No Excuse

Roman Polanksi, director of Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown was arrested in Zurich over the weekend. Polanksi escaped police custody following a psychiatric evaluation in 1977 after pleading guilty to drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13 year old girl. The actual charge was “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.”

The international community is aghast:

The Swiss media has rounded on the authorities.

“Switzerland let a guest walk into a nasty trap. We should be ashamed,” said tabloid newspaper, Blick.

Daily paper Le Temps said Switzerland had “shocked film buffs and friends of the arts with its kindly and efficient co-operation with US justice. It has angered Poland and France”.

Other responses have been anger over the age of the crime, 32 years ago. Some say that Polanski has suffered enough, due to the loss of his mother at the Auschwitz concentration camp and the death of his wife, Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson family. Others claim he is only the subject of interest because of his fame; any other child rapist would simply be forgotten by now.

These “people” making excuses for Polanski make me sick.

Filed under: crime, entertainment, arrest, france, Roman Polanski, Samantha Geimer, switzerland, zurich