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	Polanski's Past Catches up By Phillip Adams The Australian November 6, 2009 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/polanskis-past-catches-up/story-e6frg7fx-1225794298942 WHEN a US senator or congressman, a Catholic priest or TV evangelist is caught with his pants down, hostile headlines reach to the heavens - which promptly open and it's open slather on "the perp". As many heads have rolled in recent years as bounced into the guillotine's basket. I've lost count of the Republican roosters who've become headless chooks, while the Vatican continues to reel from revelations about child abuse around the world. Only televangelists are given second chances - provided they kneel before their parishioners and tearfully, prayerfully express contrition. And if you're a mega-celeb in a culture addicted to celebrity? Chances are you'll get away with murder - as the O. J. Simpson trial attests. If you're a popular presidential candidate - better still a popular president - entirely implausible denials of sexual misconduct will be welcomed by your supporters. If you're the presenter of a late-night TV show your public confessions will boost your audience. And if you're Roman Polanski, your criminality will be brushed aside by fellow celebrities who'll represent any attempt to bring you to the justice you've long avoided as some sort of martyrdom. Your talent, dear Roman, is too precious. Your rape conviction should be forgiven and forgotten. Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. Even if your victim was a 13-year-old girl? Whom the famous director used for oral, vaginal and anal sex? Back then some from his celebrity-sodden society offered the weird defence that Polanski was the true victim, that he was all but absolved of guilt by the Manson family's butchering of his pregnant wife. That the rape of the child had to be understood in that tragic context. Now that notion has been revived by the likes of Woody Allen, hardly a role model given his sexual behavior with his adopted daughter. Predictably, Allen argues that Polanski has had punishment enough. All those years on the lam in luxury hotels at film festivals. If the real rapist of the 13-year-old was, in effect, Charles Manson, then by extension any family living such a nightmare deserves a free kick to commit another crime. This would mean turning a blind eye to any monstrous crime committed by a member of a family who'd lost a child to, for example, Ivan Milat. Now in her 40s, it's hardly surprising Polanski's victim doesn't want the scandal revisited. The voyeurism of any court case and the attending media frenzy would be as repugnant as the trials of Simpson or, more recently, Phil Spector. Locally we've had the same special pleading over late painter Donald Friend's diaries detailing his sexual relations with Balinese boys as young as 10. Now mature men, one in particular is not grateful to Friend's publishers for printing the lurid details without concealing his identity. Donald knew he was playing a most dangerous game, by how appalled his Balinese neighbours were. (When I visited him in Bali 30 years back he told me he thought they'd murder him in revenge). Yet now his cheer squad, few of whom would defend less prestigious pedophiles visiting Bali for boys, stick up for dear old Donald. As an important artist he should be judged differently or not judged at all, goes the subtext. Like Polanski's loyal Hollywood pals, Friend's friends are friends indeed. As artistes, Roman and Donald are sanctified, deemed demi-divine. Thank heavens the Church didn't argue that the same sort of tolerance be extended to Catholic priests. Aren't they nearer to God too?
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