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	Medb Ruane: He Says That He's Suffered Enough and His Peers Agree. but Why Should We Forgive Polanski's Crime? By Medb Ruane Irish Independent July 17, 2010 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/medb-ruane/medb-ruane-he-says-that-hes-suffered-enough-and-his-peers-agree-but-why-should-we-forgive-polanskis-crime-2262601.html Vladimir Nabokov wrote a postscript to his novel Lolita where he talked about the trouble of getting it published. One place turned him down because they "... regretted that there were no good people in the book". No good people in the book. You can say much the same about the story of Roman Polanski, who was arrested in Zurich last September but spared extradition to the US when Swiss authorities finally found the warrants lacking this week. He passed almost 10 months detained at his holiday home in Gstaad. Polanski had allegedly drugged, raped and sodomised the very unwilling 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in Jack Nicholson's house on March 10, 1977, after the child's mother agreed to let Polanski photograph her. He was 43. The mother was an actress and Polanski already a cult figure with the epic movies Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby under his belt. Nicholson wasn't there. Arrested next day at the Beverley Wiltshire Hotel, Polanski eventually pleaded guilty to what amounts to statutory rape, claiming the child looked older than 13. In 1977/8, he served 42 days in prison before being released on bail after psychiatric evaluations considered him fit to stand trial and not likely to reoffend. Polanski apparently had his doubts about the judge in the case, a man called Rittenband, now dead. He suspected he'd get a longer sentence than he'd plea bargained, so he fled the US before sentencing and went via London to France, from where he couldn't be extradited. In September 2009, he went to Zurich to be feted at a film festival. Out of nowhere, authorities arrested him. The facts are clear but they aren't straightforward. His victim is now a 40-something mother of three living in Hawaii who settled her civil case out of court and wants the charges dropped. So do a cultural elite of film-makers and stars such as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Debra Winger, Wim Wenders, Harvey Weinstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Pedro Almodovar and Ethan Coen. If Polanski was a Catholic priest being shielded for years by the Vatican, you can bet he wouldn't attract such support. Indeed, if the same celebrities campaigned together for global action on child sex abuse/trafficking, change might just start happening. So the first question is about genius, wealth and power and whether Polanski's status could ever make him an exception to the rule that you pay the price, especially when you hurt a child. Polanski had sublimated his own traumas into magnificent films looking, uncannily, at hearts of darkness no one wants to feel. Great movies followed his earlier classics after he left the US -- Tess, The Pianist, the money-spinning Frantic with Harrison Ford. Glamour, genius and celebrity were Polanski's bread and butter, with his own life glued to some of the 20th Century's most evil events -- Auschwitz, where his mother died and he survived; carnage at his home on 10050 Cielo Drive, when Charles Manson and his 'family' murdered Polanski's wife Sharon Tate and friends. Tate was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with their first child. The art could never match the life. And the problem there, as lawyer Ronald Solos points out in the New York Times, is that the extradition request delivered last September appears to be the first one since Polanski jumped bail in 1978. He's lived openly and within the law since then and, as he was in Switzerland before, he could have been detained sooner. Revenge, deterrence, punishment and rehabilitation lie at the core of criminal law, Solos argues. He demolishes the last three, leaving the California District Attorney's office open to the charge of being vengeful. Citing European and American law, he concludes that the action is arbitrary, which makes it legally bad news. Polanski's peers gave him a standing ovation when he won an Oscar for The Pianist, which he didn't turn up to receive. He can't work in the US, can't visit his late wife's grave, can't meet his buddies there because he won't risk going. Over on Perez Hilton's site, Polanski's picture is labelled with the word "coward", written in white to match a snake coming out of his mouth. And as the lewd details and terrifying back stories go public all over again, the enigma of Polanski doesn't lighten. His art is genuinely transforming but not enough to relieve the viciousness of attacking the child. Can there be justice now in any real sense? The high-profile extradition attempt was obviously designed to win publicity. Time passing has transformed the mantle of victimhood. Now, it's passed from Samantha Geimer (who moved on) to Roman Polanski (who did not). He says he has suffered enough. It is an appeal for sympathy, which, strangely, provokes disgust. She isn't 13 any longer but he's still a fugitive.
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