Can you forgive Mr. Polanski please?

by Srabanti Majumder
July 14, 2010

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/868/can-you-forgive-mr-polanski-please

Samantha Geimer, the woman with whom film director Roman Polanski was convicted of having illegal sex when she was a minor, says she is satisfied with Switzerland's decision not to extradite him to the United States for the 1977 offence.

Ms. Geimer, who was then 13 and is now a mother of three in her 40s, has repeatedly asked for the case to be dropped. Switzerland refused to hand the 76-year-old movie director over and freed him after months of house arrest. This decision will help the internationally known award-winning director to get back to his works.

Polanski still faces an Interpol warrant in effect for 188 countries for the child sex case. Most of Europe has arrangements with Washington on sending wanted individuals back and forth, but Polanski has travelled freely in numerous European countries since fleeing U.S. justice in 1978. He made his latest film, The Ghost Writer, in Germany last year and visited Austria just before the Swiss arrested him in September.

Emmanuelle Seigner [44], wife of Roman Polanski said, said yesterday she can't wait to get back to "normal family life" after her husband was declared a free man.

Oscar-winner Polanski, 76, was thought to have received a huge welcome in his home country of France after being spared extradition to the US where he pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor. He had been in Switzerland in jail and then under house arrest since last September after Swiss police seized him for drugging and bedding 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in Hollywood in 1977.

A blogger named Richard Cohen commenting on the decision of Swiss government wrote in The Washington Post: "The Swiss got it right. Their refusal to extradite film director Roman Polanski to the United States on a 33-year-old sex charge is the proper dénouement for this mess of a case. There is no doubt that Polanski did what he did, which is have sex with a 13-year-old after plying her with booze. There is no doubt also that after all these years there is something stale about the case, not to mention a "victim," Samantha Geimer, who has long ago forgiven her assailant and dearly wishes the whole thing would go away. So do I.

"There are only bad reasons to proceed with the prosecution. The first is to rebut the argument that some sort of legal or moral exception ought to be made for Polanski on account of his talent. Having just seen his film The Pianist for the second time, I salute his genius as, if I knew something about poetry; I might that of Ezra Pound."

I am not going to make arguments on the rape charge as well subsequent trial of Mr. Roman Polanski, as the matter is still pending at the court. But, just as a fan of good films, can I ask for considering this matter with the similar attitude of Ms. Geimer, who already has forgiven Polanski for what happened few decades back?

Related Topics:  Op-Ed and Editorial receive the latest by email: subscribe to weekly blitz's free mailing list