ROMAN POLANSKI is a free man. The Swiss government refused to extradite him to the US. Does a crime committed by an Oscar winning director cease to be a crime? Should Roman Polanski be treated any differently because he is the director of The Pianist? Does the fact that he raped and sodomized a thirteen-year-old girl more than thirty-three years ago diminish the magnitude of the crime or its impact on the victim? The girl, little more than a child at the time met Polanski during a Vogue photo shoot in Los Angeles, California. He drugged as well as plied her with alcohol before he assaulted her in a hot tub in 1977. The charges against him were very serious including assault on a child under the age of 14 with under Californian law at that time, statutory rape. According to some newspaper sources his victim Samantha Gailey’s lawyer made a plea bargain with him so that she could preserve the anonymity of her client. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor (a much lesser charge than his original offences) and spent a mere forty-two days in prison before he fled first to London (his home at that time) and then to France, his adoptive home.
