Reminder: Roman Polanski raped a child - Broadsheet - Salon.com

"Reminder: Roman Polanski raped a child"

"Roman Polanski may be a great director, an old man, a husband, a father, a friend to many powerful people, and even the target of some questionable legal shenanigans. He may very well be no threat to society at this point. He may even be a good person on balance, whatever that means. But none of that changes the basic, undisputed fact: Roman Polanski raped a child. And rushing past that point to focus on the reasons why we should forgive him, pity him, respect him, admire him, support him, whatever, is absolutely twisted."

The above is a key fact that gets ignored by those discussing the matter. Another one: Roman Polanski did not get railroaded by a cruel legal system. Quite the opposite. As is typical for celebrities in L.A., he got treated with kid gloves. The actual crimes he committed were to drug and rape a child (including anally), but he got to plead guilty to intercourse with a minor, a crime with much less severe penalties. He fled to France when it looked as if he might actually get a fair sentence instead of the celebrity justice (no more jail time after the hearing - for anally raping a child!) he had originally been offered.

If the prosecutors had chosen to go to trial on the original charges, Polanski would almost certainly have been convicted, and he might still be in prison today, in which case he would probably have developed a very different perspective on anal rape.

Do I think he should now be punished? I don't know, and I don't really care, since he represents no threat to the society I live in, and I think our legal authorities have more pressing matters to consider. But on the other hand, I don't think we should be treating a rapist, pedophile and child abuser as someone deserving of special forgiveness because he has great talent and powerful friends. Fuck 'im.