Make no mistake about what follows: Roman Polanski’s defiant and outrageous conduct deserves—or at least deserved—a punishment the likes of which was meted out in Dante’s Inferno. Polanski statutorily raped and sodomized a 13-year-old girl (whom he inexplicably referred to as a “woman”) and employed drugs to help induce her consent.1 Indeed, the earlier gruesome death of his beautiful actress wife, Sharon Tate, at the hands of Charles Manson should give the public no basis for sympathy for him. Nor do his extraordinary skills as a movie director give reason for an idolatry of him that should exempt him from the full measure of law that could be hurled against him.
Polanski is, simply put, a rapist who moreover flouted American justice—indeed, very lenient justice—when he fled the United States to avoid a jail sentence that he feared would be longer than originally contemplated by the parties (and seemingly approved by the then-presiding judge).2 And the fact that the child victim then agreed, through her parents, to the leniency and now, as a 45-year-old woman, vigorously supports Polanski’s continuous efforts to avoid extradition from Switzerland and even his motion for outright dismissal of the charges, is in this case of little moment.
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