Over the weekend, film director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in connection with a rape case from 1977, and now he may be extradited to the United States. However, Samantha Geimer, the victim who identified herself long ago (and was 13 years old at the time of the rape), has asked that the case against Polanski be dropped.
According to CNN, Geimer (who is now 45 and lives in Hawaii with her husband) cannot be forced to testify against Polanski if he is brought to an American court. Still, what she really wants, she says, is for the case to be over. Geimer has already sued him and reached an undisclosed settlement. She filed court papers earlier this year asking the charges against Polanski be dismissed.
Unfortunately, American authorities don’t feel the same way. They consider Polanski a convicted felon and fugitive, and a Swiss justice official said there has been an international arrest warrant out on him since 2005. Polanski is currently in a Swiss prison, waiting to find out if he will be extradited to the United States. Swiss officials have said he will likely not be released until a court has ruled – a process that could take weeks.
“Every time this case is brought to the attention of the court, great focus is made of me, my family, my mother and others,” Geimer wrote in an affidavit. “That attention is not pleasant to experience and is not worth maintaining over some irrelevant legal nicety, the continuation of the case.”
Unfortunately? Dude raped a thirteen-year-old girl and was convicted, but since he’s rich and has friends he made bail and skipped town before he could be sentenced. I mean, what the hell kind of precedent would that make if we let rich dudes who could pay off the witness off the hook? The guy’s a fugitive ffs.
I even like Polanski’s films (well some of them), but he deserves to go to jail, no doubts about it. Raping a thirteen-year-old girl is never okay and should always be punished.
Hey … the dude has been punished already enough. Besides being the Byronic savant hero genius film maker … darling of the subversive elite lumpen pack. Poor Jewish survivor of the holocaust which killed his parents (research needed there …) Wife/baby Sharon Tate brutally murdered by the Manson clan in 68 … how can we punish him now for a little underage nookie who’s been forgiving him for an undisclosed amount of mullah some time ago? Though it would be a shame if the victim was still financially profiting from the event still now … 32 years later? What price hypocrisy. Too bad he is not a Nazi … there would be no debate about his guilt.