placed her in a position where she felt helpless because he was her only means to get home, forcibly kissed her, forcibly performed oral sex on her, forcibly stuck his penis in her vagina, THEN asked if she was on the pill and when her last period was, and when she said a couple weeks ago, he ass raped her until he climaxed in her instead, while at every step she told him no in no uncertain terms. They were once interrupted and she put her panties back on, only to have him forcibly remove them a second time.

This guy is a RAPIST with a penchant for children who hid out in a country where sex with kids is not frowned upon as greatly. And our most respected directors want to say “let bygones be bygones” because he successfully evaded justice for over 3 decades? I just want to go to each and every one of these people and ask them for the address of their closest 13 year old female relative, so I can ass rape her and disappear for 30 years, then we’ll see if they have the same attitude. What the fuck is wrong with people? Am I missing something here? Is it OK to drug and forcibly rape a 13 year old girl who stated in her testimony that he had to hold her up in a hot tub because she wasn’t big enough to keep from her head going under the water, as long as you directed Rosemary’s Baby?

I mean, our society villified Michael Jackson for allegedly doing the same thing even without the kind of concrete proof we have here, to the point that he utilized a drug that killed him just so he could sleep. At least with him you got the sense that all the celebrity friends who came to his defense genuinely believed he wasn’t capable of doing the things he was accused of having done, but with Polanski, his defenders know full damn well that he forcibly raped a child, he admitted it, and yet they don’t give a fuck? I’m just curious what about this could they possibly know and understand as people who know this guy that I as a layperson who’s never met him can not?

If I found out that my best friend had drugged and then forcibly orally, vaginally and anally raped a 13 year old girl 31 years ago, and was never brought to justice for it, I might not stop being his friend if he’d forgive me for turning him into law enforcement myself. I believe in seeing the good and the bad in people, but it seems these people are forgiving the bad a bit too easily, and I can’t figure out why. What are your thoughts on this?

Topics: film, people, law enforcement, opinions, rape, insanity, forgiveness, rapists