I assume you know that drugging a 13 year old, then raping her is not statutory rape.
why don't you familiarize with the facts. it helps. The Probation Department and Gailey both recommended against jail time. <
http://fusion.net/roman-polanski-a-complete-timeline-of-the-director-s-a-1793857320>
mages, FUSION
Who is Roman Polanski? Well, you might know him as a prolific filmmaker, the visionary behind
Rosemary's Baby (1968),
Chinatown (1974), and
The Pianist (2002). You might also know him as a convicted child rapist.
Last week, the Polish government
announced its intentions to renew efforts to extradite Roman Polanski to the United States. Zbigniew Ziobro, Poland's Minister of Justice, will file an appeal to revisit a U.S. extradition request that was rejected last fall. In October 2015, Judge Dariusz Mazur ruled that returning Polanski to the United States would be "
obviously unlawful," citing the 82-year-old director's advanced age and expressing concerns for his physical welfare. If extradited, Roman Polanski would face charges relating to the 1977 rape of 13-year-old Samantha Gailey and a possible
two-year prison sentence.
Here's a refresher on the nearly 40-year controversy that's surrounded Polanski—from his terrible crime, the convoluted legal proceedings that followed, and his eventual flight from the United States to become a fugitive in Europe.
The rape
Unlike many celebrity sex scandals—say, the allegations of molestation surrounding
Woody Allen, or the Bill Cosby rape accusations made by
nearly 60 women—the key facts in the Roman Polanski case aren't up for debate. Roman Polanski had sex with a child, whom he'd plied with drugs and alcohol.
On March 10, 1977, the then 43-year-old Polanski (whose wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family in 1969) picked up Gailey from her mother's house in Los Angeles for a photo shoot. Polanski had first photographed the 13-year-old several weeks prior: He told the aspiring model that the pictures would appear in French
Vogue, and she posed topless upon his request.
According to Gailey's April 4, 1977
grand-jury testimony, Polanski drove her to Jack Nicholson's house. The actor wasn't home, but his ex-girlfriend Anjelica Huston was there when they arrived. Polanski poured Gailey champagne and they took more photographs. After they shared a quaalude, he instructed her to strip and enter a Jacuzzi, where—despite her protests—he soon joined her, after removing his own clothes. She lied about having asthma as an excuse to leave the hot tub. Although Gailey repeatedly told him "no" and asked him to drive her home, he proceeded to perform oral, vaginal, and anal sex on her inside the house. Gailey told the grand jury she was reluctant to resist because she was "afraid" of Polanski.
Gailey said Polanski asked her to keep their encounter a
secret before taking her home, later telling her, "You know, when I first met you I promised myself I wouldn't do anything like this with you."
The legal proceedings
Polanski was
arrested at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on March 11, the next day, after Samantha's mother called the police. On the 24th of that month, he was indicted on
six felony counts, among them "furnishing a controlled substance to a minor" and "rape by use of drugs."
Polanski initially plead not guilty to all charges, but eventually accepted a
plea bargain—which Gailey's attorney encouraged in the hopes of protecting his young client from the scrutiny of a public trial—in which five charges were dropped, leaving only the charge of
unlawful sexual intercourse (statutory rape), the least serious of the original six.
Polanski's was a so-called "
open plea," one that allowed the judge to decide his sentence. The plea agreement required Polanski to report for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation at Chino State Prison, but first, Judge Laurence J. Rittenband permitted the director to complete a film. During this stay, Polanski incurred the judge's wrath when he was photographed at a beer hall in Munich, where it appeared that—according to Polanski, who complained that the image was misleading—he was "surrounded by a
bunch of bimbos." He served 42 days in Chino before he was released. The Probation Department and Gailey both
recommended against jail time.
But before the sentencing took place,Judge Rittenband privately discussed his intention to renege on the agreement and send Polanski to prison for 48 more days, followed by
voluntary deportation, with the defendant's attorney. In a panic over the possibility of this harsher-than-expected sentence, the director fled the United States on February 1, 1978, the
very day he would have appeared for his sentencing. He headed to London, then Paris, where he was shielded from extradition as a French citizen.
JudgeRittenband, who passed away in 1993, has emerged as a controversial figure. In the 2008 documentary
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, David Wells
claimed that—while serving as a Los Angeles deputy district attorney—he had privately encouraged Rittenband to toss Polanski's plea agreement and that he had personally shown the judge the Munich "bimbos" photo in a newspaper. (Wells later
recanted these statements.) In 2009, a California appeals court denied Polanski's petition to dismiss his case on these grounds, although the panel expressed that they were "
deeply concerned" about possible misconduct on Rittenband's part.
It's also worth noting that Samantha Gailey received pretty much exactly the treatment you'd expect a rape victim to endure in 1977. Judge Rittenband made this disconcertingly
victim-blaming statement during Polanski's plea colloquy:
The probation report discloses that although just short of her 14th birthday at the time of the offense, the prosecutrix was a well developed young girl who looked older than her years; and regrettably not unschooled in sexual matters. She has a 17-year-old boyfriend, with whom she had sexual intercourse at least twice prior to the offense involved. The probation report further reveals that the prosecutrix was not unfamiliar with the drug quaalude, she having experimented with it as early as her tenth or eleventh year.