This is so different. We’ve all done something in our lives we regret, something that is stupid; or something awful and stupid is done to us. For 90 percent of these situations, there comes a time when you need to let it go—unless you don’t want to. And then, in a sense, it’s your problem.
Why was the State of California interested in spending time and resources to extradite Roman Polanski? Has the DA cleaned up all the drug and gang violence in California? No more problems with illegal immigration? Are they releasing thousands of criminals just to make room for him? Was it not obvious to everyone that the DA was doing this as a means of furthering his own career, with utter disrespect and disregard for the victim in this case? He is doing the opposite of his job.
Because of his fame, Polanski had been lied to and manipulated by our criminal justice system. This notoriety drew corrupt and venal people to him like moths to a flame, from the judge on down. Celebrity can be a benefit and a curse. There is massive privilege, but that privilege and attention can easily backfire on you, too, as we see almost daily. Maybe if Polanski had been a nobody he would still have gotten the case pleaded down, been sentenced to six months for unlawful sex with a minor, and served two or three months—exactly as he did. But he wasn’t a nobody; he was somebody whose fame and power made everyone involved with the case worry about themselves in relation to it. Who would seem tough? Who would seem like a pushover? Who could use the case for professional or personal gain?
And here’s the big issue: Who, exactly, would be served if Roman Polanski went to jail? True, this was a man who liked inappropriately young girls. Hell, he eventually married a remarkably young girl—Emmanuelle Seigner, who was only twenty-three when they wed in 1989 (he was fifty-six). But he was not a pedophile; he was not hanging around schoolyards. He was not violent, he was not rough; he was, mostly, a selfish, arrogant man—and one who was not even a complete outlier given his place and the cultural moment.
I was reminded of who Roman Polanski was in those days when I read Peter Biskind’s seminal book on Hollywood from the late 1960s through the 1970s, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. Peter Bart, the Paramount producer who worked with Polanski on Rosemary’s Baby, called him “a brilliant man, the best read, most cultured director I have ever met in my life. But . . . he was always at the edge of the flame.” Life was not making sense to him. He went for the pleasures that were a sure thing. One of those pleasures was young girls. Robert Towne, Chinatown screenwriter, talked about rewriting the script with Polanski at a hotel, and how they would fight “over the teenyboppers that Roman would run out and take Polaroid pictures of diving off the fucking diving board without tops on. Which was distracting.”
Over and over I’ve been called a Polanski apologist, with the implication that I have been manipulated into taking his side by nefarious people in positions of power. I am not apologizing for him and I didn’t think his art somehow makes up for what he did. (Full disclosure: I don’t even like his movies.) Mostly what I am is a person with common sense and a belief that motive does play a role in judging a crime. Roman Polanski was a man who was horny and high on March 10, 1977. That’s it. I do not think his motive was to hurt me, even if, unavoidably, he did. I consider the integrity of our justice system far more important than the punishment of one man, for one crime, even if I was the victim.
Those were my thoughts. And while many disagreed with me, Polanski’s arrest and attempted extradition from Switzerland proved to be red meat for pundits and pontificators on both sides of the Atlantic.
For those who worshipped him as an artist . . . well, if Polanski wasn’t already revered enough in France, this arrest and attempt at extradition made him into a martyr. First, the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques circulated a petition signed by more than one hundred people in the film industry, including Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodóvar, and Woody Allen:
We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski’s arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.
His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.
Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.
By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.
The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no one can know the effects.
Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renowned and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.
Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians—everyone involved in international filmmaking—want him to know that he has their support and friendship.
On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms. Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.
If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.
Two things stand out to me in this petition. One, that the only reference to Polanski’s crime is that it was “a case of morals.” A case of morals? Really? Then this important and self-important document stops to pay tribute to the American minister’s “perfect French.” If Polanski had raped me in perfect French, all this subsequent unpleasantness could have been avoided. Vive la France!
Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French writer and philosopher, started his own petition of famous well-wishers—everyone from Salman Rushdie and Jean-Luc Godard to Diane Von Furstenberg. The arrest was called a “judicial lynching” by a society of Polish filmmakers. Swiss editorial pages did a lot of breast-beating about how a “trap” had been laid for the director in their country. The French and Polish foreign ministers took their complaint to then secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and in an interview with a French radio state, Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said “This affair is frankly a bit sinister.” And Frédéric Mitterrand, the French culture minister, called the arrest “callous” and “absolutely horrifying.” (He had to back down a little after people remembered his 2005 memoir, where he’d written about his own passion for underage young boys he’d pay for sex while traveling in Thailand. Vive la France encore!)
There was equally strong reaction from those who wanted Polanski returned to the United States and were disgusted by the support he got from the intellectual elite. Katha Pollitt wrote an impassioned and widely read piece in the Nation.
It’s enraging that literary superstars who go on and on about human dignity, and human rights, and even women’s rights (at least when the women are Muslim) either don’t see what Polanski did as rape, or don’t care, because he is, after all, Polanski—an artist like themselves. That some of his defenders are women is particularly disappointing. Don’t they see how they are signing on to arguments that blame the victim, minimize rape, and bend over backwards to exonerate the perpetrator? Error of youth, might have mistaken her age, teen slut, stage mother—is that what we want people to think when middle-aged men prey on ninth-graders?
The observations weren’t all heavy stuff. In fact, while I recoiled from the serious commentary—hearing the details of the case repeated and exaggerated ad nauseam—I
rather enjoyed the jokes, even when I was the butt of them. The funniest riff came from Chris Rock on Jay Leno’s show. “People are defending Roman Polanski because he made some good movies? Are you kidding me? He made good movies thirty years ago, Jay! Even Johnnie Cochran don’t have the nerve to go, ‘Well, did you see O. J. play against New England?’ ”
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Throughout all this, I tried to keep my head down and stay away from all the press idiocy. It wasn’t always easy. For one thing, as I noted earlier, there were cameras set up outside my house. And not just cameras. My son Alex remembers reporters coming over to him and saying, “Listen, we’ll give you money to make a statement. Here’s twenty bucks if you just say, ‘No comment.’ ” At one point my sons started taking pictures of them. Once—that fateful day in September 2009, after Roman’s arrest—I gave photographers the finger. You don’t flip off paparazzi. But it was like my hand was possessed. I’m looking at my upright third digit going, You betrayed me, you York, Pennsylvania, fuck-you hand.
It was amazing what the press would do to try to get me to make news. One of the British tabloids called Larry and said they were willing to pay me “real money” for an interview: $75,000, $80,000. For me, that was more than a year’s salary, for one hour of my time. I needed the money. My kids needed the money. I thought to myself, If I can be paid to say what I’ve been trying to get across all this time, that would be great.
The tabloid writer called and called. Larry, as my attorney and spokesman, told him I was willing. Then this: “I just spoke to my editor in England,” the writer said to Larry. “If we’re paying that amount of money, she has to say she’s withdrawn her forgiveness for Polanski.”
First, I never used the word forgive publicly—what I did in my heart was a private matter. More important, while I struggled to understand and get past what happened, I was never so arrogant to suggest that I had the power to grant “forgiveness.” Forgiveness was for my peace of mind; it had little to do with him.
Gee, thanks but no thanks.
During the weeks and months after Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland, I once again felt joined to this man who was almost a stranger: in a sense, both Polanski and I were being held against our wills. It was hard not to think about him in jail. I would wake up in the morning free to do as I liked, while he was locked in a cell. I thought this is just all so wrong. I was actually relieved when he was released to “house arrest” in the chalet he owned in Switzerland.
While Larry worked behind the scenes to free me from this hell by bringing closure (which meant enabling Polanski to come back to the States without the threat of further incarceration), I had the pleasure of watching myself being excoriated in the press. Here was the problem: I wasn’t being a good victim. A good victim asks for help and cries on TV and parades around telling her story of woe for public consumption. We are told we are “helping others” by exposing ourselves in that way. The public appetite for other people’s misery demands it.
And I just wasn’t cooperating.
Jaclyn Friedman, editor of Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power & a World Without Rape, made an impassioned yet sensible argument about why Polanski should be jailed despite my wishes.
. . . rape isn’t just a crime against one person, and we don’t prosecute it in order to fulfill any one victim’s needs or wishes. Rape is a crime against the social fabric that binds all of us together . . . when the perpetrator goes unpunished, it makes all of us less safe. Not just because there’s one more rapist on the loose, but because that lack of accountability sends a message to other would-be rapists: Go ahead and rape someone. The rest of us don’t care that much, as long as it’s not us or someone we love. In this case, we might add a caveat: Especially if you’re rich and talented and have powerful friends.
This is the reason, Friedman suggests, the plaintiff in any criminal rape case isn’t the victim—it’s the government. Rape cases are pursued by a representative of all of us because all of us are harmed when someone rapes.
I do understand this. I also understand that the punishment should fit the crime. Polanski had already served time—in both California and Switzerland. How much do they want? And I struggle with why what “they” want matters. More strangers weighing in on my life!
The months of Polanski’s incarceration in Switzerland, the legal wrangling—it was all awful. The panic attacks and insomnia I’d suffered from on and off for my entire life returned in full force. I was finding it harder and harder to concentrate at work, and my boss, while understanding, was also concerned. I was afraid I’d lose my job—which added to the insomnia and panic.
As my advocate, Larry filed a “Victim’s Statement” with the appeals court supporting Polanski’s motion to dismiss the case against him. I think he cleverly combined my thoughts and wishes with a strong formal legal argument. Here is a portion:
Since the outset of this case, Samantha Geimer has attempted to be left alone. Because she is a victim of a celebrity crime, that has not happened. After years and years of being followed, pursued, hounded, photographed, and videoed openly and surreptitiously by hundreds, if not thousands, she was advised by a knowledgeable reporter that if she would only tell her story it would all go away. She was told that it was her silence that made pursuit of her even more intense. She told her story and she is still the victim of an intense public curiosity. Over the years, for example, her children have been approached at school, friends of hers have been approached for photographs or comments, surreptitious reporters and photographers have parked outside her house with drilled holes in vehicles attempting to take photographs or videos of her. Her children, in her absence, have been gifted by photographers for information—tell your child to throw away a gift toy. In violation of Judge Rittenband’s order, the District Attorney consented to the making public of the grand jury testimony so that the world would know the sultry, [sic] albeit true, details of the crimes. It is now internetted for her husband, mother, and children to read.
Anytime Polanski is in the news, Samantha’s efforts to be left alone are vitiated. This happens when Polanski releases a new movie, when he is considered for recognition, i.e., an Academy Award. Samantha’s life is significantly interfered with every time his celebrity becomes more public. It just happened again.
On September 26, 2009, as the world knows, Polanski was arrested in Switzerland. That arrest has yet again focused a media frenzy on Polanski, and therefore on Samantha. Between Samantha and her counsel, they have received close to 500 telephone calls from media around the world seeking a comment, seeking interviews, seeking photographs, seeking appearances, seeking old photographs, seeking new photographs, seeking a statement, seeking anything to feed the frenzy. The response of “no comment” has been met with offers of money, and other gratuities in exchange for a word or two or an appearance from Samantha. The response has been: “leave me alone.”
But they won’t leave her alone. Her mother has been followed by news organizations and paparazzi. Samantha’s children have been hounded by photographers and reporters. Samantha has been greeted at places where she tries to live her normal life, i.e., at an airport, with photographers, reporters, and paparazzi. They have surrounded her house waiting for the moment when she will yield to the pressure and come out and talk. Calls, at all hours, invade her at home, on her cell phone, and at her place of employment. The victim is again the victim. The pursuit has caused her to have health-related issues. The pursuit has caused her performance at her job to be interfered with, and has caused the understandable displeasure of her employer and the real possibility that Samantha could lose her job.
Now faced with economic consequences in this economy of being unemployed, yet once more this victim has been victimized. It has been happening for 32 years. Everyone claims they are “doing their job,” but she may have no job. Everyone claims that they are acting to vindicate justice, but Samantha sees no justice. Everyone insists that she owes them a story, but her
story continues to be sad. She endures this life because a corrupt judge caused, understandably, Polanski to flee. No matter what his crime, Polanski was entitled to be treated fairly; he was not. The day Polanski fled was a sad day for American Justice. Samantha should not be made to pay the price. She has been paying for a failed judicial and prosecutorial system.
This statement makes one more demand, one more request, one more plea: Leave her alone.
Whether you perceived Polanski as monster or the victim himself of vicious persecution, there is one thing both sides could agree on: the perfidy of my mother and me. In a piece in the Huffington Post that began, “I’ve had it with the Swiss,” Joan Z. Shore, an expat living in Belgium who calls herself the founder of Women Overseas for Equality” (“WOE”—really), wrote:
The 13-year-old model “seduced” by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It’s probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence. I met Polanski shortly after he fled America and was filming Tess in Normandy. I was working in the CBS News bureau in Paris, and I accompanied Mike Wallace for a Sixty Minutes interview with Polanski on the set. Mike thought he would be meeting the devil incarnate, but was utterly charmed by Roman’s sobriety and intelligence.
Oh man. But this is the quality of insight that passes for journalism. He couldn’t have raped that girl, because the thirteen-year-old was a skank, had been pimped out by her ambitious mom, and besides, all people who do bad things are stupid, ugly, and look like criminals. Shore doesn’t let facts muddy her vicious judgment, but for the record, the legal age of consent in California is eighteen, and has been so for more than a century. Even in Shore’s adopted Belgium, the age of consent is sixteen.
Perhaps the most disturbing slam from a Polanski apologist came in an October 2009 interview with Gore Vidal, conducted by John Meroney in the Atlantic shortly after Polanski was arrested. Vidal and Polanski had been friends in Hollywood.
The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski Page 17