On March 11, 1977, Academy Award-winning director Roman Polanski was arrested outside of his apartment building in Los Angeles.
Polanski was then charged with the following counts: furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, committing a lewd or lascivious act on a child, unlawful sexual intercourse, rape by use of drugs, perversion and sodomy.
On Feb. 1, 1978 he drove to Los Angeles International Airport and bought a one-way ticket to Europe, never to return – until now.
Before his departure, Polanski – who is responsible for such films as The Pianist, Chinatown, The Ninth Gate and Rosemary’s Baby – went through a trial in which he pleaded guilty to sex with a minor, which resulted in a sentence of 90 days for a diagnostic study.
He served his time in the California Institution for Men, a state prison in Chino, Calif. Polanski was released after 42 days.
He was further prosecuted upon his release in a trial that ended when Judge Laurence J. Rittenband was forced down from his stand for judicial misconduct. Polanski decided to flee the country before his sentencing.
The obvious reaction to this information is to consider Polanski a pedophile, but that is not exactly the case. The general public does not know enough about him.
Polanski survived the Holocaust in Poland as an 8-year-old and witnessed his parents being taken into the Auschwitz concentration camp, where his mother was gassed.
His wife Sharon Tate and many of his close friends were slaughtered by the Manson followers, leaving him emotionally broken; yet he was able to recover.
Polanski was arrested again in September this year by request of U.S. authorities, who asked Swiss police to arrest him at the Zurich Film Festival in Switzerland where he was accepting a lifetime achievement award.
He is working on post-production of his new film The Ghost from his cell.
If Americans didn’t think of Polanski as a malignant, twisted man with a satanic vision, then this situation would have been completely different. If they had considered him a controversial director with a painful past, it would have been even more so.
The alleged victim, Samantha Geimer, publicly forgave Polanski in 1997; she is now in her mid 40s.
Everyone who was associated with the original trial is either dead or does not want to go back to what Polanski’s lawyer, Douglas Dalton, has called the ‘case that will never leave.’
Ryan Popham is a communication freshman and may be reached at [email protected]
