Archive for October, 2009



This is the more case-only oriented and continually extended and reedited Op End coverage of my very extensive research findings ROMAN POLANSKI – HE SAID SHE SAID THEY SAID – AN OP END CASE ANALYSIS PART ONE directly linked HERE, PART TWO linked HERE, PART THREE linked HERE, and now PART FOUR found HERE, concerning the old unlawful sex charges from the Seventies.


I suggest reading the longer analysis however in addition at one point to garner the wider picture. It is in response to the endless stream of blogs and news articles about the much maligned case, ever since the legendary film director Roman Polanski was unexpectedly arrested on September 26th 2009 in Switzerland. I will screen comments and all off topic and offensive language and/or abusive content will be deleted without a second thought. The comments to the articles can be found in the extra comments post you can reach by clicking here, since ‘something’ or ‘someone’ simply vamoosed them all one mysterious day. I call it boycotting. No surprise there.

After the shocking amount of incorrect articles and plain demonisation, based on the fact that most people never properly examined the wider picture to know better about this infamous case, they still keep repeating the same falsehood heard on the news. Having no clear understanding of the facts, they yet revel in voicing their sad prejudices and ill information without qualms based on hearsay or wishful thinking and most of all damaging hatred. Painting a much more obscene picture than it ever was, fuelling and justifying a very unsettling lynch mob attitude that is even more appalling than anything, it seems especially US media have the tendency to paint it the crime of the century, in order to manipulate the public and inflame their hate-filled ideas to maintain an atmosphere of blind condemnation. Even the Wikipedia page is constantly reedited to remove vital information that gives a more balanced view. That’s influencing public opinion, since many people take Wikipedia articles more than not as absolute truth, when they’re just as incomplete and therefore equally biased, written by the public.

Since this is not a published book, I don’t require citing my own more reliable sources, though I gladly and gratefully accredit their own efforts of research and neutrality. So here are more of the interesting facets (without prejudice) according to the court transcripts and other sources of information – willing to paint a different picture many people rather want to ignore, still out to criticise someone blindly than find out the finer details, and that this case most of all is not as black and white they all want it to be. Nor ever was or can be for many reasons. It also deals with the sociopolitical and juristic side of things in the context of then and now I personally can remember, delves into his diverse art and other events to gel the overall picture of the much maligned and hailed man, and gives current affairs as they develop all taken from reliable sources. Please note that this article can be revised at any given time, might recap on matters at any stage, and is generally a work in progress.


First, the girl named Samantha Gailey (now Geimer), Polanski was supposed to have violated the terrible way many still state, was very familiar with Quaaludes from her family environment and times in general, or as others knew it, Mandrax. It was very popular in the Sixties and Seventies and used during sexual activity because of heightened sensitivity coupled with relaxation and euphoria. It is the recreational drug he supposedly had slipped her, which is not true according to her very own testimony freely available online as original court documents. On closer examination, Polanski was not found responsible for having plied the drug, which then is called furnishing a controlled substance with intent in legal terms, and was one of the six counts, since he had found the Quaaludes in Jack Nicholson’s bathroom during the photoshoot at his house. According to her statement, Polanski showed her the small container, asked her if it was Quaaludes, and she said yes. She also stated that he had ‘offered’ her a piece, which however lies in direct contradiction to his own account, and after she wasn’t ‘interested’ at first, ‘took’ one, not said, he ‘gave’ it to her. She had told Polanski while driving to Nicholson’s house that she had used Quaaludes before, she had stolen from her mother and sister, who [the twenty year old sister] in fact had been institutionalised for Quaalude abuse.

Many students and others took Quaaludes then, and Ms Geimer had willingly taken it again even if he had offered it to her while with Polanski, after she felt thirsty and they opened a bottle of champagne, that, according to her own testimony. One could say, as an adult he should have prevented her from taking it, but since she had told him she had taken the drug before, might not have had any reservation for her to take it again. He left it to her thinking her experienced enough. The acting caretaker who let them in, still present at that moment, testified to that he didn’t subversively drug her with anything as still reported. She too could have told her not to take the champagne, but she thought Ms Geimer much older than she was and therefore had no reservations either. According to some sources the caretaker had poured their glasses and a quick drink with them before she left, while Polanski said in his autobiography he had which is more to the fact. Ms Geimer had told Polanski  on their way to Nicholson’s house she liked champagne, and that’s why they went for that rather than anything else. Besides, why didn’t the girl simply decline and ask for something else to drink? I’m sure even a teenager has enough will to say no, to anything, unless as in her case, her family background paints a picture of frequent alcohol and drug ab/use she was used to, which was certainly not down to Polanski’s influence in any form. According to Ms Geimer, he had asked her if she was ok with the Quaaludes and if he could still be driving her back home after taking a piece himself, to which she answered “I don’t know.”

While in some later interviews she stated that she had lied to him about having taken Quaaludes before, and simply ‘took’ a piece and he the other, not even saying, ‘I was forced to take it’, she however had told the Grand Jury already that she had taken some before. According to her, his own words were that he said he shouldn’t take a piece himself for needing to drive. He stated in his own testimony that he did not offer her a piece and never said if he eventually had taken any himself, but that she took part herself without his direct request, and Ms Geimer herself had said, ‘I took it,” not, ‘he ‘gave’ it to me’, or against her will, which she had implied otherwise and could have left it at any rate even if he had offered it to her. Furthermore, why would ‘he’ in fact need to ask ‘her’ if they are Quaalude, or if he could still drive [her home], when he in by all mean knew perfectly well how they would affect him or in what amounts, since he had his own prescription Quaalude for his hyperactivity? So, the fact that she told him that he asked her if  this is Quaalude makes no sense, since for one he should have recognised them, while she also had stated that she only once ‘saw’ [a] Quaalude on a t-shirt, when she had a sister who had been institutionalised for Quaalude abuse and they were readily available at home. She therefore knew how they looked and in fact said in her testimony that she had taken some herself before. Since Quaaludes was used for the given properties other than a calming effect, it is entirely reasonable to think that she knew which it would have on her, or what purpose they served. In the very small amount she had consumed it, it predominantly served as aphrodisiac and not as relaxant.

Once at the house, she took the champagne on her own volition in the company of the acting caretaker without his forcing her to drink it, so her claim of ‘plying’ her with alcohol was unsubstantiated too and in fact never an indictment count. She had also volunteered to him and the courts that she had sex with two kids from the age of eight, with one down the road and her boyfriend of the age of seventeen she had at that time. That did not only shock Polanski, but it didn’t seem to hold much significance to her. Or the fact, that she had stated in later interviews that she had told him to have had sex only once before, and is another rather inconsistent account. That doesn’t make her in any form ‘experienced’, or any difference to us today legally, but then previous sexual encounters were included in the records or if they had taken any alcohol before. Today this is deemed irrelevant, yet could make a significant difference to expose relevant details to make or break a case of guilt or innocence. Or person’s life. If anyone was guilty related to the drugs or champagne, than that’s Jack Nicholson for actually having had them at his home. Not that champagne was illegal then, but Quaaludes was in fact the sixth best selling drug on the market in the US during those days where it was legally sold, before its widespread abuse to ‘lude out’ made it a prescription drug only. During the Grand Jury testimony Ms Geimer was asked if she could identify what a Quaalude is, and she was by even explaining what brand it is despite the pill having been broken into three parts – unlike Polanski who apparently even needed to ask her – Rorer 714.

It should be noted that Polanski was brought some high-strength Quaaludes the next day courtesy of a pal of the sister’s boyfriend, and that right before another friend asked him if he had some for him, which Polanski then fetched to hand it to him at his hotel lobby. Before he could however, he was promptly arrested to get caught with it after one of the cops had ‘noticed’ it in his hand. Curious coincidence, or in fact classic ‘set-up’, since it was the same strength as the one they had found in Nicholson’s bathroom Ms Geimer had to identify for him, while Polanski had his own lower strength Quaaludes prescriptions for his hyperactivity. That’s why he in fact asked the arresting officer (Philip Vannatter) if he could have the confiscated pill back to calm down – but that was obviously still ‘evidence’ at that time and he declined his request – before it became clear that he had not brought any of his own along to the Nicholson home not matching the ones she in fact took herself. Why his friend’s ‘pal’ had brought him a single, higher strength Quaalude the very next day is a mystery, since everyone knew he had his own that were of lower strength, and appears more than suspicious. Mind you, there was no need trying to get rid of it, because Polanski was not even frisked after his arrest, or while the cops searched his hotel room in his presence. Of course, one could say, what girl of that age can judge for herself concerning drugs and alcohol or even sex, but she obviously was not unversed in either or her family after what she had told him and the courts, and never said that she was ‘forced’ to take any of it while with him. She was certainly not as experienced in regards to sex as Polanski, but schooled enough, even to the judge’s own words.

Just so to correct people’s repeat argument that what she took knocked her out, even with a glass of champagne, that in fact requires several pills and has merely a calming effect when taken as single pill. It’s not a sleeping pill either or causes anterograde amnesia as in today’s date rape drugs which in fact are not as rampantly used as the media make it out to be. Quaaludes in contrast however was in fact so popular that they even had different size decorative ceramic jars with the name in relief to show them off, and people of today have simply no concept that they took them like candy. Many people of course have a problem with her having been that young even if she had consented, and him being that much older. So what are we talking here? ‘Decent behaviour limits’, ‘moral outrage’? What you were taught is ‘immoral’, and what not, while others don’t have such reservations and makes neither attitude the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ one, just different ‘opinions’ of different eras? Or is it sheer dictatorship that physical love should know any age difference? In other cultures many underage girl were/are even married off to older man and Polanski came from a different culture altogether where such pairings were nothing unusual. Or is it simple unwillingness to accept that teenagers can be sexual beings? I wonder where all the underage mothers come from other than having slept with their teenage boyfriends, and many don’t even know who their kid’s father is in fact. Maybe they should just take precautions.

His later attraction to younger women after Sharon’s death was not only to avoid commitment in general as he put it because he was afraid to lose another loved one he might feel attached to beyond sex, but because exactly these older women always ‘wanted something’ from him for who he was, or thought after sex they automatically might get a part in his next project he never promised, while innocent youth had hardly any ulterior motives in regards to his power status in the double-faced and competitive world of movies and simple sex was all they [both] sought. Of course, it’s technically against the law to sleep with a minor, but the bile attached to this case in particular is nothing but double standards clad in sanctimonious calls for his head suddenly, while others are allowed to do it and never see any charges brought forward, but call him a child molester because of the huge age gap and for too many reading their own feelings into this, and neighbour X is doing it right now and they probably would simply ignore it. I for one do not ever believe the girl was a hooker like controversial Gore Vidal recently stated, and that kind of disrespectful statement is just as wrong and in fact doesn’t do Polanski any service in any form either coming from the same Hollywood camp. On the other hand, if the accuser had prior sexual experiences the argument that she was ‘corrupted’ by Polanski is also null and void. He might have shot off his mouth at times by saying that [all] men like younger woman, but I doubt that he’s wrong in essence, except most people might not have been that upfront or unconventional, let alone today.

Ms Geimer was certainly not a whore as many called her, but neither was Polanski the vile rapist many others want/ed him to be, simply according to the overall testimonies and forensic findings. Which are as follows: on medical examination, the girl was found not physically harmed, and was never threatened to sleep with him by force at no such words from her. No anal or vaginal trauma was evident and recorded as such by a rape kit examination performed the very same evening mind you just after midnight, a few hours after the apparent ‘multiple rape’. No blood on clothing, panties, or perineum. Full speculum examination done with ease. Adult female. Anal examination reveals no hematoma, lacerations or blood. No traumatic acute fissures seen. No sphincter tear. No evidence of forced entry, examination was normal. Vaginal and anal slides were negative, and tested negative for semen. Some say, that can happen when no force is applied, but woman and teenagers, or even men, know if no lubrication is used or the female is not willing and therefore lubricated enough, it will still cause visible vaginal or anal trauma on dry friction no matter how ‘careful’ a man is and ‘willing’ the female. The physical dynamics of penetration vaginally or rectally, are clearly defined by needed female or other lubrication to facilitate easy penetration not to hurt, to avoid laceration and soreness even in younger, still suppler women.

She never complained of abdominal or rectal discomfort or indeed severe pain and bleeding as seen after forcible intercourse, and these documented facts speak in his favour that it was indeed consensual sex. Of course one can say, because he apparently (since he in fact never mentioned oral sex) had performed cunnilingus on her first, that could have served as lubrication for later intercourse and therefore no physical trauma occurred as in forced intercourse, if that however is sufficient to aid anal intercourse is another question. Now, if anyone really doesn’t want oral sex, that for one would require her to NOT let him push her down the down the sofa, she never claimed he had, NOT for him to open her legs, she never claimed he had, to then proceed to perform on her, and that over a few minutes mind you on top, at which point she long could have kicked and scratched, clamped her legs together, done anything possible for him to really stop not to perform ‘cuddliness’. Furthermore, if she had really ‘protested’ the sex, he’d have had a hard time to fumble around with his mouth, and piece to get it inside her vaginally, let alone anally if she had ‘frozen up’ as she claimed. THAT would have caused her pain and visible trauma. If he had or not orally ‘conditioned’ her, if no ‘force’ was used, it is simple intercourse. In anal intercourse unless extra lubricant or of course saliva is used, it will always lead to minor damage of which neither was evident nor traces found inside her, and she never said he had used any essential lubricant.

NO one can simply get up after such an attack and ‘walk’ back to the bathroom, get dressed without any discomfort and head for the car. She herself stated: “I walked into the bathroom and I put on my dress, combed my hair and I walked –” and then she suddenly backtracked to say: “I sort of was walking out…” ‘Sort of’, meaning, she had to think of what she had said minutes before that she felt ‘dizzy’, that she had trouble with ‘coordination’, when in fact she had no trouble or she’d not stumbled over her ‘I was ‘walking’’. “…I got my clothes and there was – that woman [Anjelica Huston] was sitting there on the phone.” That’s exactly what Polanski had said in his autobiography, and Huston herself stated before she was blackmailed by the cops into saying she had interrupted them, and that she in fact had NOT seen her before they both left, i.e., during sex as Ms Geimer had claimed, and Huston most certainly had noticed if she was ‘drugged’ or ‘drunk’. She did not. Ms Geimer herself stated often enough later it wasn’t ‘rape’, and only the ignorant and ill-informed public had willingly turned it into a brutal rape case with more vitriol than even Michael Jackson had to deal with. Curious enough too, that in the whole of California at that time no one had been sentenced to jail for a similar offence in years, at their discretion, but Polanski was made an example of for publicity reasons the prejudiced judge fully exploited since he was a celebrated director and not some unknown hoodlum.

After he had vaginal intercourse with her to which he however always had stood firm, and yet, she still did not try to fend him off despite her claims that it was ‘scary’. Then, to her own words again only, he flipped her over and ‘went through her back’, penetrated her anally, but, still did nothing to stop him beyond her alleged words he never could confirm either. In another version she said, he [only] lifted her legs to go through her rectum, from the front. Odd that there were no marks on her, since he seems to have rough handled her. Evidently not. At that point, according to her while having anal intercourse, they were interrupted by someone at the door and he left her, to answer it. She apparently got up to dress her underwear and sat down on the sofa again. By now we know that allegedly was Huston, and that she had reneged on her statement for having charges of cocaine possession waved, granting her immunity from prosecution in return to give evidence for the prosecution, not him. The usual double dealings by corrupt cops as standard procedure. The mother’s boyfriend was involved in drug distribution and drug paraphernalia, having tried to sell his illegal ‘Marijuana Monthly’ magazine to Nicholson through Polanski, yet, the only one to face drug charges at the time, other than Polanski over the Quaalude the girl in fact took herself, was Huston to make her turn on Polanski. The entire family had a very lax approach to drugs and alcohol, but no one busted them over any of it.

Another curious thing was, the same cops had asked the girl about the alleged sodomy after they had the negative results, to which she looked puzzled and answered, “Oh, I thought he went in the wrong way.” ‘Thought’? ‘Wrong way’? I’m sure the difference between anal and vaginal intercourse is all too obvious. There’s no way anyone can mistake vaginal with anal penetration. In fact, since she said that, it cannot actually be taken seriously anymore that she stated he lifted her legs, which in fact even more difficult for achieve for the curved rectal angle, while in another version said he flipped her over to sodomise her, since she’s not even certain where he went in, and certainly not ‘through the back’. Even if he had come back to have more intercourse with her from the back facing down, or front facing him, vaginally rather than anally she seems not even clear about at that point either way, the examination had already turned out no penetration had occurred anally, and no forcible entry vaginally. Furthermore, according to Polanski, they were not interrupted by Huston at the door, with some sources stating that she saw them both ‘going at it’, i.e. having sex, not him ‘ravishing’ her which smells more like the ‘turned’ statement corrupt cop Vannatter had forced on Huston, but by a light on the phone signalling someone [Huston] was in the house, [and in fact on the phone], and after Polanski had assured the girl it was ok, they finished making conventional [not anal] love.

It should be mentioned that the room was shuttered and pretty dark, so how Huston could see them is another question. It’s difficult enough to find the right orifice when wanted – let alone in a darkened room or when the receiving end is apparently thrice unwilling even if just lying there to be taken. Not a chance. He probably was even more gentle with her than not, since she never said anything to the opposite even back then, or that he hurt her, let alone later. In fact, it was Polanski who called into the corridor for Huston afterwards through the door crack [while Huston was still on the phone and called back his name] and, while Ms Geimer hurried into the very living room Huston was making that very call, she grabbed the rest of her clothes quickly. And, to Ms Geimer’s own words to put Huston into context, stated, “I said ‘hello’ to her”, ‘the woman on the phone’ she saw and, that ‘she peered around a glass partition’, as she put it in her testimony, since she didn’t know Huston. She said they were met at the Nicholson residence by a woman with dark hair and two dogs, and that she did not know the woman’s name. The acting caretaker [Helena Kallianiotes]. She was asked to identify a photo of Houston, and said, “That was the woman that was there [on the phone].” She never said it was the same woman who apparently had interrupted them, since of course, Huston hadn’t.

In fact, in her testimony, the extent of the cited conversation between her and Huston was limited to Huston interrupting her phone conversation and asking “Are you the girl Roman is taking pictures of?” and she said yes while exiting the house, which is exactly what Polanski had stated, and that this was the only conversation between the two, not that Huston had interrupted them, and they [evidently not] exchanged words, before he [evidently not] returned to [evidently not] sodomise her again. More curious inconsistencies on Ms Geimer’s part why she contradicted herself even then. When Huston joined him after he had dressed, the girl hurried through the kitchen to the car. He followed her to introduce her to Huston there. Now, if Ms Geimer said she had interrupted them while having sex, but Huston was in fact on the phone, it makes no sense either way, for one, letting him apparently return to ‘take her again’ after Huston was actually at the door and left again, and then even less to see that very woman on the phone later only. To Huston’s credit, however, she also stated, the cops had victimised Polanski and her with this drugs blackmail, and said, “I don’t think he’s a bad man. I think he’s an unhappy man.” And, that, “He would never harm anyone or forcibly rape or sodomise an unwilling girl.”

She probably had the better insight into this than all those blind haters clamouring for his head, and Huston claimed the girl looked ‘sullen’, but didn’t appear distressed or inebriated in any form not to make her apparent ‘fear’ of him known to her. Since Ms Geimer didn’t seem to have felt it necessary to stop him from copulating with her twice that day even, to her own words only that is, all her claims of unwillingness are to this day mere allegations and more than dubious. Sullen does not mean ‘afraid’, it means gruff, that’s why Huston said she found her behaviour ‘rude’. But for whatever reason Ms Geimer was impolite to her is a mystery. Judging by Huston’s testimony, that was because she was miffed they had to leave, since Huston wasn’t too amused they had been there without her knowing, used her Jacuzzi and drank her champagne she found half drunk, since only the caretaker let them in, but knew they were there, and evidently didn’t think it important to enquire if ‘the girl’ was in fact in safe hands and waited until they were finished. Polanski said she was very animated and talkative before and once they left, and certainly wasn’t doped up or Huston of all would have said so. But she didn’t.

Ms Geimer had said in some later interview, not her original testimony where all she said was that she wanted to go home and that he had said to take her home soon, he however never said in his original statement she or he had exchanged: “I said, ‘no, no. I don’t want to go in there. [The ‘bedroom’] No, I don’t want to do this. No!’ And then I didn’t know what else to do.” Adding: “We were alone (not quite) and I didn’t know what else (‘else’?) would happen if I made a scene. So I was just scared, and after giving some resistance, I figured well, I guess I’ll get to come home after this.” I’m sorry, her argument that she had nowhere to go because he was the only means to get back home is baseless, since she could have called her mother back to pick her up after he had phoned her to say they would be late and she had offered that option already. The more than striking problems with any of this rather inconsistent retelling of the course of event is this: why did she not once make a dash for the door saying she’s ‘afraid’ of him? It was not locked, and he didn’t prevent her from running off by verbal or physical force by her own admission. Why did she not once call for help at any given time instead of letting him, to her words, come back? Why did she let him, to her own words, take off her underwear again, he never said he had? Besides, it is a rather blasé way of putting being ‘scared’.

So, why did she allow him to have, again to her words only that is, more anal intercourse with her without any resistance, screaming, or not the slightest pain unwanted sodomy most certainly would causes? According to her, he climaxed inside her anally after Huston had apparently left again and ejaculated externally (rather than ask for her help.) According to him, however, Huston never interrupted them and he had withdrawn vaginally before he climaxed and ejaculation externally. She claimed that she was ‘afraid’ of him, yet did not make any active attempts to struggle against him, especially when in pain after one ‘rape’ already, nor took the ONE chance to call for help [from Huston being there] despite no physical impairment to do so. By all logic, unless a victim is restrained in some form, heavily sedated or threatened, anyone in danger of being assaulted, again, fully conscious and able to walk away or fight their assailant, alert someone being right there, would seize every available means of defending themselves or try to escape at all costs. If someone is really ‘scared’ or of being raped, ‘again’, with potential help standing right outside, by her own admission, an older woman at that, how only could she have failed to seize that one chance to stop him?

She repeatedly maintained she was ‘afraid’ of him, yet he had no such impression, nor Huston, before he, to Ms Geimer’s words, joined her at the door, and then let the ONE opportunity slip to get away from him? Why did she not ONCE make her fears known while Huston was apparently there? She was not imprisoned or hindered to get away from him, walk out the door, yet it appears that she even let him return and have more sex with her. Unlike many love/d to repeat, she certainly wasn’t semi nor fully unconscious or physically incapacitated enough according to her own words and Huston’s. It makes no sense to me that she never called on Huston for help and to say ‘I was still pretty much afraid of him’ sounds more than bogus since she not once said ‘why’. Another oddity is her not having told of any of Polanski’s ‘reactions’ to her apparent ‘opposition’, when the first thing he’d done is engage her apparently strong words verbally, tried to ‘persuade’ her into actions she apparently never wanted. But, in contrast she posed, went from one room to another, never said he forced her and I doubt he pushed her there at no such words from her either. All she said was what ‘she said’, and nothing from him in response. Since anyone being told to ‘stop’ would either verbally or physically engage them, it’ll either end in a big vocal or physical fight.

But there were no marks on her, and to his statement there never was any direct rejection on her part he’d needed to dispute, and to her own words no argument ensued. In order for him to engage in any of the sex, Polanski must have asked her ‘somehow’. Talked to her. How did he ‘ask’ to make her do things? All she says was that he didn’t say anything at all, or ‘react’ to her apparent repeat rejections. If he just went from kissing to having sex with her on different levels coming from different places to end up in the TV room, [not bedroom as people keep repeating, and Polanski had explained to the cops] and she tells us she didn’t want any of it, all we have are her ‘words’ of resistance, while his don’t confirm any of them. If Polanski wants something he pushes back till he gets it or gives up, and not just ‘silently’ proceeds against her will on several levels she took part in. People have stated often enough that he gets very animated, and if someone didn’t want to have sex with him he simply left. So how did he manage to get her to the TV room without force, unless she simply walked there with him. Her telling him off seems rather dubious therefore, since she in fact never said she wasn’t physically incapable of fighting him but ‘afraid’, not to ‘anger the famous director’, but that he apparently ignored her ‘pleas’. Even if she had repeatedly said no, refused to have sex with him, all she needed to do was simply leave, not just let the sex happen.

And, afterwards to her own words, she went back into the bathroom to dress. That doesn’t sound like reluctance or physical inability of doing things, or being intimidated, drugged, drunk, unable of really resisting him she claims she vaguely attempted, her main argument being that he ‘wouldn’t take no for an answer, which are merely her ‘words’, not what she ‘did’. Many stated that she was repeatedly raped, blindly ignoring what she actually said herself, “He came back and had more sex with me,” not ‘raped me’. But evidently, he had not come back at all to have more sex [anal or otherwise] with her again, since Polanski only talked to Huston after sex and her introduction to Huston once he followed the girl outside to the car and then returned to the house to explain things to her, omitting the sex, which to Huston however was perfectly clear had taken place, and that they had a drink. She asked him how the Jacuzzi was, and he answered, too hot as usual. That’s why he never had a dip himself and told the girl to get out. On the DA’s question, why Ms Geimer hadn’t said anything [to Huston], she stated, that: “I was still pretty much afraid of him, I didn’t-though there was someone else there. I didn’t know what to say.” According to him, however, she had met Huston afterwards, not during sex, and she certainly didn’t appear ‘afraid’ to Huston. Of course, if she was not actually at the door, there was no way to call on her.

This is of course where many people stumble/d over her overall accounts not to make any sense anymore. No one wouldn’t know ‘what to say’ suddenly, and Huston didn’t have the impression she was ‘pretty much afraid of him’ once introduced. Why did she not once make a ‘scene’ to actually find out if he was a danger while Huston was there [apparently at the door], rather than state that she ‘figured’ he was, said she was ‘scared’ of him, said ‘no’, yet he never could confirm any of it in any form. Being ‘scared’ has clear signs of agitation and want of getting away, yet, her overall behaviour did not substantiate any of that. No one who is scared lets herself be taken again after apparent help had appeared right at the unlocked door, to her own words, and leaves again, to her own words. To me, this alone is utterly illogical to let herself be ‘raped’ again, especially since he said they saw Huston only afterwards. Apart from the fact, that he would have needed to ‘force’ her to get to the TV room in a different part of the house altogether. But she never said that he had to get there. He might have been very promiscuous, but no one else ever stated that he was a sexual danger, and in all these years no one else had ever cried rape other than Ms Geimer.

What happened that day is certainly not straightforward and many don’t believe a word she stated. Was it ‘lewd acts’ against her ‘expressed’ will beyond her passive words, giving ‘some resistance’, yet let pass by every single chance to extract herself from him. Or was it simple sex acts with not much participation on her part. Or even more than she denied at his statement that she was very responsive. Can it be seen either way, or was it misperception on either part. Was it breakdown of more explicit signals and communication needed to convey her apparent disinclination, or was it silent disregard on his part not to have noticed them. So, where does passive resistance start and where passive endurance end? Was it taking no active resistance as a yes, or acquiescence as consensual. Does consent or non-con have to be given verbally, or physically? Or both? Or maybe not at all. Or with a kick in the face. Too many variants can be applied to be sure either way. One probability is that she felt peer pressure, wanted to please him, her mother, went along and did her best at no clear signals he could read that she was out of her depth perhaps. Either way, all her words of resistance or fear are to this day mere claims and not proven fact and hardly make any sense in regards to her overall actions. Statistics show that many young girls are found to cry rape after sex for various reasons, unlike more mature women.

She claimed she cannot remember what he asked her beyond her next cycle, which they, according to him, in fact had never discussed during sex, nor if she was on the Pill at that point, but in the car initiated by her not him, yet, she did not raise her voice when she could have called on Huston. He can clearly remember having asked her if she likes what he’s doing and she said, “It’s alright”, yet, she cannot recall any of it suddenly but only ‘her’ words he never heard her say. Puzzling contradictions and uncertainness as to why she didn’t call for her help, or why her version is so different and utterly illogical, and only she knows why. This strongly suggests that it was indeed consensual, since, by all logic, first of all, there certainly was no reason to signal to anyone that she was ‘afraid of him’, after she had consented and willingly engaged in sex with him. There’s no way around the fact that unwanted vaginal sex leaves bloody marks and is painful, when even willing sex requires lubrications and sometimes hurts, so she must have been lubricated enough to facilitate painless sex, and the anal intercourse never happened let alone twice, or it had most certainly shown and caused pain.

She claimed years later that it wasn’t rape, and he always had maintained that it was consensual. To anyone with the slightest common sense, the only conclusion they can arrive at, after all these highly contradictive and most of all her unfounded statements of ‘fear’ and things regarding Huston, is, that it was mutual and no one interrupted them. To me, only this makes perfect sense. Of course, to some simply sleeping with an underage girl is immoral and a form of brutalisation, but, would it still be the same if the teenager does not consider herself being ‘immoral’ or brutalised in such a form? Or, is this just another adult concept and that they cannot allow the adolescent to ignore the adult’s idea, that it is simply ‘illegal’ for others to perform any sexual act on them? Who is the judge when it comes to a young person’s ‘body’ and ‘sex’? The teen or the adult? Or, is it in fact the ‘law’ simply prohibiting the minor to judge for herself flat out? In that case, many are breaking the ‘law’ at this very second despite ‘consenting’.

Besides, why should only the adult be punished for ‘consensual’ underage sex, when the minor could just have said no, resisted temptation. Why should only the adult carry the onus of guilt to have fallen under the spell of nubile sex, while otherwise the minor is rightfully punished for any other offence. Technically, the law allows the minor to lead the adult into belief of consent, while in the same letter stipulates inability thereof, yet faces no punishment once breaking the law, but the adult alone. Funny thing is, underage teens can get married in the US, but not have sex under a certain age, differing from state to state, and if either the bride or groom is underage, at least one of the minor’s parents, or legal guardian, must appear with the couple before a court to decide. Certified copies of birth certificates are required, the couple must schedule an appointment with a counsellor and then appear before a superior court judge. Voila – married – and then what? No sex because you’re [still] underage but married? Preposterous.

Yet many will never see any ‘punishment’, wile others who are over the age of twenty-one engaging in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor under sixteen is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years years as maximum sentence applicable in California today or can be fined. The law of statutory rape takes away the freedom of choice for each person to be allowed to decide at his or her given constitutional right of judging for themselves this law directly violates. Hence, it is unconstitutional at its dictating the minor automatically to become the ‘victim’, and the adult the ‘perpetrator’. Add to that an atmosphere of harmless seduction, and it becomes impossible to rationalise and equitably enforce any ‘sex laws’. As a result the ‘statutory rape’ law effectively trivialises forcible sexual assault, which in contrast is a gravely serious crime, and automatically makes every man a rapist. It entirely defeats its own purpose to liberate the female when it imprisons or ‘fines’ both parties and simply is legislated morality imposed on ‘free people’. Apparently, sexual freedom isn’t included in that ‘constitutional rights’ package rather than promote ‘safe sex’.

It should be stressed, that the six indictment counts were of what he initially was ‘accused’ of, not was he was ‘convicted’ of since only one was found credible and he was never sentenced. But of course, because he pleaded guilty to unlawful sex, people still believe all the other counts are ‘fact’ and that he was given exemption by dropping them, which is incorrect since none of them were ever tried to be found true. The case had two counts of, furnishing a minor with drugs, and, having committed a lascivious or lewd act, but they both were also found unsubstantiated as per findings. She was not a ‘child’ anymore either, but adolescent, the examining doctor describing her as ‘adult female’ in his official report. She had the physical maturity level of a young woman, and the pictures Polanski took of her clearly demonstrate she was an adult by appearance. So ‘child sex case’, let alone ‘child abuse’ or ‘child rape’ is also incorrect, since in the context of the law Ms Geimer was too old for the designation of ‘child’ or they would have charged Polanski with heftier counts. The prosecutor didn’t go after the alcohol, drugs and sodomy charges, nor prosecuted him for these or any [forcible or otherwise] ‘rape’. If the prosecutor would have had the goods on those charges he would have gone ahead, but he didn’t. Hence, it wasn’t ‘rape’ let alone forcible, but simply ‘unlawful sex’ Polanski pleaded guilty to and that only in exchange for a plea bargain both sides had agreed on.

Though many ultra feminists call Ms Geimer a ‘child’ still today, they consider their own children teenagers in contrast or young adults when it suits them. Youngsters always want to be taken seriously and as mature enough to call the shots, even sexually, yet when people in fact let them, are called cynics, or Polanski excusers, and of course paedophiles themselves. A teenager is not an infant anymore, but an adolescent who can and is expected to reason for herself in every sense – except when it comes to sex that suddenly seems impossible and shun all responsibility into the man’s court. Wonderful way of empowering women by disempowering them. Of course, what is ‘rape’ in general varies from case to case already, even one US state to the next, let alone between countries, and is legally controversial where one might consider only physical trauma as rape, while another considers a mere touch to a breast as sexual assault already and face years behind bars while murderers get away with fines. It happened often enough in the UK. Legal definitions of rape have no doubt changed since then and cannot be seen in today’s views or laws. It simply wouldn’t be fair to judge anyone by today’s standards or apply current laws, which is in fact illegal, as per several applicable statutes prohibiting that. Yet, people want him to face more years behind bars than any terrorist or serial killer they couldn’t care less about planning their next attacks.

The case never went to jury trial to reportedly spare the girl most of all the proceedings according to the plaintiff’s attorney, and that’s why the plea bargain was struck and Polanski pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor, which was another count. Many question/ed this move was to prevent further distress to the girl, no matter in those days many statutory rape cases were signed off as plea bargains, but because there was the significant possibility that if this had gone through all the cross examination, the jury would have quickly realised that this was not drugged rape foremost. The attorneys knew they had no rape and sodomy case at the bare forensics not corroborating crucial accounts of her conflicting statements, and that’s why they ‘bargained’ on the wishes of her mother. The girl expressly refused to be cross-examined, and they declared that they did not want Polanski incarcerated. They also had expressly rejected any therapy offered by the courts. You simply don’t press for such a ‘bargain’ if your daughter was just ‘brutalised’, you press for jail time and demand a jury trial and most certainly require therapy. Why there was a sodomy count in the first place despite NO evidence pointing to it, is another mystery, since the Grand Jury heard that the examining doctor could not even say that she had intercourse that day, let alone showed any signs of even the gentlest anal penetration.

US prosecutors often bluff defence attorneys and their clients into pleading guilty to a particular offence, to alleviate the risks and uncertainties of a trial for their own client. As a result, people will often plead guilty to the charge because of fear, and the more numerous and serious the charges, the greater the fear, obviously. This explains why prosecutors file every charge imaginable against defendants, if applicable or not, based on the accuser’s mere words. As seen in Polanski’s case, who effectively was deluged with counts and ultimately forced into that plead deal, ‘each accusation sounding worse than the last’, and, ‘if the tinted plated glass window of his thirty-third floor office hadn’t been sealed I might have jumped there and then’, as Polanski put it. The theoretical work based on the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ is one reason why in many countries plea bargaining is forbidden, and such despair provoked in people. Many people have killed themselves despite being innocent, unable to see any escape, let alone justice in being punished for something that is human nature and everyone’s right. While the innocent party is unlikely to confess, often the guilty one is likely to confess and testify against the innocent. As seen in Polanski’s case, who denied all charges first, and then admitted to one count of unlawful sex on pressure, while Ms Geimer had accused him of all sorts of things having in fact been the one less than truthful on most counts and then simply refused to stand trial.

The fact that the girl told him to have an asthma attack in order, to her words only of recent interviews, to leave the Jacuzzi because she was ‘afraid’ of him, was found a lie she asked her mother to maintain once back home and he only heard of in court. The mother said in her original testimony:  “And she [her daughter] said, “I told him I had asthma because I didn’t want to get in the Jacuzzi. I just wanted you to know that”. And I said, ‘Okay’.” Now, she clearly said, she didn’t want to get ‘IN’ to her mother, when according to Polanski she had asked him if she can get in and he said, later. When he had asked her what medicine she needed, she had no clear answer, and if you had asthma, you would carry your inhaler with you. She kept saying later stated she only said that because she was afraid of him, while he had no such impressions and was surprised once he found out she had lied to him. Her sister had testified that: “[Then] I remember her saying something [to her boyfriend] about she got out because she said she had asthma.” Again, NOT because she was ‘afraid’ of him she later kept maintaining was THE reason to get out because he was in the hot tub with her – while in her own testimony Ms Geimer said: A. He got in and he went down to the deepest part of it. Q. What did you do? A. I went up to the other end of it. Q. What happened then? A. He goes, “Come down here.” And I said, “No. No, I got to get out.” And he goes, “No, come down here. And then I said that I had asthma and that I couldn’t – I had to get out because of the warm air and the cold air or something like that. And he said, “Just come down here a second.” So I finally went down. And then he went – there was a lot of the Jacuzzi jets. He goes, “Doesn’t it feel better down here?” And he was like holding me up because it is almost over my head. And I went, “Yeah, but I better get out.” So I got out.

Now, how does that in any way support her claims of ‘fear’ of him when she did not say ‘because I was afraid of him’ in 1977 but only in later interviews, Polanski had said he never was in the Jacuzzi with her, and she had told her mother that she didn’t want to get ‘in’ not ‘out’ she also had maintained? It doesn’t, it makes NO sense. When questioned: Did you have asthma? A: No. Q: Have you ever had asthma? A: No. Q: Why did you tell him you had asthma? A: Because I wanted to get out. Q: Did you get out of the Jacuzzi? A: Yes. Q: What did you do when you got out of the Jacuzzi? A: I got out and I put on a towel.” Again, she does not say ‘I was afraid [of him]’, just that she wanted to get out the literally too hot tub. So, how does that comport with the fact that she keeps telling us that today she wanted to get out because she was afraid of him, but had in fact said because of the ‘warm and cold air’ [the hot and cold Jacuzzi jets]? It doesn’t in any form. She got out of the Jacuzzi by her own words, and he asked her to swim a lap in the cooler adjacent pool to get back her breath and not stay in the Jacuzzi’s hot vapours to aggravate her [fake] asthma according to his statement. After she had asked if he would come in and he said no because the Jacuzzi was too warm and took to the pool, according to her, she didn’t go inside [the pool], because it was [according to him] too cold for her once she tested the water with her toes. While in another version, she said she swam the length of the pool, got out, went to the bathroom, put on her underwear and started drying off. Should be the other way around really. Curious inconsistencies.

She also stated in later interviews that he had helped her to get out of the hot tub after ‘moving his arms around her waist’, while he said he had never touched her at that point. Both going to the TV room, according to him, he advised her to lie down as the concerned adult after she had asked to rest. In fact, she actually left her underwear by the Jacuzzi before they went there wrapped in a towel to dry each other off there only, not in the bathroom she kept saying later, while in her testimony she said she had left it there, and then again took it off by the hot tub. Then, after she assured him later to feel better, he started to kiss and caress her, and to her words engaged in oral sex with her. To his words, she was very responsive, ‘spread herself and he entered her’ and said nothing about oral in any form. To hers, she had said not to feel better, and felt the situation was ‘scary’. Yet as we saw, never made any serious attempt to stop him, simply stayed in any of the other rooms, or left. So let’s recap: she claimed they were in the TV room: “I was going, ‘no, I think I better go home’, so I just went and I sat down on the couch.” Now, for one Polanski never said that she had told him she wanted to go home, two, she obviously ‘went there’ without him forcing her, and then she claims, ‘he went down on her’ and he started performing ‘cuddliness’ as she called it, i.e., cunnilingus, that he ‘placed his mouth on her vagina’. Asked by the Grand Jury panel where she was when he did that, she answered, “[I] was sitting on the couch.

Now, let’s be serious here, how can anyone perform cunnilingus she obviously means on someone, who is ‘sitting down’? Think of it. Cunnilingus means you need to have your legs wide open for the man to actually get to the ‘vagina’, which by all means is ‘inside’ her genital region, not outside where the pubis is. So, he must have pushed her down, pried open her legs and then used his fingers to open her labia to get his mouth ‘on her vagina’ in the fist place. No? Yes, but she doesn’t say that he had done any of it – unless she opened up herself, as he had said she had when he ‘entered her’ with his penis vaginally – and she didn’t say that she had obliged him in that for him to perform ‘cuddliness’. So, in my book of sexual practices, it’s impossible to ‘lick’ someone’s ‘vagina’ as she put it he had, by ‘sitting up’ – all he would be able to reach were her uppermost pubes. Or of course, as he had said, he never had oral sex with her. The to and fro as to where and when she had her underwear on or off it is also not very consistent. So, how could she put it back on afterwards, even twice, saying that he had taken them off before and after Huston had ‘interrupted’ them, when her clothes were in the bathroom or by the Jacuzzi and other gear in the lounge she attested to in her testimony?

Also, her sister had said in her own statement that she had overheard Ms Geimer saying [to her boyfriend] something about getting out the Jacuzzi because she said [to Polanski] she had asthma. “And then he wanted to dry her off with the towel and she kept saying, ‘No, let me go’. And then she went into – I don’t know where she went. (The TV room.) She said that he went down on her…” Again, Ms Geimer in fact never said in her own testimony that she had told her boyfriend that Polanski should let her be and not dry her off – while Polanski had said in his autobiography they dried each other off before he started kissing her. Furthermore, the sister said when she came in she looked ‘glassy-eyed’, while in the same breath states that she was hardly around to actually be sure, trying to ‘underpin’ Ms Geimer’s words of having had ‘some’ champagne while the mother in fact said no such thing, nor Huston or Polanski. Looks like the sister had her own ‘agenda’ to make Polanski more ‘guilty’ of Ms Geimer’s own actions. Besides, alcohol doesn’t make you glassy-eyed, it makes your eyes look tired. In effect, they did not recognise her as being ‘intoxicated’ at all as Ms Geimer had tried to make the Grand Jury believe. Another thing that’s surprising was this: after she was returned home, she didn’t tell her mother about the sex or any drinking or drug taking. Many suspect/ed not because she was ashamed of having done any of it, but that Polanski would find out that she had lied to him about having asthma. In fact, she told her boyfriend that Polanski had sex with her, (note, again: ‘sex’, not ‘raped’ her) who in turn didn’t really believe her and wasn’t concerned about any of it.

Odd too, that she never mentioned that she wanted to rest after the hot dip [while he still was in the pool] and Polanski therefore brought her to the TV room to rest there in the first place, and she joked, if she might pass out, that he should revive her by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. All this strongly suggests that Ms Geimer wanted to continue her relationship with Polanski, and again strongly points to that the sex was consensual on her part not wanting her mother to know, simply for her unharmed state and only partly contradictive statements many like to ignore. If that sentimental idea is however true or not, only two people know and what really happened and both should have their say now. That possibility cannot be discredited since it would support the findings, and cannot be a based solely on the idea that many feel ashamed and don’t desire to go through a court hearing. Many rape victims were not believed in those days, true, but others in contrast saw men convicted on lies or of course were pointlessly incarcerated for consensual underage sex. Today’s much more advanced forensic and sympathetic approach enables trials to more effectively prove innocence or guilt, on either side. Or rape. The fact that she constantly wavered in her later statements, or said that she didn’t want to do the second [Nicholson] shoot, nor take off her clothes, that it became scary and she found herself in a precarious situation with him she never wanted, while the other witnesses thought them behaving like lovers, and he never had such an impression, is more than at odds or logic.

How only could he [or her family] have missed her suddenly being so unwilling for so long while she accompanied him, or to do any of it, and if so, why did she not once say so? Apart from the fact, that she herself could have shown better judgement, declined to do any of this and not just let it all happen, making him believe she ‘consented’. While Polanski later said that he had all the sympathy for Ms Geimer, that courtesy did not extend to the mother and her ‘sister’. No wonder, with their deliberate ‘rewording’ of ‘details’. On closer examination, the pictures he had taken of her at any given time or in the Jacuzzi do not give the impression that she was ‘afraid’ of him either, contrary to what she had stated, nor are they full nude shots. It was stated by several concerned parties that she looked older, but that obviously is of irrelevant subjective perception and Polanski had never said at that time he didn’t know her age, or that she looked older. When Polanski was invited the first time to her mother’s house after her sister’s boyfriend had asked him, the mother’s boyfriend produced a copy of Hustler [the still published porn magazine], he in fact never heard of before then, for Polanski to ‘assess the great photos of female and male genital’. Polanski dutifully passed on any more explicit expressions and didn’t seem too impressed with them [the family, or the girl, flashing a copy of Playboy], before he left the house. Curious initiation process, or of course, deliberate ‘preconditioning’ him.

Polanski wasn’t into crude porn magazines, he took artful still photos, and that since the Fifties for more aesthetic art connoisseurs. When he showed them later his own pictures he had taken of the girl from the shoot behind heir own home, after the glossy shots he took of Kinki for Vogue a year before they expressed great interest in, they seemed to have liked them. When the girl later testified that this was not the case suddenly, yet, the older sister’s boyfriend, who had asked him to photograph the girl in the first place, found them beautiful and didn’t understand their apparent dislike after he in fact came by to take a look at the slides, and behaved rather ‘edgy’ but didn’t explain ‘why’. Ms Geimer had said, “On February 20th 1977, Polanski took me on our first photo shoot in a hillside area just a few blocks from my house. We shot a roll of film; then he asked me to take off my shirt and took topless photos while I changed. I let him do it, but I felt self-conscious. I was thinking, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this’, but I was a kid, so I thought if it wasn’t okay, he wouldn’t tell me to do it. If I’d told my mom, she would never have let me go with him the second time. When he made another appointment a few weeks later, she had no reason to suspect anything. I didn’t want to go, but I still thought it would be a good opportunity.”

To say it was an ‘opportunity’ is correct, but they later put it as if she was somehow ‘compelled’ into it and just ‘did it’, while she in fact said even in that documentary that she’d love to be photographed by Polanski as soon as she heard of it. Which also nullifies her previous claims that he had ‘fooled’ them into posing for him, under a sort of ‘pretense’ to get to know her, since the boyfriend had asked Polanski as soon as HE had heard he did the Vogue Hommes assignment, not Polanski them. So her quotation can be seen as leading him on from her side, trying to ‘dupe’ her mother, which sounds logical for a teen trying to hide things from a mother, but since she was to expect that they all would see them at one point, and the mother needed to sign them off for possible release to Vogue, there’s no way this is correct especially in view of this sort of erotic publication generally depicting also underaged nudity. In effect, she either covered up for her mother who ‘really’ suddenly didn’t like them, (and note, ‘no one else’ actually stated so according to the sister’s boyfriend) or, the mother ‘pretended’ she liked them when Polanski, Ms Geimer, the mother’s boyfriend’s and Ms Geimer were present who didn’t object either when looking at them. If true, she in fact misled both her mother and Polanski by not telling him she might object and can be in fact the very reason for this entire disaster, (which however does not explain why the mother only made a fuss once he was gone).

In fact, she could have asked her mother if she would mind topless photos and then tell Polanski to destroy the ones they had taken already to avoid any repercussions, for either of them. Polanski said himself, if she or her mother didn’t like any of them (when he showed her the behind-the-house slides in the car) she should put them aside, which she however did not do, so the batch would be destroyed. Or, maybe her mother didn’t mind at all and they just brought this in to ‘justify’ her hasty stance against Polanski for her daughter having had sex with him, since she was the very last to find out. Or, because (and Ms Geimer said so herself), ‘no one believed her’ the sex story and then made things up in order for them TO ‘believe it’. Or to say, “I didn’t want to go,” simply in order to make the mother more ‘responsible’ over her negligence that she had left her with him unattended to take these photos. Telling the court that she had said ‘no’ to him, when no one can verify that, also means nothing after the facts being one of the very few word against word counts at that point. She appeared not distressed according to several witness statements, yet seemed tense while giving her testimony, and suddenly behaved like a ‘child clutching a doll’, unlike while with him, Huston or the caretaker. She stated to have asked him to stop which he couldn’t confirm she ever had, yet did not ONCE attempt to fight him off or simply leave at plenty opportunities.

One thing that is clear, though, is that it cannot be substantiated she was brutalised in any form at her physically sound state. Of course, the blood lusting public would rather stone someone for being famous and so much older than her than believe his words over hers, which could not be corroborated by medical evidence and other findings. So who ‘lied’, and why did she later say it wasn’t rape. Because it wasn’t, by legal definition and act. ‘Rape’ by law, is the act of forceful penile penetration of the vagina, nothing else, all other acts are classified as ‘sexual assault’. Of course she later could have regretted having taken the drug, or the alcohol, saying she felt ‘dizzy’, but she was not found impaired in any form not to be able to walk or talk, shout for help or run away. Even severely battered victims try to escape their attackers. Especially if the door is unlocked. She also forgot to mention that she explored the house first while Polanski spoke with the caretaker, before she asked for a drink. When her attorney asked, “Why did you take it [the pill]?” she said, “I don’t know. I must have been pretty drunk or else I wouldn’t have.” From a few sips of champagne when the average size bottle, not magnum as some stated, was still half filled and three people had a drink from it? That hardly makes one glass each. Polanski later wondered about her ‘dizziness’ from a third of a Quaaludes, since it wouldn’t affect anyone like that.

What’s even more curious, is that she had returned to the kitchen to eat something according to her own testimony to counteract the effect, which Polanski however never mentioned, except that she nibbled on sugar cubes for the photos. In that case, there’s even less chance to be ‘drunk’, and the tiny amount of Quaaludes she took doesn’t make one ‘dizzy’, it makes one euphoric, confident and sexually aroused. All food absorbs alcohol to reduce any intoxication. If she was capable of that much premeditation and rational thinking, she certainly was capable of picking up her gear and simply leave, or call her mother to get her; but she did not. If Polanski took any alcohol or any Quaaludes is fairly irrelevant, and the fact that there never was a count for alcohol plying, is more than telling even the Grand Jury realised as not pertinent. Besides, alcohol dehydrates, causing additional vaginal dryness and complicates having comfortable sex even further. These are all curious contradictions born from reasons unclear to us and should be addressed finally in a proper trial, or, a full evidentiary hearing to bring in all testimonies and findings. But, there are certain parties that simply don’t want that, and it’s not Polanski’s, and each time he came too close to see the case dismissed or reopened, Ms Geimer petitioned to drop it. Another thing is, while in some later interviews she had stated that he had ‘taken out the drug’, from where is another question, after she left the Jacuzzi herself, when she told the court she took it before entering the hot tub and that he gave it to her in the bathroom, that also seems rather contradictive.

Some say, maybe she was forced to state she repeatedly said no, since no physical findings would support that he had brutally forced himself on her in any form, and the course of events doesn’t match her claims of constant reluctance and fear in general. He said she was willing, she stated not, but neither tried to escape him. Illogical. Of course, she could have regretted it and then said she didn’t want it, while she however even let him perform on her, to his words vaginally once, to hers anally even twice. Besides, in many cases not only vaginal, but most definitely anal intercourse requires lubrication and other certain preparations or you might hit on some brown matter, which can lead to rectal damage, and in turn infections in both partners. A spur of the moment ‘dry double sodomy’ which she implied, is most unlikely since it would show and hurt especially on repeat strokes, and be unpleasantly messy due to [residual] faecal matter friction, unless you use special (Crisco) or at least waterbased lubricant (which however dries up quickly on repeat thrusts), the rectal passage is cleared, and/or numbed the sphincter. The ‘receptive’ partner must be able to relax the anal sphincter in order to accommodate the erect penis and to be safe and comfortable. Hygiene is essential or STD is the most likely outcome. Forced or ‘dry’ penetration always results in tearing of the sensitive skin around the anus or the sphincter itself, which in fact can be ripped away on brutal force, and always ends in severe pain or even incontinence. The best position is in fact from behind, not the front as she claimed, for the curved rectal angle which makes entry difficult – and painful.

Vaginal fluids are not sufficient to avoid friction anally since they dry up very quickly once outside the moist vagina, resulting in sphincter tearing no matter how willing each partner. If she had been afraid of him or of the sex, or even to her words anal intercourse, she’d not only done her best to get away, but it most certainly had injured her both vaginally and unquestionably anally on clenching up, or ‘freezing’ as she put it later. Forcible penetration would cause instant physical reaction of pain and attempts of trying to get away. Even simply ‘enduring’ forcible rape anally or vaginally at no other choice, would make the victim thrash and scream in agony for the sharp pain no matter what, take up to a minute for the muscles to relax even after willingness, and most certainly make it more difficult and injurious for anyone to maintain penetration, leave bloody signs genitally and marks on the body while pinning someone down. None of that was evident. In fact, the receptive partner must be in control, and there’s no such thing as forcible anal or vaginal rape that leaves no signs or have the victim not scream for help. She never declared any pain, and to ‘put his thing up her butt’ without any efforts on his part or damage even for him, is impossible. How often does the man need the female to ‘guide’ the penis into herself? Or when the penis slips out again, and s/he needs to guide it back inside? Or you need more lube? Think of it. Ask anyone who ever had anal sex, and no one will say it’s painless, or easy to achieve even if wanted.

One thing they missed doing then was to take blood tests, to establish how much both had ingested in alcohol or drug form. Seriously criminal neglect to perform toxicology tests on either, but not surprising, or they could have proven her allegations of having been ‘pretty drunk’, or not, or overly drugged, or not. Within four hours after the events and the police had interviewed Ms Geimer any Quaaludes and alcohol traces could still be found. So, if there was a rape kit exam done on her, but no blood tests performed on either of them to prove how much Quaalude or alcohol content was in her bloodstream, or to what extend, how could they even level a count of ‘drugged rape’ on Polanski? There was no count for alcohol plying since the Grand Jury didn’t include one, no matter how much Ms Geimer tried to make it look she was drunk during sex, or the sister having stated that she looked ‘glassy-eyed’, or the mother saying she looked ‘odd’ on her return home, while Huston of all having seen her still at the house and Polanski most of all never corroborated her claims, knowing he didn’t get her drunk or drugged at her rather talkative and lively demeanor on their way back home. So, why did they go for the drugged rape charge at no evidence either but didn’t include alcohol plying? Just because Ms Geimer or ‘they’ said so? That’s ‘leading’ the Grand Jury [on] where no hard evidence backed them up in any form to make Ms Geimer’s words more ‘believable’, while her overall behaviour didn’t mirror that to start with.

On another note, one thing we don’t know for sure concerning more forensic issues, is that, when they had retrieved the girl’s underwear for examination, and found ‘semen’, who in fact can be sure it was his, then, in the days of pre-DNA testing? ‘Where’ exactly were the semen stains found on the garment? Were they on the back, inside of it, seeped through, to support her claim that he had ejaculated all over her back? She never said she actually had cleaned herself up at that point, and I’m sure the average person would want the sticky stuff gone after sex, let alone after rape, not only put their underwear back on to soak it up as she said she had. If of course he didn’t leave any semen in or on her as HE had stated, there was no need to clean herself up in the first place and is a self-defeating accusation. She stated she didn’t have a shower or douche afterwards (at home) and no traces of semen were found inside her vaginal cavity or rectum according to the examining doctor. When the prosecution asked him if he could tell when the semen was secreted, Dr Larson said, no. When asked if he could determine who secreted the semen, he also said no, meaning, the ‘semen’ could have come from anyone but Polanski. Unless he had ejaculated over her back to get there as she claimed, after vaginal [from the back, or to her anal] intercourse, or of course, never were the same panties.

It is noteworthy to add that the girl had fetched them along with her blue dress she apparently wore that day, NOT the cops according to the officer himself, the same evening some hours later to interview her, since she didn’t wear the same clothes when she arrived at the hospital after she had changed once at home. So, if seminal fluid was found anywhere else on the unidentified garment, but inside the gusset (crotch) as so explained at the hearing, it in fact was utterly compromised ‘evidence’ which wouldn’t be admissible today since it was not directly collected from her body. I shudder to think how many men were convicted for underage sex, or rape, on ‘semen evidence’ before the days of DNA proof were able to make sure whose it was. Or how old it is. The residing judge in fact dismissed the evidence and therefore possibility of deliberate [prosecutix (as he called the girl) and of course police] tampering with it. Problem is, physical evidence from any case that never went to trial is rife for the taking, and could simply vanish one day, or tampered with some more. Oddly enough, in a later interview Ms Geimer stated that she had gone into the Jacuzzi in her underwear for the lack of a bathing suit, while in the courts she said she had undressed fully and later put the panties back on, twice, after sex. More inconsistencies.

Of course, the girl had no idea about how forensic science would apply its better knowledge and expertise to refute her claims outright, like teens do, and will always be found out sooner or later. Hard science of any kind is hard to beat with unscientific fabrications. How did one of the more impartial probation officers put it; the life of Roman was filled with a ‘seemingly unending series of punishments’. Another probation officer had said the following about Polanski: “This particular offence doesn’t have the connotation of rape. It’s not even an offence, a criminal offence, in about thirteen of our states and in many places of the world, this is a crime that’s been committed by policemen; it’s been committed by probation officers assigned to counsel girls at a detention school; it’s a crime that’s been committed by people that have a far higher trust to their victims than did Roman Polanski. I feel he is a criminal only by accident; and that there are many complex social and psychological factors that were involved in this situational event which otherwise was a complete departure from his normal mode of conduct.” I.e., sleep with an underaged girl because she looked and behaved like a mature young lady, not any prepubescent ‘child’.

I would recommend examining the psyche evaluation findings of Polanski’s probation/dismissal reports [found online], since it might shed light on what was the man, who had suffered extreme traumas and losses others hardly would have survived, sanely, and not what the public ‘thinks’ ‘today’ he is or was. Of course, since he is an actor, whatever he might have to say or do, will be taken as an act, and nothing sincere, so even his genuine defence would always be seen as an act. He simply doesn’t stand a chance of a fair judgement passed on him. One probation officer said, Polanski had not realised that his request to photograph Ms Geimer topless was problematic, since such photography is acceptable in Europe. According to the report, he also expressed great remorse regarding any possible effect his actions might have upon the girl, and that he was neither aggressive nor forceful. Many self-righteous people generously delight themselves in ignoring these and other important findings, and rather deem them lies and him the greatest monster of them all suddenly he never was, one that finally needs killing rather than healing. So much for equal rights for all. If he were a nobody, they surely would try to give him all support available and a break. Or wouldn’t care either way.

Maybe all those hyperbole crazed haters wishing his slow and painful demise, should actually listen to those who were there and of unbiased professionalism. One of the psyche doctors talking to Polanski during his evaluation sessions, reported that Polanski might benefit from psychiatric treatment, but what he had in mind was not related to any sexual [deviation or otherwise] problems he has, but to him [Polanski], ‘unresolved state of depression’, ‘stemming from a series of traumatic incidents in his life’. He never met Polanski or had any insight into his life before then, yet recognised that instantly, and thought it would only make it worse were he to be incarcerated and recommended to let him be, and that’s what the prosecution decided on. But of course, others think it was a whitewash when it’s not – while allowing or even demanding everyone else’s and their own past ordeals to be recognised and/or treated. But no, in Polanski’s case he’s only allowed to suffer more. Polanski had no past criminal record and all he ever did since then in fact confirms what the officials had expected – no repeat offence.

What is very detrimental in general to any case unlawful sex or rape case, is the legalistic labelling of ‘acts’, making them sound so much more perverted suddenly. As in, a lewd act (one of the counts), or sodomy (another), or ‘perversion’ (another), when in the bedroom they’re called, caressing, anal intercourse and cunnilingus, the latter two of which he had not admitted to in his statement and medical evidence does not support either. Later the term perversion had been changed to oral copulation, and that’s why some people get confused, thinking it’s penis to mouth, when it’s mouth to vagina. That’s ‘law’s’ hypocrisy to make an entirely needless emphasis by deliberately defiling sexual acts like that to make the public regard them as wholly ‘filthy’ suddenly, just so to satisfy the moral high ground that all sex is dirty and must be punished. There never was a count of ‘child molestation’ as some still state, since for one Ms Geimer was legally classified as an adolescent not ‘child’ anymore, and ‘molestation’ was not applicable.

She also omitted that she wanted to head for the Jacuzzi straight up, and that the water in fact was too hot, after he had turned it on later. That’s why he entered the cooler pool only, and she most likely came up with the asthma idea feeling rather too hot than ‘afraid’, wanting to appear in control of the situation, since he also thought it was too hot, and said he wanted and did take some shots of her first clothed. I’m sure the Jacuzzi’s hot vapours overcame her, not any [fake] asthma or fear, just as Polanski stated in his autobiography, and that she looked a bit ‘odd’. That’s why he told her to get out and into the cooler pool, she did to her words, and not to his. So for her to say, that he asked her to come down his end in the Jacuzzi and she refused, ‘feeling afraid of him’, seems more than dubious when he in fact never was in the Jacuzzi with her. What’s more, she had said herself: “I had to get out [of the Jacuzzi] because of the warm air and the cold air or something like that,” and then turned it into this asthma/fear lie instead of admitting to him [and the jury] that she felt too hot. She never stated that he had forced her to go into that room but that she sat down on the sofa, while in fact she had asked him to lie down somewhere to cool off she also never mentioned, but put it as if he had ‘told’ her to go there after in fact offering her to rest in the TV room, that’s why they went there to start with. He in fact said in his autobiography that she was wheezing quite a bit while still in the Jacuzzi and told her to get out, she of course entirely omitted but turned it into this ‘I was afraid’ rather than say that she in fact had told him in case she passed out he should mouth-to-mouth resuscitate her. Not quite the picture of being afraid of him or wanting to go home.

Apart from that, she equally failed to mention that they were disturbed by some hoodlums outside [who left again] on their first shoot at her mother’s house, and he told her to cover up to show his concern, and she said she didn’t care [to]. Or, that they heard a car pulling up the drive [Huston returning], before the light lit up on the [TV room] phone. Oddly enough too, once at the Nicholson house she was keen on a drink, while being at the house of Jacqueline Bisset they had visited just before to take some shots of her there first, she had refused a glass of wine she had offered her. Once she was away from her mother, she was much livelier and incessantly talking, and there was no miscommunication as to her sister or her present girlfriend to come along, he turned away as she later stated, since the mother quickly had gathered her new clothes and the two hurried off before the sun would fade. Another curious thing was, when he had turned on the rheostat lights for the Jacuzzi in the bathroom and she followed him on his heels, where he had found the Quaaludes, she had stated that ‘he had broken them into pieces’, which implies something he had done prior she witnessed, when he never said so and only found them in that broken state and didn’t in fact know if they were Quaaludes, yet she said they were. Which makes most of that dubious grey area of this in/famous case, concerns the question, what parents (or rather her mother and her mother’s then boyfriend) let their underage daughter go to a famous director, if they had no intentions of allowing (or even wanting) her to engage with him in other things than taking pictures to further her as a model or actress, and of course to promote themselves through her and his fame most of all.

Apart from that, who would file for ‘compensation’ after a whole ten years only, (so popular today, see the Jackson case) and mind you, not for rape or any of  the original counts he did not plea guilty to, nor anything the findings could not substantiate like most of the counts. The entire case hinges on her words alone, and the civil suit claimed ‘sexual assault’, ‘battery’, ‘false imprisonment’ and ‘seduction’. The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, sought damages for ‘physical and emotional distress’. Polanski didn’t silence her with the money after reportedly both parties having come to a ‘settlement’ in 1998. The DA’s office having filed suit against Polanski, claiming that he had siphoned off [$619,000] refunds of value-added tax instead of turning them over to the completion guarantors who financed his Ninth Gate film, they simply deposited it into a private account, refusing all requests for its returns. Evidently, it was her account. It took a whole ten years to conclude the suit, since Polanski was unwilling to pay her for something he never did let alone any ‘new claims’. The different judges residing over it didn’t agree with her accounts simply for never having been tried and found fact, let alone these new claims suddenly after she never had brought them up then, with different lawyers handling it. That DA’s suit was amicably settled soon thereafter, while the US still cavilled over a three decade old misdemeanour.

Ms Geimer in fact was giving her first interview a year prior, stating that he neither had raped nor harmed her. Of course, people who never saw these developments take place ever since then, simply won’t know or understand his defenders’ rightful scepticism of her unchallenged original claims let alone ‘settlement’. So in that sense, the money was not awarded, but simply taken, since Polanski had no means to stop some court in the US from using all methods till they succeeded. As we saw – in the land of no hope and no glory for most where people sue everything and everyone possible for x amounts of dirty dollars in civil suits. Many think it was on the behest of her mother we in fact never heard of in all these years, who apparently had received some of the money according to some sources. That wasn’t seeking ‘compensation’ to many, but simply trying to milk the Hollywood system after many years suing him suddenly. Why so much later many wondered already then and believe/d all she wanted was his money. Other sources stated that the mother had nothing to do with the lawsuit, since she could have sued Polanski on her behalf the moment he left the US, and is more than curious for Ms Geimer to wait a whole ten years to sue him suddenly.

A country that doesn’t allow a defendant to face his accusers in efforts to ‘spare the victim’, resulting in allowing credence to her words alone, making it impossible to hear his side to prove himself innocent, but cannot force the actual accusers to in fact appear in court to make their case personally in a cross-examination, resulting in plea bargains and many men sent down unable to in fact exonerate themselves, this by now more than notorious case is a classic example and entirely based on her never seriously impugned testimony, and no one ever challenged this fact. US ‘Rape Shield Laws’ introduced in the 70s intent on ‘protecting’ the ‘victim’ only, in a very rigid form mind you, make it impossible for the defence to prove their clients’ innocence since they prohibit any search into the ‘victims’ sexual history, and have backfired by now massively, after too many women have ‘cried rape’, or claimed to have said ‘no’, sending innocent men into hell. Furthermore, requirements that the ‘victim’s’ testimony be corroborated and that jurors be cautioned to give this testimony special scrutiny have largely disappeared. And, because neither side has usually any witnesses, she can lie, and he cannot ever prove otherwise. Hence, more men being convicted of ‘rape’, which never was actual rape. That is simply not acceptable.

I really wonder where ‘battery’, (which connotes violence that was never proven or even brought forward by her at the time of her testifying) ‘false imprisonment’, (which was certainly never the case either since she simply could have left but never did) and ‘seduction’ come from, when no such counts were ever part of the original indictment and therefore were never proven either. She never declared any ‘physical and emotional distress’ even at that time, since she officially rejected all professional therapy and help, and to do so after ten years is more than suspect. At the time of her lawsuit she was getting married in fact, and to many it is most unlikely that she suffered any of her claims by then anymore. In addition, after she sued him she publicly declared, ‘she would not call it rape, and that, ‘the word ‘rape’ for her always brings to mind a level of violence that wasn’t there’. Why then cry rape and sodomy first, then sue him over ‘violence’, and then refute these allegations ever more altogether? I for one believe she was forced to turn it into a confusing rape case to make her the non-complicit part in the events since she was a minor. Even the media already then had noticed these curious contradictions and gaps in her statements, before Polanski would give his own version of events in 1984. Of course people who never saw these developments take place ever since, simply won’t know or understand his defenders’ rightful scepticism of her unchallenged claims.

It is noteworthy to add, that in a footnote, it said that she had asked Polanski for admissions that he ‘gave’ her the champagne and Quaaludes, had oral sex with her and sodomised her, before she gave  increasingly equally ‘amicable’ and varying event account interviews and later petitioned to see the case be dropped altogether. Polanski obviously asserted his 5th Amendment right not to admit to that on the grounds that the answers ‘may tend to be incriminating’, since of course, whatever he would have said would not be believed, and really unwise to even engage such a ‘request’. But, that equally does not imply his guilt since none of it was tried and a lawsuit is always the last resort for people to get back at others, rightly or wrongly. It’s general practice for lawyers to demand admission of guilt for the plaintiff to make their case more credible, and the accused of course would simply deny. It’s nothing but a money machine set into motion, as with the infamous case of Simpson; once he was found ‘innocent’ of his wife’s murder, faced a massive lawsuit of $46 million in all, that were eventually awarded – But, of course, it was never executed at no such riches and is nothing but greedy exploitation of a tragedy.

Court papers document/ed efforts by her lawyers to garnish residual and payments owed to Polanski by the Screen Actors Guild, movie studios and other Hollywood businesses to pay her instead. This type of money grabbing ‘effort’ is more than questionable, since the one sued has hardly any rights to stop such dealings to withhold and/or shave off monies from his legally earned proceeds. It is based on a clause found in the very old ‘fugitive disentitlement doctrine’, which [also] allows courts to seize [part or all of a] fugitive’s assets, with its rights, title and interest of the property transferred to the government. This clause is rather called ‘asset forfeiture’ which has two types of applications, since there is the original doctrine not related to any fugitive’s property. A civil asset forfeiture is intended to confiscate any property used or acquired in violation of the law, like through money laundering, drugs trafficking etc., which in Polanski’s case cannot be applied since he legally made/distributed his films and the studios still owe him. A criminal forfeiture is imposed on an offender as part of their punishment following a conviction, which is not applicable either. So in effect, they simply [could] steal his rightfully acquired earnings just because he’s a fugitive, which evidently failed in that form only to succeed differently.

In fact, after he had left the States, the courts had tried to pressure the UK he had gone to first, to seize his property he had, since he had none in the US anymore once he had abandoned his bloodied home he had shared with Sharon. They had tried to force the courts to gain proceeds of his flat in London he had owned ever since he had married Sharon, which he wanted to sell in his move to settle in France, knowing that the UK could extradite him any day. But one merciful English ‘official’ in fact had warned him of such intentions, and that the deportation authorities were already in the course of paying him a visit. But he managed to sell his mews home and received his rightful money to leave the British Isles unhindered and with enough means to recover himself. At least financially, and to prepare for his film Tess with Kinski, since Sharon shortly before her death had given him the Hardy novel she said he should make into a film, and so he did, on a grand scale. It should be mentioned that the film marked an important change in his life after his flight from the US not only artistically, since it shows his once lover Kinski not only as rape survivor, but that he also was a mentor to her rather than just sleep with her, by helping her into the industry on several more professional levels before and after.

Once Ms Geimer said what he did to her was gross, then she said it wasn’t rape. Then she again said in an interview it wasn’t consensual and in another, it was ‘creepy’. I never heard anyone call sex and least of all rape, ‘creepy’. So which was it? Why accuse him of ‘lewd’ acts first he refuted bar one, then negate the apparent double rape in various forms after suing him. Apparently then it was her ‘fault’, while over the years her ‘temptress’ status had shifted and today no one would bad mouth her anymore, while no doubt both have to be held responsible.  In another interview from 2000 for a US TV documentary on Polanski, she had stated, “He had sex with me. He wasn’t hurting me and he wasn’t forceful or mean or anything like that, and really I just tried to let him get it over with.” That doesn’t sound like rape, and to some could be considered as leading him on, since she had testified before that she had told him to stop while he said she hadn’t, and then suddenly said she just let him get it over with, in effect making him believe she consented when she just could have walked away.

Either way, she also claimed that the event had been blown all out of proportion – that’s for sure and a sign that it wasn’t rape since no rape victim would ever state that – and never said anything about her ‘fear’ or sodomy claims again. In the interview with Larry King, she completely omitted the part where Huston had apparently interrupted them in her breakdown of the events, so that Polanski could sodomise her again, which evidently didn’t take place, and she later kept explaining things inconsistently, saying she couldn’t remember the incident clearly. No rape victim wouldn’t ‘remember’ the exact details no matter the passage of time, and she more and more equalised her accounts with his version, playing the ‘assault’ down in effect. In regards to the medical findings King had asked her about if they had shown any trauma, she oddly said, ‘must have’, when she had heard the doctor presenting his report to the Grand Jury she attended herself and her mother, telling of not the slightest evidence of even vaginal intercourse let alone [double] anal. She also flat-out lied in reference to how Polanski came to ‘choose’ her.

She said, “I guess he must have seen a picture of me and came by to meet me and then asked, you know with the pretense that he was interested in photographing me from the beginning.” ‘Pretense’? It was her own sister’s boyfriend who had besieged him to take her on as a model for his Vogue assignment, telling him what as stunner she is while Polanski didn’t share his enthusiasm once he met her. Her mother was more than happy to receive him, after he had met her and the older daughter at a bar a year before through him already. The boyfriend had given him her phone number, Polanski called her some time later to arrange a meeting, and she was eagerly awaiting his call he made a few days later. In fact, her mother had tried to get hold of him before, but couldn’t. Plus, Ms Geimer had later stated hat she was very excited to be photographed by him and then suddenly said it was ‘pretense’, when THEY had asking HIM. In a 1997 interview she stated, “My sister was dating a guy who knew Roman and introduced him to my mom, who had actually met him once before at a club. When Polanski said he’d take some pictures of me and put them in a European magazine, it was exciting. We thought it would be a good thing for my career.” So there is no chance that Ms Geimer never knew he would be coming by to meet her.

On their first shoot behind their own home she had posed topless already, and then some time later again at the Nicholson house, after which she suddenly stated it had become uncomfortable, when she had said before she didn’t care to be seen topless. Then, she stated no one liked the photos, when they all had approved them before the second shoot. All very curious inconsistencies and downright misleading recounts. No one ever said he saw a picture of her which triggered him to ‘choose’ her, making it sound as if he wanted to get to know her, under the pretext of this assignment, when he wasn’t really interested in her once he saw her and surely had no need to ‘select’ someone to sleep with in this complicated manner. Many say that was his intent from the onset, and the Vogue assignment merely a ruse to ‘lure’ her away, when this is more than ludicrous in the face of his disappointment and a planned string of events from THEIR end that eventually made him engage in the spontaneous decision to sleep with her. Everyone knew he probably would do so as per his reputation, and many say this was a classic set-up.

When Ms Geimer told him in the car on their way to Nicholson’s house that she went with her boyfriend to bed ‘right away’, that is where he asked her when she had sex the first time, to which she replied, “When I was eight,” while Ms Geimer had later turned that into, thinking ‘that’s none of your business’, but said, “Yes, I had, once, it was embarrassing to be a virgin among my friends.” Once? Doubtful with a boyfriend she had sex with ‘right away’ by her own admission and starting with eight with some boy down the road. So much for her sexual history she told the Grand Jury about not quite matching her rather unchaste family environment of sex and porn magazines and conduct with Polanski, the free drugs and alcohol use at home, and she in fact had told them in her testimony that she had sex before twice , not ‘once’. Why her mother, her separated father and her mother’s live-in boyfriend were not charged with furnishing her with drugs and alcohol, since Ms Geimer confessed to like champagne and was drunk in the company of her father one Christmas eve when she was even younger, or the girl’s boyfriend for having sex with her and her mother’s much older boyfriend committing at least ‘lewd and lascivious acts’ on her in prosecutor Gunson’s office, is quite astonishing. So is the fact that they had two whole weeks to prepare what to say to the Grand Jury, after the girl was examined the very same evening not to find any sign of rape, and the cops arrived the next evening at Polanski’s hotel lobby to arrest him on exactly all those counts.

It is most curious how she went from claiming he sodomised and raped her, though she never actually used the word rape in any form or said ‘he raped me’ even in her original testimony, but that he had intercourse with her, to publicly ‘forgive’ him and contradict herself in various ways. She always maintained that he shouldn’t face prison, for obvious reasons in eager agreement with her mother, yet people are so adamant to invalidate her own words when it suits them to invalidate his own through that. Or maybe they have reason, since many thought and think again today that she simply lied, which could only have been proven had the case gone to trial at the bare forensics not corroborating crucial accounts of her highly contradictive statements. But someone pressed for the plea bargain and that was that. She had stated that she didn’t remember him saying anything from one day to the next, yet seems to have come up with all sorts of ‘explanations’, and he remembered every word and that he did not prevent her from removing herself from him in any form. Recently she said that time has given her perspective on the incident and doesn’t feel like a victim, and judging from her original testimony to today’s interviews there’s a huge difference between her allegations and what she tells us today.

At that point, Polanski had been a widower for eight years after Sharon Tate’s brutal murder, and many say he was looking for a new embrace in his life after too many fits of weeping at unforeseen moments. Many like to forget that Sharon was a mere ten years younger than him. So much for the inane paedophilia allegations, which could never be substantiated, and many make the mistake to picture the older Polanski of today with the young girl of then, thinking it’s even more depraved to see them together, while forgetting that he was much younger then and never short of girls and in no need to violate that particular one. Yet of course, if it doesn’t suit certain people blindly believing her, they would even try linking him with other ‘crimes’ just so to satisfy their warped ideas of him. If only they could. Besides, his general predilection for younger women is nothing out the ordinary for many men, the age difference to his wives is utterly irrelevant, and to apply some especially warped emphasis to this is pedantic nonsense.

Gene Gutowski, the Polish friend who accompanied Polanski from London to Los Angeles by plane, said: “He was facing me when he heard the news by phone. He turned around. Staring straight ahead in the distance with his eyes glazed over. ‘They killed my wife and son,’ he said. These words only, and then he burst into convulsive sobs.” Laurence Harvey commented on Polanski immediately after the murders, saying, “This could destroy Roman. Marriage vows mean nothing to him but few men have adored a woman as much as he adored Sharon.” Indeed, her cruel loss had destroyed him, and many suspect/ed that he wasn’t quite himself ever since then and that he immersed himself in work. Many deem/ed him deeply depressed, haunted by his recurrently tragic past, and no wonder. After that deeply scarring nightmare, Polanski abandoned their home as it was bloodstains and all, and never returned to it. He dived headlong into sexual adventures, never even noticing that many used him to advance their questionable ‘careers’, gain publicity in the glare of ‘scandals’, and he made a thorough fool of himself.

Though Polanski reputedly never mixed pleasure with his job as a director, on or off set, this might also have brought him some jilted female enemies on the other hand, who couldn’t use sex for their career advancement or own ends. After all the vile public abuse already. The point of this analysis is simple; how can a man survive such ordeals sanely for so long, after his Holocaust childhood and adolescent days were already of unprecedented traumas during the war leaving him with a fractured skull twice over, only to face the horrors of the loss of his wife and unborn child. I find it absolutely bewildering and in fact obscene, how people can state that all that has no meaning, not the slightest bearing or effect on his life, most of all on his work, and should simply be ignored. When it comes to others, we preach that all facets of life must be taken into consideration for someone to heal, all circumstance, all emotional state, after years of flawless conduct, decades of not one slip-up and extreme distress. Yet in his case, this is simply all taken away suddenly by ignorant and pious double standards that are simply staggering.

A man can endure only so much for so long, and by beginning an affair with Nastassja Kinski in 1976, this might have been his one consolation not to be alone, he always needed his work and people around him. What he could not get on mental satisfaction he might have sought in physical form and many satisfied it. That’s why he much later stated that he thought what he did then was not to harm anyone by sleeping with her, he never deliberately hurt the girl, which she later said herself he hadn’t, had expressed concerns for her wellbeing and showed remorse at the time after his exercise of transient poor judgment, as findings documented. He was known to be sexually very active with willing females, though he’s nowhere near Warren Beatty’s over ten thousands of conquests with one girl a day over the same period of time, and there was no need to force himself on that particular girl suddenly. There are some who keep living in their preferred rape and sodomy fantasy world by saying he never denied her accounts, when that never was the case either and is sheer wishful thinking.

Apparently, he even tried speaking with her [family] after bail was granted to make her admit it was consensual, but while waiting in front of their home, cops spotted him and told him to leave, after an apparently rather ‘lewd’ frisking. This however was never mentioned in his autobiography. Curious how he was allowed to go free after such serious allegations, while today the much older man has to be kept under house arrest and millions in bail bond. One could argue because he’s a fugitive, but he could have easily absconded already then before he in fact had, and the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution states: ‘Excessive bail shall not be required’ – but Polanski had to cough up nearly $5 mill, in fact needing to mortgage his family apartment in Paris at no other liquid assets contrary to popular belief him to be ‘super rich’ – unlike they practice it with their own much worse criminals as seen so often. But of course, he thought himself innocent, that a trial fair would find him just that, and trusted in the US justice system. That seems to have gone very wrong with more than shameful judicial transgressions and unacceptable racism. Yet of course, if all they want to see is a very young girl and a much older man engaged in sex even if they were to dismiss rape as not proven, coercion as not corroborated, leading to innocent seduction, that is their ethical burden entirely.

Many engage/d in consensual sex with willing minors, and never were or ever will be done for statutory rape, since no one called or will call on the law to declare it that. On the other hand there are harmless cases of consensual sex and the older party gets slung inside for years with hardcore criminals, destroying people’s lives for having sex. The flower power Seventies was all about free sex and drugs and THEIR morality play, NOT ours of today. The psychiatric report echoed the probation report. “There was no evidence that the offence was in any way characterized by destructive or insensitive attitude toward the victim. Polanski’s attitude was undoubtedly seductive, but considerate. The relationship with his victim developed from an attitude of professionalism, to playful mutual eroticism. Polanski seems to have been unaware at the time that he was involving himself in a criminal offense, an isolated instance of naiveté.” A criminal lawyer had said, “The family’s legal advisor probably realised that if a trial were to take place and she were cross-examined, the resulting testimony might reflect badly on her. If she’s ever cross-examined, there’s no way they can convict Polanski, not even if she appears in court with her hair done up in braids wearing white ankle socks and cuddling a doll.”

There even was a motion to have the girl examined by a psychiatrist and the judge was about to order it, until her lawyer intervened to determine whether or not this was a fantasy to determine, whether or not she was psychiatrically well balanced, weather or not she invented any of it, or lied for whichever reason. This was within the right of the judge, but as we saw, when it came to ‘her’, he gave her exception as the apparent ‘victim’, but not when it came to ‘him’ the apparent perpetrator, who ultimately was found a stable man with no ulterior motives or intent on harming her, by an unbiased body of officials, and ultimately dropped the psyche evaluation option. Maybe they should have, and we’d be a lot more informed about her own lack of judgement not to engage in sex with him. But of course, today’s child protection agendas see this in a very different light, and he suddenly is made guilty by today’s changed attitudes regarding such matters that were of no great concerns in the Seventies. He cannot be made guilty of the times, but people simply do so, unable to rationalise the huge era and behaviour differences.

I find it amazing that people keep giving her credence alone simply because of her age, and her [apparently to some oh so harrowing] accounts. To many on the other hand they simply don’t make any sense at the best of times who bothered reading it logically, while others keep blindly condemning him and those who don’t believe her simply for who they are [celebrities,] and for standing behind him. It would never occur to them that their belief in him is simply based on their better knowledge of the case and him as a person, knowing he is not capable of drugged rape and/or sodomy. Oddly enough, in that case he must be the only rapist who ever raped only once. Everyone knowing that’s impossible, they invent all these other victims no one ever had heard of. Fantasyland I call it. The haters easily keep calling supporters [rape and Polanski] apologists just so to feel better about themselves, when in the same odious breath they demand perverse punishments they’d love to execute themselves. Fame and earlier Hollywood notoriety have most certainly proven a greatest disadvantage to him, having caused irreparable damage to Polanski’s reputation, and with the passage of time and much overblown falsehood can only become more distorted.

Polanski never was convicted of what people would love to see him hanged, or a [repeat] sex offender, since he never was required registration or found guilty of any repeat offence. Unlike other [American] celebrities who never saw such hatred and kept on having stellar careers [like Rob Lowe and others], who played around with underage girls and even filmed it. Hence, regardless of Polanski’s original [and broken] plea, he is not a rapist by legal definition. He pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a minor of thirteen after five months of deliberations, but since she was underage, it was called statutory rape when it’s not actual rape by legal definition. Only forcible rape is. It is a very unhelpful misnomer people get hung up on ignoring that it means NOT rape but underage sex. The fact that the law thinks they have to protect children and teenagers, makes no allowance however that they still would do what they want, able to or not, and are much more knowledgeable in many areas than most parents/adults want them to be in any era. Many are much more mature than the law allows them to be, while others are not.

The fact that the law thinks they have to protect children and teenagers, makes no allowance however that they still would do what they want, able to or not, and are much more knowledgeable in many areas than most parents/adults want them to be in any era. Many are much more mature than the law allows them to be, while others are not. As the law currently still exists, statutory rape undermines the rights of both minors and adults to consent while costing the taxpayer thousands of dollars every year in the prosecution of senseless ‘sex crimes’. It is analogous to the dictated beliefs of a ‘society’, not the fact of two people’s unconditional rights to have sex without others’ intolerant moral and legal intervention ending in much more damage to many concerned. One thing that is for certain however is that Polanski wasn’t in any form violent with her, according to no words of hers to that effect, and that he had shown consideration to the possibility of her falling pregnant by withdrawing before ejaculating.

This is what Polanski said: “I found a little box in the bathroom with Quaalude pieces marked ‘Rorer.’ (That’s what she recognised instantly as Quaalude and told him after he apparently had asked what they are, while she later stated that she only had seen Quaalude on a ‘t-shirt’, [when she in fact told the Grand Jury she had taken some before and] volunteered to Polanski that her own sister once was institutionalised for Quaalude abuse and her mother took them too, since she told him she had filched them from both.) She took one piece. (And if HE took one but omitted it is irrelevant.) There was conversation about it, but there was no actual offer by me.” (And even if he had she could have refused it.) And he maintained, “I went to the bedroom (‘TV room’). She never objected. No, we didn’t discuss birth control there, we discussed them later in the car. (So in effect ‘afterwards’, she then turned into ‘prior’ to bring in the sodomy.) There was no discussion about her period. I withdrew before climax. (I.e., engaged in the classic coitus interuptus, since he didn’t have any condoms with him.) There was no discussion about what to tell her mother. (Which is always what the accuser would say they had been told.) The whole thing was very spontaneous. It was not planned.” Indeed, or else he would have carried condoms with him, since risking pregnancy was not his style – obviously, or else he’d had like a few dozen illegitimate kids. Some call this a solicitous act like his attorney had stated in his plea argument to avoid pregnancy, while others would call it despicable buggery if he had had anal intercourse.

Many people engage in anal sex and then it’s suddenly not called sodomy, but in his case of course, despite medical proof there was no anal sex let alone brutal sodomy. Rapists, let alone serial rapists, don’t concern themselves with their prey becoming pregnant. The medical evidence as taken from the court records showed that there was no [vaginal and or] anal trauma, but according to her statement, he even took her anally twice. That certainly doesn’t make any sense or sounds like the girl was unresponsive, no matter if it was only vaginal intercourse or anal he never admitted to, nor could it be proven. I find it amazing that so many people take this [double] sodomy for granted not having the first idea about anal intercourse. I suggest a look at Wiki’s entry, and not just blindly take her [uncorroborated] words for fact. Or here, to make it easier. The anus produces no sufficient lubrication for comfortable anal sex, [i.e., not even for ‘dry finger or sex toy play’] anal tissue is delicate and easy to damage, resulting in generalised ano-rectal trauma and anal fissures without the use of waterbased lubricant in sufficient amount or can make it especially painful and injurious. Damage is more likely to occur if intercourse is forcible or aggressive or if alcohol or other drugs have dulled sensitivity. Despite the fact that she claimed alcohol and drug use, none of the physical findings backed up her allegations.

A strong psychological factor as ‘fear’, or unwillingness, would increase the experience of pain during anal sex in the first place, and most people find it painful even if wanted and causes tearing and bleeding of the soft tissues and damage of the sphincter. Even passing a hard large stool the dimension of an average sized erect penis causes damage. Ergo, no anal penetration occurred. Only three weeks later she would have been fourteen, and the count of sodomy had been dropped, since it was only unlawful then to engage in anal sex with someone under that age when being more than ten years her senior. So, someone her own age may anally penetrate her, but not someone much older. Where the logic is in that eludes me. But of course, it is to prevent pregnancies rather than teach safe sex, and when men in fact resort to that kind of sex, are punished for it. Safe [spur of the moment] sex to Polanski was to withdraw before ejaculation, and not to sodomise anyone. There’s absolutely no logic in sodomising anyone to then still withdraw and ejaculate outside someone. It’s called coitus interuptus, and the fact that he didn’t have any condoms on him, unlike otherwise ever since being a late teen in fact, should also prove that this was a spontaneous act of casual sex.

Otherwise, how could Polanski manage to ‘sodomise’ her without any serious planning, her foremost having had an enema to be cleared, use special lube, have handy tissues, or antibacterial wipes for the rectum harbouring micro-organism that can cause infection unlike the vagina, (or some ‘amyl nitrate’ to ‘open up’) and most of all will and that even twice? It is highly unlikely that anyone can have anal sex without these preparations not to hurt, cause damage or mess, and soreness is the least one has to content with even if performed with the use of lube and would still show. If it had been his intentions of ‘going through her back’, which in itself sounds farfetched, he should rather have posed the question if she had cleared herself not to have any hygiene issues and hit on the brown stuff, not if she’s on the Pill and then sodomise her to avoid pregnancy. She stated that he had asked her if she’s on the Pill and that he therefore ‘won’t come ‘inside’ her’ because she said no. ‘Inside’ is inside, neither inside the vagina nor rectum. Now, since he in fact didn’t mention in his own testimony that he had asked her, but withdrew before climax for the lack of a condom, how did she expect not to get pregnant when she never said anything about being protected, unless she WAS on the Pill?

Years later she said, “He had sex with me.” Unprotected sex usually leads to pregnancy, surely not thinking he would in fact ask her is she’s on the pill, and/or expected him to withdraw before ejaculating. She clearly had sex with Polanski, yet made no protestations of not wanting to get pregnant any unprotected woman fears most, but rather gives us this dubious ‘I was afraid of him’ rather than any undesired pregnancy, especially if the sex is not wanted. Unless her boyfriend or her other sexual partners used a condom, Polanski however had not and clearly proves she was on the pill, or she’d in fact told him she’s not before he even asked her, and because she said she’s not and he therefore resorts to coitus interuptus, she can easily accuse him of the doubtful sodomy as an alternative to it. It might sound logical to have anal intercourse with someone to avoid pregnancy, but coitus interuptus in fact is the general practice to make sure if no condom is handy, since semen can still easily leak inside the vagina when ejaculating into the rectum, with the vagina very closely located to the anus. Besides, no semen was found inside her, so he certainly didn’t ejaculate into her no matter where.

Nothing she claims in regards to the sex makes any sense, and the argument that older men might have used coercion to have sex falls flat, since I doubt there never was any youth who would have done the same. This is true of all relationships in life and all power between partners must be negotiated, regardless of their age. Many think she might have been a pawn in this game her mother (or even in collusion with her mother’s boyfriend) had staged for her all these years back, and Polanski fell right into that ‘honey trap’ as some had called it. To many she was made to play the sex game with a very permissive mother behind her, and he paid for it after the law was called on him to make big waves in the end drowning them all. Many call/ed this sexism or of course accusing the girl of being promiscuous, which she apparently was according to some who knew her, or of course is just another excuse for him when stating things like that. That doesn’t make her in any form immoral, just very mature, at the very time for women to finally break free from [sexual male dominated] conventions and explore their own rights to sex. People who weren’t around then, should keep their pious sermons to themselves.

Ms Geimer had often enough said herself later that she wanted to get into the movies, that this was the whole arrangement with her modelling to begin with she later painted as him having ‘persuaded’ them, though the mother testified to the opposite after his own friend has told them he had asked him to look them up, and Polanski was just the right stepping stone. He never denied having intercourse with her, and the parole officer pointed out a noticeably provocative air on the girl’s side, which might have been another trigger factor of wanting to bed her. Maybe it was just simply a fact and people should keep their overemphasis of her virtue in the closet. His attorney had done his own investigations into her [sexual] history, and, after having unearthed more than the two people she had mentioned in her testimony she had sex with, had asked for this to be admitted as evidence. But of course, the judge had no intentions to support Polanski’s cause, and refused ‘to serve his pathfinding mission’, utterly ignoring the fact that she would have committed perjury. Nice justice.

Especially after the mother’s boyfriend, who was oddly never part of the witnesses, once picked up the girl after she was brought in for questioning again, and they both were in fact spotted by a clerk of the prosecution in a very compromising embrace right outside the prosecutor’s office while the mother was in fact inside with her attorney, both engaged more in what lovers do, with his leg between hers embracing with erotic connotations. In a crack in the door, the clerk saw them locked in a steamy, passionate embrace; not the avuncular hug of a grown man comforting a young girl, but an unmistakably erotic clinch. Her thigh was up against his crotch. That, coming from prosecutor Gunson’s own office, mind you, and Polanski recalled in his autobiography. Looks like the boyfriend had not only interest in her mother, but designs on the young girl too. So much for an ‘innocent’ thirteen year old just having been ‘raped’. The clerk in fact was so taken aback that he reported it to the judge. But of course, nothing ever came of it, at the judge’s ‘discretion’ not intent on helping Polanski’s case with such an important incident. Such report could have thrown out the case right there, especially after the medical reports and testimonies didn’t support five of the six counts, no matter Huston’s most helpful own statement was (of course) not admissible for the defence. The girl was spotted frolicked around with her mother’s boyfriend in the DA’s office, and after ten more years surely had no claims on ‘compensation’ anymore either after she had rejected all help for ‘physical and mental distress’. Why no one busted him for statutory rape is clear; no one called on the not at all blind law to see him behind bars. If the mother ever knew of this is unclear, but might just as well have been a factor for her later pressing for that plea deal.

Had Huston however been forced to ague against him had they gone on trial, his attorney would have motioned her testimony to be disregarded as compromised witness statement, since it was unlawfully coerced and rendered inadmissible. I wonder why the cop could in fact go on in his job, after basically threatening witnesses, and accepting corrupted evidence. It is noteworthy to add, that, had Polanski been ‘advised’ to pleading guilty to the one of the others counts, it would have given him a few months or years only depending, and for sodomy the most he would have received was one month on probation. So to say he pleaded guilty to the ‘lesser’ count of unlawful sex, is incorrect, since it was the one punished harshest then. But, since he had admitted intercourse with her, they decided on unlawful sex once rape and sodomy was excluded, and he knew exactly it could entail as many years as twenty at the judge’s final decision. So much for being a coward not wanting to face any punishment. He effectively had no clear idea if it could entail anything between one to twenty years as he was ‘advised’ of then. However, it is more than dubious why his attorney didn’t tell him that he actually could have faced as many as fifty years, had the prosecution demanded it, and that nobody at the hearing corrected him when Polanski pleaded to it. Another severe setback for justice and deliberate misleading.

His plea clearly states that he believed the maximum sentence was twenty years, and I’m certain, had he known it would mean the rest of his life, had not pleaded guilty but insisted on going to trial for believing he was innocent and much pointed to it at the mere findings. This more than obvious failure to let Polanski know what punishment he might have been forced to endure, shows very unprofessional counsel and residing judge Lawrence Rittenband obviously had no intentions on correcting them, which is clearly unlawful to leave the defendant in false beliefs of his coming sentence. Under Californian law, a plea may be withdrawn at any time before judgement, and of course, there never was any formal sentencing of Polanski and he still could withdraw the plea statement today since Rittenband’s intended absentia sentence was unlawful at any rate and the resulting arrest warrant unsound. Maybe a certain DA should explain why his office had accepted it in the first place and that it should never have been allowed. More grave judicial misconduct in Polanski’s disfavour.

Furthermore, while on the date of the incidence he could have looked at fifty years, March 1977, the penal code however changed on June 1st that year and California adopted a new set of sentencing laws that imposed determinate sentencing for particular offences. Although the new laws applied only for felonies committed after that date, it also had made changes to some committed before that date, for which Polanski had not been sentenced yet. Based on the change in this law, and because the incident occurred before that date, but had not been sentenced by June 1st, the maximum time he could be looking at today – on extradition and the prosecution demanding such a penalty – for unlawful sex is two years maximum on probation. However, since no one told him of that change either, and he had pleaded to max twenty years, that too is a grave failure of informing the defendant of such drastic departure from sentencing rules, when he believed the max was twenty – not withstanding the other ‘omission’ that he could have looked at fifty had the Attorney General so demanded, of course no one wanted before he ever pleaded.

The officials’ unbiased reports however, finding Polanski a mentally stable man without violent or devious tendencies or premeditated intentions in contrast are a positive revelation. Polanski was declared not a paedophile or sexual pervert by definition and evaluation, nor had groomed and abused her the way classified. Many people keep tagging him with these labels, obviously not quite familiar with their actual meanings. I suggest a dictionary. Or, let me help you out; a paedophile is an adult or older adolescent who sexually abuses prepubescent children, i.e., anyone under puberty, not post-prepubescent and/or adolescent teenagers. In short, girls who don’t menstruate yet, and/or very young boys. Their sexual interest is toward prepubescent youths only and does not include teenagers. Most paedophiles harm children mentally and/or physically, ‘abuse’ them for various reasons and is often based on an abused childhood, not simply ‘sleep’ with them, which is not a paedophilic marker.

Paedophilia has certain psychological characteristics, such as low self-esteem and poor social skills, which in Polanski’s case is obviously more than null and void. Paedophilic men have lower IQs than most, and I doubt Polanski will fit that picture either, or he’d not be a genius film maker who does everything himself before and behind the camera, was in charge of mega film and stage productions for decades. Regarding disinhibitory traits, paedophiles demonstrate elevated sociopath and tendencies for cognitive distortions, i.e. show anti-social characteristics Polanski never displayed either, or no one would have worked with him. Paedophiles gravitate towards children because they find their company less threatening than that of adults, and if that were the case with Polanski, he’d not be able to function in an adult world he has occupied since decades and worked with mostly adults on his films. He liked sex in general with females that suited his personality and they all look/ed alike too, he had a certain type that attracted him, and his current wife fits that picture as well, unless it was casual sex in the heydays of the Sixties and Seventies everybody engaged in.

Since she had sex before with others, it was apparently considered acceptable as we saw, and then it falls under the term, that, if the adult is less than three years older than the minor, no crime has been committed. These are called ‘Romeo and Juliet’ laws, despite the boyfriend actually having been four years older than her at that time. Curious that no one had held him responsible or at least fined him as the penal code had allowed. But of course, we’re not charging the boyfriend but the older man. Many suspect/ed Ms Geimer wanted to continue her ‘affair’ with him, but when the law was dragged into it against her will by the mother who learned of the sex (not rape) from the sister ‘pushing’ her to call the cops, it all went terribly wrong for both of them, her promising future career in the movie industry destroyed and his reputation forever tainted. Some suspected the bit-part actress mother since her overtures towards Polanski, or even her boyfriend at his own designs on the girl, were not too happy with that idea and he advised her to call a lawyer, and declare it rape. Why should she ask for the charges being dismissed, if he had seriously hurt her? Did she really say no, or was she forced to say so? Is she really the purely ‘forgiving’ type, or did she have other reasons to see the case closed? She stated it wasn’t rape, so it wasn’t, end of story. But no, the greedy public has their own twisted ideas as usual.

You’d be surprised how often Hollywood moms tried to ‘get an agent’ for themselves or their ‘promising daughters’ at all costs. But of course, in this case that cannot ever be. Double standards. What was sure however is that the girl was found in no danger, and he didn’t injure her in any form as per medical findings, and to her own words, and no one ever said that he was sexually violent. Surely the signs of a brutal serial rapist. We cannot condemn him for another mindset of the day after he pleaded guilty at no other choice, which fell in fact right on the day of his wife’s 8th death anniversary, August 9th. One can only imagine that this date was set deliberately to pain him some more, or was mere macabre coincidence. He did his time, and regretted the entire affair at the sudden nasty turn neither in fact wanted. When Polanski had romantic relations with Klaus Kinski’s daughter of fifteen for a short time in 1976 for their Vogue ‘Pirate theme’ assignment that ended with Tess in 1979 and she had started a liaison with Hollywood agent Moussa, that was suddenly fine then and not rape anymore. Indeed, Polanski had met her mother too and she was perfectly aware as to the nature of their relation, treating it with the usual more mature Continental approach to such intimate matters.

While Ms Geimer dropped out of school with sixteen and went off the rails with wild teenage boys to became pregnant with eighteen, to her own words, married and got divorced again with nineteen, Polanski had tried his best not to make her a mother and would have helped her into the industry through modelling despite her not being true model material, and her self-destructive behaviour was certainly not down to him either, but her own family. It has to be added that she underwent these more than intimate examinations in no distress unlike rape victims display, unable to suffer more intrusive violation, according to the male physician who examined her, present at the Grand Jury hearing. No rape victim lets herself be touched let alone ‘examined’ by a man, or afterwards goes across the road to get some fast-food as if nothing had happened, while the adults decided on what to do next. Ms Geimer admitted to having taken no shower, no bath, no enema, no douche, this according to her testimony, yet the physician couldn’t find anything indicating semen or saliva, let alone vaginal or anal penetration. She also claimed she had called her boyfriend, who came over and went into her bedroom. No rape victim wants to be near any other men, not even their own companion.

This entire case is a question of vastly dissimilar cultural views, era differences, personal situations and very shady legal wrangling foremost we cannot go by from our today’s standpoints. Europe was always more liberal and open to many things in contrast to the prudish and repressed American way of (sexual) life choking on their typical outrage where such liaisons are deemed immoral, and then still did/do it behind closed doors anyway the bigoted hypocrites they are. And of course, for those seeing it all their own twisted way, say Kinski was just another rape victim and Polanski a serial paedophile. Or maybe in her case they thought she was a slut suddenly when it pleases them. I highly doubt Nastassja had ever thought to be a rape victim or him a child molester and certainly was not immoral either out to gain fame. She was a classy young actress already and didn’t sleep with him to get the role of ‘Tess’ or have her photos taken by him, before Ms Geimer in fact. Shame she in contrast never made it into the same league for the interference of ‘adults’. And ‘laws’.

In an interview Ms Geimer once stated that she was angry at her mother for calling on the law, but then had accused him of all sorts of things of which most could not be substantiated, said that she cried after the sex, and that he had told her to keep it between them Polanski on the other hand refuted that, and if one goes purely by logic, there’s hardly any room for his misreading her continuous unwillingness after many women to call on able to read their signals just fine, and then suddenly seemed to have failed with her? I highly doubt that. In another interview she had said that she was ‘starstruck’ and therefore never said anything as to her reluctance to do any of it, which in itself is utterly contradictive, let alone in reference to her being ‘afraid’ of him. None of this makes any sense, and he said that she never gave him any indication of her unwillingness, or he simply would have let her be at that point. He said that she never gave him any indication of her unwillingness, or he simply would have let her be at that point. He had enough self-control and prospects of other offers, so there was no need to take advantage of this particular girl. Curious that all these accusers simply cannot see that perhaps simple attraction was the name of the game, and that many of those who slept with him might have fallen for him, even loved him. Or vice versa. Or of course just indulged in casual sex. I wonder why his wife is still with him after twenty-five years.

But no, in that case, they’re all whores or golddiggers and any female virtue is out the window as it suits them. No, he’s just an ugly dwarf no one can find sexy or love. You’d be surprised how many still do today. I call it jealousy. While Europe was willing to see it both ways, the high and mighty US was of the typical prejudiced mindset we saw applied often enough in various forms, and today again. Still only mainly the States were delighted that Polanski was rearrested, (other than many in Hollywood who knew exactly what went on and the Gaileys, and who did nothing other than Polanski but got away with it, or more liberal folks who had underage sex), while in Europe most are still appalled. Why? Huge cultural and social differences, dissimilar political views and more liberal individual perceptions the puritanical gun-obsessed States don’t need to accept, simply condemning others in their bigotry when they are of no more moral standards than them. Many mitigating circumstances were at work that day, most people don’t want to know of either. Europeans say the US is the biggest moral hypocrite, and have no rights to judge other cultures. That much is always true. This case was simply never that clear cut to begin with and cannot ever be judged by today’s cultures, politics, laws and personal views, or sociopolitical changes. And certainly not by fanatical prejudices or blind ignorance in general expressed on petty little haters’ blogs.

We know, Polanski only fled the law after the racist judge wanted to lock him up for decades suddenly to make an example of him as a famous and most of all foreign, admired and ‘Jewish’ or ‘Polish’ celebrity (the ‘Polack’) he wanted deported, while truly vile rapists face/d an average sentence of three to twenty years for violent or multiple rape depending on the degree of physical and/or mental harm done. The judge was removed by both parties’ attorneys and officially discredited after filing a statement of disqualification, listing down his unprofessional bias and plenty unlawful code violations, which even included an incident, that he seriously considered a call by a friend, that a UK paper claimed that a similar incident had happened to Polanski some time before in London. When the prosecution of all had already looked into that and found it a deliberate lie to goad on the judge, they had no other choice left to see him step down. Too late, since by then Polanski had fled, when they could have helped him better by challenging the judge’s misconducts at any prior obstruction of justice.

Defence attorney Douglas Dalton also alleged that on another occasion, Rittenband stated to prosecutor Roger Gunson and himself that he believed that the sister’s boyfriend had put Polanski in touch with the girl involved in the case for the specific purpose of Polanski having a sexual contact with her. Gunson advised the judge that his office had thoroughly investigated that possibility, and their investigation had concluded that there was nothing to substantiate that he contacted the family or the girl so that Polanski could have sexual relations with her. Despite this assertion by Gunson, in a conference in chambers, Rittenband stated to him and Dalton that he still believed that the boyfriend had made arrangements for Polanski so that the defendant could have a sex with the girl. So much for Rittenband thinking that Polanski indeed was offered the girl by the family, in exchange for a ‘career’ in the industry, called the ‘casting couch’ game. Looks like he knew that one. Fact is that the boyfriend asked him to photograph her, which he did, only to find himself accused of rape the next day.

After a colluding DA had pressured the mood and attitude fluctuating judge already to send him down for the diagnostic study, to establish if he’s a mentally disordered sex offender, and used it unlawfully as punishment, following his spotting Polanski in a photo taken during the Oktoberfest, he finally resorted to renege on the plea bargain they had agreed on just to save his public reputation. He was intent on declaring his ‘show’ sentence in absentia in a media spectacle worthy a Hollywood film on the postponed date of February 14th 1978 if Polanski wouldn’t return within ten days.  The judge was removed before that date, and Polanski’s plea stands. That was serious abuse of Rittenband’s powers instead of explaining things to the leering public, keep to the truth, not discuss it with friends, the whole case reeked of deliberate misconduct, in-chamber mock arguments even Polanski then was aware of and that the manipulative judge was intent on spinning out the case as long as possible to save his face at his Club. That was/is a very bad example of the in/famous US ‘justice’ system of then per se. Let’s hope it has improved today. Many have no faith in it and I doubt they are wrong.

Many people however still don’t know Polanski had served 42 of 90 days behind bars over Christmas and New Year, after the judge had allowed him to finish his new film abroad within a year to stay in the money. He had lost the previous project already over his arrest when the studios dropped him, and was about to lose the one he worked on. Another minor factor to avoid a costly trial was that Polanski had needed to carry all expenses, and to keep paying his legal staff. He also didn’t want to put the girl through the cross-examination wringer. So in effect, Polanski was forced into the plea on several levels and grudgingly agreed to it, since he in fact wanted a trial. He was effectively on probation during that time, but was recalled back to LA after ten months before he was released early on the recommendation of impartial probation officials, and his attorney had guaranteed him that was it. I read somewhere that people think he didn’t ‘want’ to finish his 48 days of psyche evaluation, but I doubt he had any say in that and could just walk out the door of Chino.

It is noteworthy to add that this sentencing was in fact also illegal, since such diagnostic period is specifically precluded from serving as a prison sentence. But, because the 90-day detention was mandatory and could not legally be appealed, it was the only way to insure Polanski would spend time behind bars the judge fully exploited. The ruling was opposed by both attorneys who argued that it was unlawful to use the diagnostic detention as punishment for a crime, but, Rittenband who had ties with the mob and was known to be a loose cannon, obviously didn’t care much for the law and no one challenged him, saying, “I’ll do it anyway,” while everyone had agreed on no custodial time. In fact, he seems to have been under the impression that playing around with his attorneys and most of all Polanski, leaving them in the belief that the plea bargain was to be upheld, and the time at Chino to entail his entire ‘punishment’, was for his personal fun and games since he never wanted to honour it to his own words but send him down for good it seems.

Polanski was suddenly faced with the prospect of many more years behind bars for this judge ‘changing his mind’, when the probation officials found Polanski of no threat and said that he should go free, and that is where he fled, since no one had advised him it could entail years beyond his death and surely had pressed for a trial instead. Of course, he read it in the papers but was told it wouldn’t be that long, and he could have appealed once Rittenband was removed. But, all he saw was another political persecution, false assurances that was his entire penalty, and decades behind bars with violent criminals who would have (had) him for breakfast. When he became prisoner B88724Z, all he saw was another Nazi camp no matter he put on a brave face and was kept separate from other hardcore convicts. The man never was, or is now even less, of any threat or challenge physically for any determined wo/man, and I’m sure even a ‘scared’ teenager could have done him serious harm. They are known to be able to brutally kill and rape adults. But no, Ms Geimer wasn’t really scared.

Polanski has proven that he never was any danger in all these years, yet many want him to have committed more heinous and obviously covered up crimes, pulling nonsensical phrases like ‘he’s a danger to society’ out of thin air suddenly. They don’t bother with current rape crimes but want to see him behind bars out of sheer spite, desperately in need of a reality check. Many say, why should he receive ‘special treatment’ now, when he never asked for it, but surely was gifted with it once the judge, who was a confessed swinger himself mind you, wanted to incarcerate him on public pressure and then deport him BECAUSE he was a Hollywood celebrity, BECAUSE he was an ‘unwelcome’ foreigner, BECAUSE of the impartial probation officials findings saying to let him be. Oddly enough, Ms Geimer stated in one of her dismissal pleas that she thought the 42 days at Chino were excessive and should not face any more, while the US thinks he deserves that measured in years. I wonder what makes them think they know better. Such represents a dehumanised form of justice, where even the adult woman is not deemed entitled to play a role in determining the sentence and her feelings about Polanski are rebuffed as irrelevant.

Another factor is of course, that prisoner rape is one of this country’s most widespread human rights problems, and arguably its most neglected and reprehensible, and no one calls for these ‘ordained’ criminals be hanged. No wonder Polanski doesn’t wanna know. Had he been some unknown poor American he’d been sent home with a slap on his wrist for underage sex and/or fined, like they in fact did with a few dozen ‘offenders’ right at the very same time. They would love to see him incarcerated like a terrorist, who in contrast are running around freely to do real damage. But of course, he’s a much easier target to malign than dangerous criminals or true paedophiles hiding out amongst us right now. Most likely at home with their abused children, who will never be heard because it’s much more important to catch and bring a harmless old man before any sanctimonious ‘people’s court’. Since it was, ‘people vs. Polanski’, they think it’s their ‘right’ now to demand his ‘severe punishment’ and even death penalty after all these years, with most not even alive at that time. Truly alarming.

Polanski was nothing but railroaded by a media hungry lawmaker then already, others called a ‘sociopath’ [Rittenband], who had a twenty year old partner when he was in his fifties and was into even younger girls than that too, according to people who knew him. Fact. He was seventy-one when he came across Polanski, and died in ‘93 aged eight-eight. But such truly giant age gap and ‘activity’ in his case was or is acceptable, I guess. Polanski’s sudden arrest in Switzerland was a disgraceful pacifier titbit thrown into the right-wingers court wielding too much powers on politics in the land of no hope and little glory. It suddenly proceeds with strident fanaticism when it comes to an old man wanted for an outstanding warrant over some unlawful sex even the now grown woman doesn’t want to hear of anymore, repeatedly asking the case be dropped. Any warrant should have been torn up right after the case was declared a mistrial, while political torturers and other criminals are shielded right now by the same mob and no one clamours for their extradition. How did someone put it so aptly: “Polanski is not accused of being guilty, he is guilty of being the accused.” Quite.

If one can believe reports, then a certain DA wants his head for personal advancement by locking him up again, while ironically, the US Congress harbours more criminals guilty of various crimes including spouse abuse than Guantanamo Bay. No wonder Polanski’s lawyers think he’ll never receive a fair hearing, or that he absconded, which even the prosecutor then didn’t find surprising and would have done the same too. Any man in his right mind would have bolted and to state differently is nonsense. Polanski wanted to continue working in the States and with the unlawful deportation threat simply thought enough is enough. Even funnier is the fact, that this other now retired colluding attorney from the DA’s office happily recalling how he had rallied and coached the judge against Polanski to psyche evaluate him, suddenly recanted all he ever stated in a certain documentary, and would in fact be in Polanski’s favour. But of course, since Rittenband is dead, he can just state he had lied with no one to corroborate his words, least of all the judge who surely would have denied them. The documentary helps make it absolutely clear that the rearrest of Polanski in Switzerland is not a case of justice being served, but political vengeance, after he had complied with all the orders of the court until the judge’s actions became so egregious that he could no longer afford to do so, and fled.

What Rittenband had stated about Polanski prior and later in public to justify this decision to renege on their deal, was found mere inflammatory racism and defamation and was/is simply unacceptable in general, and in fact unlawful. He kept asking journalists and others what he should do with the ‘Pollack’, which in itself is unlawful, let alone to discus any case outside the courtroom. Ex parte communications are strictly forbidden. The man thought he was above any law, and good enough the more intelligent attorneys didn’t think so after he had overstepped his jurisdiction they didn’t find sound nor legal and saw him taken off the case. The fact that other judges agreed to proceed with his removal is proof enough that he had acted dishonourably, and Judge Breckinridge who took over would have done a much fairer job, who, on the other hand still missed to perform his duty to investigate and most of all correct these unethical proceedings people of today love to ignore, and simply put the case on ice. Even he had failed to act on his own rules, but of course, other much more important cases had to be dealt with.

Polanski had fully cooperated, he had done all they had demanded from him, he had endured looking over his shoulder day in and night out once inside, and yet he found himself forced to flee the impending injustice engulfing him. Everyone would have done the same. The judge had effectively threatened him with either spending the rest 48 days behind bars and then self-deport himself, or will be sent down for decades and then deported which was not his call. The judge had forced Polanski waive his right to any future deportation hearing in which the director could challenge any attempt by US authorities to expel him from the country, which is unlawful to force on any defendant. If he had said, he wanted him to finish the duration, though hardly anyone was kept in for that long, to ‘recheck’ on their findings with different probation officers or psychiatrists, that had been within his authority, but not blackmail him into self-deportation, for ‘moral turpitude’ – as if none of the US citizens showed that. Even Ms Geimer’s lawyer had said that the judge acted unlawfully at no such rights given, or to force someone into deportation. Rittenband was issued with legal findings declaring that Polanski is not a mentally disordered sex offender after independent assessments and the medical findings not pointing to forcible rape/sodomy.

But, despite these recommendations of the probation department and the findings of two court-appointed psychiatrists, Rittenband ordered him to Chino state prison to undergo a ‘psychiatric examination’, after many months of being on probation to determine ‘appropriate sentencing’, and when he was released, they had already agreed on that being his entire penalty at no further time in custody. But Rittenband simply went against counsel and his limited legal authority, and demanded more time inside. Another more ‘hidden’ reason Rittenband had refused to uphold the bargain to free him on probation, was that Polanski could not withdraw his plea on any sentencing, but instead would need to appeal that sentence which could take months beyond any actual time served. Rittenband refused to allow Polanski to withdraw his plea and go to trial after Polanski gave the state/attorneys what they had bargained for: the certainty of conviction while avoiding a costly trial, yet the judge did not give the defendant what he was entitled to if he rejected the probation recommendation: the right to withdraw the plea and go to trial, after the plea was already unsound in reference to the 20/50 years discrepancy. But, since he’s passed on cannot be held responsible anymore for the wholly dishonourable dealings with the ‘Polish’ director. Shame.

Years later, Polanski had described the events as, ‘an abominable cat playing with [him as] a mouse for sport’. The callous cat is dead, but now even more vicious hyenas want him for dinner. The man factually never committed any crimes and led a perfectly law-abiding life in open daylight for decades, and I’m sure some wanted him to slip badly. But did he? No. For people to still ignore these facts or disregard that Polanski was a victim of wilfully illegal transgression, or to say how many more Polanski has abused and raped, when no such thing ever happened and no one else ever came forward to substantiate anything like that, this sort of lynch ‘justice’ attitude is just as inexcusable as it is dangerous. He’s a great humanitarian and has supported many newcomers to find foothold in the field of filmmaking, who obviously didn’t think him a capable of any of it, and when one points to these insider voices people think it’s emotional blackmail and that they all must be immoral to work with him. But that’s exactly the point; they know better and certainly are not morally corrupt.

But who cares about stuff like that the public hardly know of anyway, when it comes to mapping Polanski’s character, or that he supports several charities unlike plenty other much richer folks.  He might have put on a brave and rebellious face to get on with it, was a bit of a pain on his film sets at times to get the right results in occasionally rather unorthodox ways some ‘divas’ didn’t find amusing, but it surely dictated his entire evolution as it would be with everyone else on this planet. Every time someone approached him in regards to his ‘crime’ on a more hostile level, provoked him into any kind of reaction, all he did was coldly regard the person, till the coldness froze the other party into submission to retreat, when he could have taken up a fight, explain himself, which would only have served the aggressor, not himself. But another reason he hardly could touch on the subject in later interviews either, was the fact that during [any] proceedings or the following lawsuit which took ten years to settle, no one can discuss the case. So in effect, most of the time.

Only in more recent interviews he had said again, that he had apologised often enough to her then and the public on and off, and by now doesn’t have to satisfy [re/current] public opinion anymore when they know nothing of the highly léger times, the wider circumstances, her forgiveness and today’s siding with his cause, and the legal failings that let them both down. He never gambled away his money in the questionable company of prostitutes, and no one ever stated that he paid for sex. Polanski distanced himself from his past traumas by saying, “I’m not interested in [any of] it,” and is his one way of coping with it all, never having been free of [underserved public] abuse ever since Tate’s murder now over four decades ago. After the trauma of his wife’s murder, the disaster with the Vogue Hommes assignment, he began to change, and once separated from Kinski on friendly terms, he was more careful with whom he engaged, and when he met his current wife, he once more settled down to have a[nother] family, who has absolute trust in him and nothing to reproach him for.

I suggest watching the documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired from 2008, to get a new perspective, watch some old interviews and then mouth off against him again, if you still can. (This not being an endorsement and I wasn’t paid to recommend it. It’s free to watch on YouTube anyway.) In that documentary Ms Geimer claimed that no one had believed her story – and many wonder/ed why. He’s certainly not a child molester by legal definition and to many probably more virtuous, to the praise of his countless colleagues’, friends’ and neighbours’ own words who surely don’t all lie in his favour or are depraved to do so, than those trying to continuously smear him after this arrest simply ignoring the bare facts, and that it can never be ‘brutal rape’ no matter how much they want it to be. Either of their words didn’t mean much then, and don’t mean anything now. Where’s the human capacity to express understanding and sympathy for him suddenly, like in fact his so called victim had demonstrated year after year? People should concentrate on current affairs and express their dismay over war criminals like Bush, not any old sex case they never even heard of before.

Every time Polanski talked about what happened, he fell to pieces not out of ‘guilt’, but simply for not understanding the double standards applied to him so harshly, while others around him could do it and still do so as we speak, and oddly, no one seems to come to harm but him. Or her most certainly for other reasons. Many realise/d that ‘special treatment’ only happened because he was/is famous and rich, a holocaust survivor and most of all, a ‘Jew’ that again needs punishing relentlessly. They let others off the hook no matter how corrupt and much more degenerate and dangerous a criminal they are even operating as we speak, but call him a depraved monster never having harmed anyone. That’s why many rallied to his defence over this sudden arrest, defended his actions to flee, while others think he deserves to be shot, knowing nothing about him or the case let alone realise what is happening here.

What happened to benefit of a doubt this case has demonstrated more than once, or that people rather prefer someone found innocent than guilty believing in the good of man. Except in his case of course, despite many signs pointing to his innocence. Unfortunately, the case never went to court or he would have had a very good chance proving it. He conveniently is made guilty of things by today’s fanatical minds he was never accused of nor was ever sentenced for even then. They keep accusing the Polanski of today of acts as the Polanski of then he did not ever commit either way, or since then. He’s guilty of whatever they like him to be at this stage, not ever thinking he could in fact be innocent, and simply redefine these words to ensure that he has become guilty of all of them, even then. The bigoted public has successfully managed to turn him into a multiple criminal by default. Or rapist. Staggering.

Actual rape is widely considered an expression of anger or aggression and a pathological assertion of power by the rapist, he needs to maintain, and then escalate the more successful he was and got away with it. I doubt that ever applied to Mr Polanski in any form; he was a joker and charmer who wooed and loved women, their company and sex in general, he was not a violent predator out to overpower them, or we’ve heard of many more ‘cases’. There never was a ‘one time’ rapist, and assailants become increasingly reckless and violent over time. Where Polanski’s ‘other victims’ therefore are, is a mystery yet to be uncovered. Rape is an attempt to hurt and humiliate, using sex as the weapon. Rape is a premeditated act of aggression, not a spontaneous act of passion. One of the probation officers said, “The relationship with his ‘victim’ developed from an attitude of professionalism, to playful mutual eroticism.” Rapists are not motivated by ‘sexual gratification’, while all he in fact wanted WAS to get sexual gratification. Assailants overpower their victims with the threat of violence or with actual violence. Polanski has not done so, nor did she in fact say he had threatened her or used violence to ‘make’ her do any of it.

Rapists rape again, and again, and again – until caught. Has Polanski ever been ‘caught again and again’? I guess that’s a BIG no. But of course, in his case he’s the only rapist in history with only one victim despite all the women he had dated. Rape is a pathological force that cannot be controlled and needs feeding, and frequently sleeping with women is certainly not comparable. These repeat offenders always admit to seeking out victims who they knew would be unwilling so they could ‘conquer’ them, rather than attempting to date women who would be willing. Being accused of rape is one of the worst crimes that any man can face, other than murder or child molestation, and clearly one of the most controversial aspects of our legal system is how the person accused can have his face plastered all over the news or blasted in the media, yet the accuser can quietly remain anonymous. The name of both parties should remain unknown until the case has been dealt with. If he is guilty of the offence then he should be named. If she is guilty of committing perjury then she should be named. This is about men being named before it even gets to court. The damage is already done to him and she still remains unknown. Had Geimer simply admitted to the sex, nothing would have come of it, but the mother had her own ideas and it all went wrong from there.

Polanski dated dozens of women, and if he had in mind to rape the girl, or by all luck chanced upon a handy ‘one-off rape’ scenario, and I highly doubt he’s never been with a woman before on his own, there was no possibility for him to get Ms Geimer into the industry which was the whole idea of their photo sessions, let alone continue working there. Polanski would never have jeopardised his life’s devotion to making film, by violating a girl aspiring to become an actress like her mother. He in contrast had a very productive artist’s life in open daylight for decades, while she had destroyed their own future in that very competitive industry by embroiling him into rape accusations, when no one had ever cried rape before, or since. There is no such thing a ‘just the once case’ rapist and/or paedophiliac offender. Anyone believing that, has their facts badly twisted just so to make him fit their warped picture/s. Besides, if Rittenband had thought him a potential rapist, he’d not allowed him to travel across Europe to finish his film. He wanted to get rid of him, hence the self-deportation threat, knowing what it feels like to have a very young partner himself, after he had married an equally more than three decades younger partner, holding Polanski to his own standards of ‘moral turpitude’.

The psychological responses of genuine victims vary, but usually include feelings of shame, humiliation, confusion, fear, and rage, or retreat into themselves. That Ms Geimer expressed any of that as per her behaviour right afterwards as described by Polanski, other than the ‘sullenness’, i.e., her unusual rudeness towards Huston, was not evident. To be ‘rude’ to someone who had no part in it, other than show them her disgruntlement that they had been at the house without her knowing, drank her champagne, Ms Geimer’s rudeness is clearly a reaction to their having to leave. Not any ‘rape’. Had she appeared ‘ashamed’ to Huston, even that had made more sense, but the sex obviously was not the reason. Had she looked shocked as it would be after rape, clearly distressed, or even displayed unwillingness to be introduced to her, then her claims of fear had been more believable. Genuine rape victims experience depersonalisation or dissociation, feeling numb and detached, like being in a daze or a dream. Ms Geimer did not appear like that to Polanski or Huston, contrary to her original claims that she cried while sitting in his car afterwards Polanski could not witness to confirm her claim, rather stating that she was very animated and talked about her guitar lesson, Shakespeare and to see ‘Rocky’ the movie, on their way back home. There was no reason to make that up.

Most victims wanting to forget the attack, she however seems to have ‘remembered’ certain details that could never be verified or corroborated, by circumstantial evidence, Polanski or Huston, while Polanski told the court of certain things she never touched on, before she later told varying versions of the events in interviews getting certain details wrong, unlike him. Which however had nothing to do anymore with the actual ‘acts’ she downplayed more and more, but exactly these ‘minor’ details that made no sense to start with, or suddenly saying, “He had sex with me.” No genuine rape victim would say that or forget any crucial specifics and invent others in their place, but relive the exact assault through repeated thoughts, memories, or nightmares, display anxiety, avoid social life as part of the post traumatic stress disorder. I highly doubt that Ms Geimer suffered any of these symptoms either, other than claiming an implausible string of events, especially in regards to Huston, what happened in Gunson’s office, her later engaging in self-destructive activities with ‘wild boys’ as she called them herself, to ultimately drop out of school with sixteen. Ms Geimer told Polanski that she first hung out with the ‘good people’ at her school, before she joined the ‘bad people’, who were a ‘fun crowd’, drank, popped pills and defied authority as she put it. Taking that from her own lips, she of course never mentioned it to the Grand Jury and later said she never had taken Quaalude and simply took the piece of the one Polanski ‘gave’ her, or that she went to bed with her boyfriend ‘right away’. With a family background of Quaalude abuse that is simply a lie, especially since she had even recognised the one found in Nicholson’s bathroom.

None of this was Polanski’s influence at that time in any form, she later painted as if it was all due to Polanski’s doing or that she felt she was ‘compelled’ into doing it, but her mother she was angry with to have called on the law against her will. Ms Geimer got pregnant with eighteen, divorced, and moved in with her mother on Hawaii suddenly with a child and no father, to become pregnant a year later again and remarried. It’s not only that she wants the case be dropped, but the charges; meaning his guilty plea. No rape victim would ever demand that, now with Polanski’s extradition looming over his head and a chance to send him down. Contrary to people’s erroneous belief, Polanski never ‘blamed’ Ms Geimer for her engaging with him in the sex, unlike many perpetrators, attorneys and even judges came to practice, blaming victims for their own attacks. See Rittenband. Hence, Gunson’s unwillingness to let her testify and rather went for that fatal plea to end it. If only. Just like they had blamed Tate’s murder on herself. Or rather Polanski, in a very disturbing show of media extremism and demonising abuse unheard of. He never called Ms Geimer a whore either, but said in interviews back then, that she was a nice girl with experience. It’s all on film. The extents of falsely reporting and false rape accusations are disputed, and a study from the UK found that figures on false reporting used by journalists have ranged from 8% to 50% depending on their sources. A low number would undercut our belief about rape being as old as sex itself, with mostly young women claiming that their consensual encounters or rebuffed advances were rapes. If the number is that high, on the other hand,  advocates for women who have been forcibly raped worry, it may also taint the credibility of genuine victims of sexual assault. Statistically false accusations are somewhere around near a quarter. One in four cases. A fact feminists like to ignore.

And what about the statute of limitations? According to Californian law then and now: ‘it [only] permits prosecution of unlawful sex within one year of the date on which the identity of the suspect is conclusively established by DNA testing or within ten years of the offence. Furthermore, retroactive application of current statutes of limitations violates the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution, and thus should eliminate any possibility for prosecution of a crime committed before the implementation of the extended [ten year] statute. Or, if it may aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in at the time it was committed.’ Ex post facto laws are expressly forbidden by the Unites State Convention. Furthermore, article 11, paragraph 2 of the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights provides, ‘that no person may suffer any penalty heavier than what existed at the time of offence. It also adds that, if a lighter penalty is provided for after the offence occurs, that lighter penalty shall apply retroactively’.

I really wonder how all that is applicable to a thirty-two year old case, which never saw any positive DNA ‘identification’, after Polanski submitted his guilt under the rules of the plea bargain, which was legally unsound to begin with [at no maximum term declaration of his coming sentence and] once it was reneged on, when a certain DA trawants to pursue this case intent on applying current laws, plus ignored the SOL to begin with. Furthermore, once Polanski pleaded to one count, all other counts become subject to the statute and not pursuable anymore after the ten years. But of course, in his case, they can make another exemption, and I’m sure the DA will hit on massive [il/legal] obstacles soon, since he of course never bothered to seriously study the case properly. Other than wanting to exploit the case, the legal transgressions and ignorance shown throughout the decades he knew of, will seriously put a wedge into his intentions. When Polanski once stated that he had faith in the US judicial system to rule fair, convinced to be innocent, he sure as hell found out just how victimising the oh so civilised US could be towards ‘unwanted’ foreigners. Or ‘Jews’ – though Polanski is not Jewish.

For three decades the DA in fact had known about the misconduct of Rittenband in this case and the sentencing agreement with Polanski. Still, the DA refuses to admit to these facts and has misrepresented them to both the courts in California and the Swiss government. Even after the Court of Appeal had called upon Cooley to immediately address these allegations, regardless of Polanski’s custody status, he has not publicly done so. Politics seems to be interfering with the just administration of the law, and the fair and equitable operation of the US justice system, and should be disqualified from further representing the People of the State of California in this matter, and because of a statement DA Cooley has made in an interview printed in the Criminal Law Journal, quoted as saying that the legislative initiative process in California ‘has been whored beyond belief’, and that the Victims Bill of Rights Act of 2008 may have unintended consequences, citing Ms Geimer’s efforts ‘to cause the conclusion of proceeding against Polanski without further punishment’. That is polluting the case outside a courtroom which is unlawful. But Cooley was never one to stick to the law, or rules, with his crooked track record.

The fact that Switzerland of all ‘neutral’ places decided to sell out Polanski after its own Zürich film festival had invited him to receive a life achievement award, was more than disgraceful and calculated to humiliate him suddenly, treating him like a dangerous terrorist. The authorities could have pulled him at any other time in his own Swiss Chalet several times a year, and apparently had tried to apprehend him a mere five times in all these decades. Despite feigning offence at Polanski’s absence from California, the DA has never sought extradition or other relief, knowing, of course, that such relief would require litigation of the misconduct in this case. Until now. The Swiss even contacted the US first to basically mis/use him for their own political reasons, since Switzerland’s real motives for its extradition move was to get the US to be more lenient in its IRS investigations of a major Swiss bank (the UBS), which helped Americans tax-evade in Switzerland by using offshore accounts set up by UBS bankers. Polanski could only be ‘apprehended’ on an underhand subterfuge in exchange for their banking deals. In August 2009, Switzerland’s federal government reached a deal with the US that at the time was expected to see the Swiss transfer some 4,500 names and data of clients to Washington.

The Swiss government subsequently entered negotiations with the US, in order to reach a deal on the transfer of data given the previously strict banking secrecy laws, and this is where Polanski comes in, they then ‘offered’ to the US to go easy on their clients when they heard he will appear a the film festival. After Polanski’s arrest, the head of International Law at the Swiss Foreign Ministry said: “We’ve reviewed the agreement with the United States. If a demand is filed in good and proper form, Switzerland has no choice but to comply. Otherwise, we would be violating our international obligations.” Of course he failed to mention that the ‘demand’ could never have been made by the Americans had the Swiss not tipped them off. A series of emails obtained under a public records request, show that Polanski’s arrest all began with an urgent fax sent by the Swiss Federal Office of Justice to the US Office of International Affairs on September 22nd. The fax stated that he was expected in Zurich and asked whether the US would be submitting a request for his arrest. The tip-off was passed to the DA’s office, and DA Cooley immediately began drafting an international arrest warrant, since Rittenband’s original bench warrant was rather ‘outdated’. So much for shameful politics at the costs of a law-abiding citizen having paid his own taxes all these years without fail.

Odd too, that none of the parents of the plenty teenagers or children he had met privately or worked with on his film sets over the years, had no reservations of leaving them in his company. It never was a question that he would ‘abuse’ them, no matter how many out there want him to be a paedophile, and I’m sure they had the better insight as to his trustworthy conduct with them. It’s amazing how people simply ignore these facts, delighting themselves in throwing around these accusations not ever having met the man. All they see is that he was the brutal predator out to drug and rape her from the start when that never was the case either, and wasn’t the only photoshoot they had done together after he had known her mother for a year already. It is indeed ludicrous to say he lured her there, since this was part of an official assignment for a French magazine, no matter they denied it after the fact of course to distance themselves from any scandals, but Polanski hadn’t even seen any contract or payment for his 1976 Vogue edition until the glossy jet set mag was on the newsstands. Polanski had no need to violate anyone no matter his reputation to be a ladies man and to like sex, and it was the Vogue Hommes editor who had pestered him to do another feature, and they decided on young girls from all over the world.

I in fact own the special Polanski Vogue Christmas edition from 1976, which has a special feature on himself as the artist with childhood portraits. While his artful pictures of Kinski within a lush Pirate setting taken on the Seychelles, to promote expensive perfumes, jewellery and other luxuries, right at the very end there is a double page ‘Vogue promotion’, of four extremely young girls far below the age of puberty contributed by another photographer. All standing next to each other utterly naked safe for a fig leaf substitute of a pink flower with it’s distinct yellow curved stamen pointing out in place of a miniscule penis, it serves no other purpose to promote anything but some overly pornographic images of headless nubile girls for a ‘respectable’ fashion magazine not even directed at men unlike Hommes. So for today’s Draconian minds to think this was unheard of, or that was child abuse or meant for paedophiles when even published in the US, they have to rethink very hard. People of today seeing these provocative images give them a lot more serious thought than they were given by the magazine editors who initially ran them, more concerned about how much revenue would be generated by featuring nubile teens. In fact, had it been ‘child porn’ people erroneously today believe it was, they had indicated Polanski on that charge – they did not – since any other photographer taking [even full] nude pictures of teens and children in erotic poses in those days for any number of posh mags, never was either. Only today people think they were all paedophiles – when that’s utterly off the mark.

How ironic that his current wife singer/actress Emmanuelle Seigner had posed for Vogue Hommes in 1994, whose former editor had betrayed her future husband seventeen years earlier by first denying that they had an assignment with Polanski. Shown all in the luscious nude, photographed by another artist who took artful photos of clearly underage girls in the Eighties and Nineties like many others had, like Polanski would have and maybe even later again, even his very own wife, this man shot his pretty muses in a variety of nude and clearly sexual poses or in scant outfits, exploring ideas of ‘innocence, sexuality and gender’. Exquisite and austere as such ‘innocence’ can be depicted, and unlike in Polanski’s case who intended the every same, yet none of these ‘artists’ were ever seen as ‘paedophiliac exploiters’ while catering their own brand of evocative nude images of beautiful nubile girls exclusively to the male populace. Polanski’s was part and parcel of this libertine spirit of then, and his own considerable and well-documented success in photography and film, or of course with women, had a lot to do with the fact that he hardly appeared older than a teen himself throughout his early to mid years for his sprightly vivacité and diminutive stature, and even with sixty hardly looked forty, for his general charms and earlier naiveté, his hunger for life.

One factor which is important to understand is, in those days men didn’t consider ‘seduction’ as ‘rape’, as long as it wasn’t done with physical or verbal force. Polanski having evolved with the times to abandon such attitude had later publicly acknowledged his mistake of having slept with her, and she had later declared he hadn’t harmed her, which is exactly what the officials had arrived at. And what is most telling is that no one else ever came forward to cry rape over the decades, after plenty of women to call on. But of course, the lesser he’s what today’s public wants him to be, the more they are the judge and jury over something and someone they have no relevant concept of, lock stock and barrel in their self-righteous calls for ‘justice’, and to ‘pay his debt to society’. What ‘society’? ‘This’ corrupt and hypocritical society, who lets others get away with truly disturbing acts? Where even more alarming online paedophilia is rampant, now that these ‘respectable’ magazines have outlawed harmless nude photography, comparing him with mass murderers and depraved long-term abusers like American Garrido and monsters like Fritzl? The perverted mindset of these people is truly astonishing. None of this can be judged by today’s views.

Let’s not forget that the Seventies was an era of very relaxed attitudes towards sex and drugs, and nude pictures, having less conscious ideas about possible child abuse or [s]exploitation of women. Unlike in the US, where pictures of scantily clad girls in glossy magazines were the work of the devil, though they oddly did and still have explicit porn magazines like Hustler, while in Europe such publications hardly found such reactionary demonising reception. Polanski’s own attitude was integral part of the time and he simply had no idea to take pictures of nubile girls for a foreign magazine or to sleep with any was suddenly ‘wrong’ to OUR morality standards of TODAY compared to then. They all did it then. Some men weren’t too keen on him or his sexual escapades, or prowess, while the women in contrast were, as we saw – it’s called jealousy and natural attraction. He was seen with stunning females, he had affairs with stunning females, and he married stunning females. It’s sheer envy, nothing else.  Let’s not judge either of them by the here and now over something there and then many of today were not even part of. I was, being in my late fifties. And, if anyone thinks teenagers of today don’t sleep around with older men, or women, should get a reality check. Kinski’s husbands were all much older too, and Geimer’s current husband is twenty years her senior and no one bats an eye over that. They both were into older men in general.

Another fascinating facet I have noticed repeatedly being stated over the years, based on what appears personal opinions of him and insider knowledge of the case, that, having anal sex wasn’t Polanski’s thing at all, because it was too ‘homosexual’ to him and not his preference at all. Though he didn’t treat any non-straight person differently, he just didn‘t like this sexual practise for himself, let alone do it to anyone. I’m sure many a woman could either confirm or refute that and would be worth investigating. And he of course never admitted to it. To his own words, he many times too, purely sought young women’s company while not engaging in any sex, just listening to music and chilling out. He was not the most famous man for commitment, but he neither mistreated his women, and Sharon accepted this at their mutual understanding. Kinski was perfectly happy with him for years even during his ‘affair’ with Ms Geimer, and his current wife seems to be perfectly happy with him too, but this of course utterly defeats the haters’ idea of him being unable to be a loving husband and father. While they called/ed other virile men sleeping around with young girls and women playboys, they curse him a paedophile.

One other thing they all failed to do then, was to bring in other witnesses to deliver testimonies as to either’s characters – and that of the ‘ambitious’ mother foremost. Even the girl’s older sister, the mother in fact didn’t ‘offer’ to him to her own words, but the underage, the innocent looking one, saying he would prefer the ‘younger’ girl. The ‘provocative’ and pretty one, knowing of his reputation. Of course, since the other daughter was over age. It is noteworthy to add, that according to some who knew her, the mother had decidedly signalled to Polanski that any romantic overtures from him [towards herself mind you] would not be unwelcome. Another curious turn was; her mother, while being asked what the girl had said on the phone during their shoot, after Polanski had called her to tell her they might be late and that they were at Jack Nicholson’s house, she backtracked to add, “Before she went, she had indicated to me that she ‘didn’t like him’,” at which point her own attorney cut her off to strike her remark as hearsay from the record, and Ms Geimer in fact never said so in her own statement. Polanski had stated the girl was relaxed, that she had told her she was ok, and that she didn’t want her to pick her up, which she in fact said herself in court. Looks like the mother made things up as she went along, to give ‘credence’ to that curious development of her increasingly illogical being ‘afraid’ of him.

Had they gone to jury court, the case would have been thrown out and the girl found guilty of perjury. Or the mother and sister of perverting the course of justice. Many people don’t want to hear of such finger pointing, but on the other hand think everyone in Hollywood was/ is immoral and sleeps around to get their next part, when it pleases them. But not in this case, of course. The first thing Rittenband in fact said when he heard of the charges, was, “What is this? A[nother] mother/daughter hooker team?” Maybe he was closer to the facts than were revealed. But alas, no, it never went to trial to establish any of that and public image obsessed Rittenband had Polanski plea guilty to what he did, after they had no case of rape he didn’t like at all and resorted to simply rescind their deal. She would have cracked under more rigorous cross examination, just like the poor rape victim Rittenband just had tormented with relish days prior the attorneys wanted to avoid. The judge had grabbed the case because it promised him more clippings for his scrapbook, and because it would give him plenty of grist for his daily lunchtime conversations at the Club.

But after he began catching heat from his Club buddies over his jailing of the rape victim for a five-day contempt term on her refusal to talk, which was illegal under Californian law, but who cares about any laws, the pressure would only increase and he decided he made his own law, for this ‘victim’. And ‘the little Pole’ Polanski. I’m sure she had more attention than she wanted ever since, or monies from her story. She kept shielding her mother, who, according to insiders, had a reputation of trying very hard to get her daughter a modelling and/or film career, and Polanski apparently was not the only man she had left her daughter to unsupervised and under dubious circumstances. Rumours of blackmail were rife and when Polanski came along, he was the perfect victim to be exploited. Some even said that she had lied about her age, in order to stay anonymous, since at her school everyone would know her real age, and if it says the unto then unidentified ‘victim’ was thirteen, no one would suspect her. No one is sure if any of this is fact or factoid, but now it would be completely different and none of them would crack anymore, after years of practice in the limelight and decades of further exploitation and hazy memories. So much for justice.

This entire mess has to be re-evaluated from an impartial legal standpoint now, since, had the disgraced judge played by the rules, Polanski wouldn’t have panicked for his very unpleasant past experiences we cannot simply ignore either, and we’d not be talking this case still today in any form. He had served his time and that was that, end of story. But no, someone in a black robe played god and we have to pick up the pieces of many deeply affected lives, again. In fact, if you hadn’t been there in the Seventies, you have nothing to say. Even less without the will to grant him final justice, and not blind intolerance, not even considering of giving the evidence the slightest credit not corroborating the girl’s statement. People of today seem to suffer from the delusion that salacious teenager photography was never heard of, while in the Seventies Playboy, Penthouse and Vogue featured several even younger girls in erotic poses, and even the US was busy touting films like Taxi Driver and Pretty Baby, both about underage prostitutes and older men.

Another problem with the persistent one-sided media coverage and most of all people’s blind acceptance of the ‘evidence’ given by the girl is, that they all treat it as incontrovertible facts of the case, when her version was never challenged in any jury court on the behest of the mother. The other five counts therefore still remain only allegations, not ever proven, and Polanski is guilty of nothing but what he pled to and fleeing. Furthermore, the questions asked to Ms Geimer in the Grand Jury, (which is a panel of ordinary citizens, very much as in a jurors trial but larger, wide open to prejudice against the accused since all they hear are the accuser’s allegations and biased public/own opinion for the prosecutor to decide on the indictment charges) don’t appear to have been asked by her attorney in a very ‘challenging’ way. The jury took a mere twenty-three minutes to decide this is a case for trial, despite having heard the medical findings not supporting her claims. Her mother’s statement was also cited in the probation report, saying, “I don’t want to see him in jail. I want an assurance of remorse. I want no unreasonable publicity. I want to keep our anonymity.” Sorry? She was a TV ‘actress’ people knew, and willing to sell her daughter to a fancy French men’s magazine, to become famous, be photographed by the celebrated Polanski, but didn’t want any ‘unreasonable publicity’? Curious paradox on how to keep your anonymity that way, when the girl had already one TV commercial to her own name.

Apart from the fact that Polanski showed enough remorse and apologised dozens of time, this case was long ‘closed’ until that ambitious LA judge reopened it some years back and the two parties came together to put it to rest. Of course, Polanski never returned to the States for a possible hearing and in 2003 didn’t pick up his Academy Award for his powerful masterpiece The Pianist either, for understandable fears of more judicial transgressions and the case couldn’t be settled. When The Pianist was up for several Oscars in 2003, the incomplete transcripts from the Grand Jury testimonies, i.e., only Ms Geimer’s ‘partially selected’ claims were floated online by the DA’s office to boycott it. Polanski still won the Oscar for best director since [most] academy members are very conscientious about their vote and distance themselves from any jockeying of position and name-calling. His international arrest warrant was only signed in 2005, and the celebrity bloodhounds started gearing up again with more media fabrications out to get him, each time they need/ed some celeb for the bored public to demonise. The original US arrest warrant outstanding since 1978 had failed to apprehend him at no urgency and judicial unsoundness, and the US formally requested his extradition on October 23rd 2009. Of course, if the States would succeed in their extradition efforts, which I highly doubt, Polanski’s lawyers would simply appeal and the case could drag on for months.

The more Polanski or even Ms Geimer pleaded the case be dropped for years now over many reasons, the more the LA courts simply won’t for more than dubious reasons, rather than prosecute violent criminals and tackle all the recent rape cases left ignored. Another funny thing is, this judge fully agreed that the case showed ’significant illegal misconduct’, yet didn’t bother to dismiss it. Another Rittenband in the political making who wanted to conduct this case in the glare of live broadcasting à la Simpson  and Jackson, and that is why Polanski declined to step foot back onto US soil. When he was arrested in ‘77, it was in fact against the attorneys’ wishes, who would have merely cited him before court. But the officer in question who has a less than clean record to show,  didn’t care much and had two other plainclothes officers with him to apprehend him in public. When Polanski was arrested last year, it took a whole nine, yes nine strong and young officers to take the oh so dangerous old man into custody. Like a terrorist. Disgraceful. The more they demand his crucifixion, the more it is because this case holds all the classic signs they love to hate: Jew=racism, [though he’s actually a French national and his parents were agnostics, not Jewish] fame and money=envy, and most of all, ‘sordid sex’ they can drool over. According to insiders, it was a very different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything we’re being told now the media can’t get straight. True. Plus, there’s the usual anti-Semitic swing of the press and the idea that this [‘pure American’] girl was being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s what people called him – the story is very different now from what it was then.

During the 1970s, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and [Polanski’s own] producer Robert Evans were celebrated for lifestyles of sexual extravagance, see ‘playboys’. Unlike Polanski with the stunning females, these were never criticised for their sexual excesses, but Polanski was condemned even before he pleaded guilty and today is called a paedophile. Anti-Semitism is [still] very strong and his prosecution was and still is motivating by anti-Semitism. He was also a foreigner. He did not subscribe to ‘American values’ and to his ‘persecutors’ that seemed ‘unnatural’, while their own could do the same without being demonised. As we saw. Like Errol Flynn, who stood trial for statutory raping two underage girls in 1943, and was acquitted. He was treated differently because he was a swashbuckling heartthrob, not a serious ‘psycho’ film director. Charlie Chaplin too, had several affairs with underage girls, and even married one. He was eventually ousted for being a Jew, though he actually wasn’t Jewish, not ‘moral turpitude’, like Polanski. French navigator de Champlain’s wife was twelve years old at the time of 1610, and the so called prophet Mohammed’s wife was apparently only nine. That’s far below any adolescent development. Would anyone consider them ‘paedophiles’? I doubt that. But only because they’re not from our ‘time’ when the Seventies isn’t the era for many of Polanski’s detractors either, but they vocally keep bashing on about today’s child molesting issues that have nothing to do with this case of thirty years ago.

Jerry Lee Lewis’ third wife was only thirteen years old. Did anyone bust him? No. Kelsey Grammer, star of ‘Frasier’, long-term drinker and cocaine abuser. In 1995, authorities decided not to prosecute him for statutory rape, and a Grand Jury declined to indict him on two charges made by the same seventeen-year-old girl. Michael Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy’s son. In 1997 he was exposed for statutorily raping his children’s fourteen-year old babysitter, and then attempting to destroy her when word got out. Did he get busted? No, he went into alcohol rehab and soon later died in a ski accident. Don Johnson, ‘Miami Vice’ star, at fourteen, Melanie Griffith moved in with the actor who was then twenty-two. Johnson has never voiced any concern about the wisdom of having an affair with an underage girl. Did anyone bust him for statutory rape? No. John Derek, whose wives got progressively younger to the point that he had to escape to Germany for a time until Bo had hit age of consent, and they finally returned to the US. Did Derek face any statutory rape charges on his return? No. On April 12th 2010, a twenty-three year old former model (and others) had accused action star Steven Segal of using his film ‘assistants’ as ‘sex toys’. She filed a lawsuit claiming sexual harassment, illegal trafficking of females for sex, failure to prevent sexual harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination and false representation about employment.. She alleges that Segal and his co-workers along with the production company ignored her repeated complaints and the assaults continued, including a ‘vicious sexual attack’. Will corrupt DA Cooley send him to the slammer? No. So much for double standards no one cares about. But I guess they’re all Americans and ‘Hollywood’, Polanski hasn’t belonged to since 1974 after his masterpiece Chinatown.

And let’s not forget ‘The King’, Elvis, who would end up with his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia of his drug abuse, and polypharmacy the cause of his death. Polanski never became a drug addict, or alcoholic like him. But Elvis, while he was twenty-three, also started going out with Priscilla when she was fourteen, underage I believe, though not in Germany where they met, and I doubt they never engaged in sex before they would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla says that Elvis refused to have sex with with her until they were married. Really? Elvis was a womaniser, like Polanski, and another biographer writes that they slept together on their second date, and that she was not a virgin when she met him. With 14? Sounds just like Geimer to me, and that was in the late Fifties mind you, when Polanski was dragging his ‘Two Men and a Wardrobe’ across Poland. In her book, Priscilla writes about how she was ‘nearly raped’ by one of Elvis’ friends during a ride back to her house. She says that Kurt (not his real name) was asked by Elvis to give her a lift home, but, while she was ‘dozing off’, he left the main highway onto a dirt road and attempted to kiss her and then threw her down the seat. After fighting him off and attempting to get help by hitting the horn and flashing the cars lights, she says that he must have feared being caught and decided to stop assaulting her. Now THAT sounds much more like a ‘lewd act’ and ‘forceful sexual assault’, ‘being afraid’, and, ‘giving some resistance’, saying ‘no’, And in fact, succeed, to ‘stop’ him.

Funny thing is, the Germans concentrate more on the legal misconduct side when talking about the case today, after they were the first to send Polanski hate mail then, while the US plays hypocritical witch hunter out to burn him at the stake for political gain. What the French think about the sexually repressed US warmongers is obvious: vive la Polanski! What’s new. Though the Swiss maintain that they have tried several times to alert the US, they never had noticed when Polanski was in the country? How only could they have ‘missed’ him family and all, while he openly visited there many times to stay for weeks. Just like Ms Geimer had missed calling on Huston for help. Funny thing is, Polanski owns Swiss property since a whole forty years now, ever since Tate’s death. But someone obviously wasn’t too happy with his coming in fact very very close to having the case dismissed and he promptly was arrested. It’s about time this case is closed for ALL concerned, but not by locking Polanski up for more than he was ordered and had served then and now, or senselessly vilify him beyond any common sense and logic. So far, the States have failed to extradite him, and is most likely down to this entire case having been a legal sham once Rittenband had called for his head and other judicial ‘obstacles’. In mid October Polanski was reportedly removed from the Swiss remand prison to be taken to a public hospital for an undisclosed medial condition, most likely depression, and later returned.

On November 25th, the Swiss courts have finally granted Polanski bail, (4.5 million US Dollar, 3 million Swiss Francs or £2.7 million) and while the States have until December 23rd to force extradition, the Swiss Ministry of Justice has no intentions to appeal. Unlike in the States where bail money needn’t be paid in full, Europe handles this differently. Curious however, that in the US they let a finally recaptured murderer at large for years out on partial bail for half that amount only recently, a clear danger to society. Or, ex murder suspect and ex fugitive, and currently incarcerated O J Simpson, who was charged with multiple felony counts in 2007, including kidnapping, assault, robbery and using a deadly weapon, and had bail set at a mere $125 000 despite having fled before and only needs to serve nine years, while a thirty-two year old sex case requires full bond and house arrest after no repeat offence let alone gun point robbery, and could have looked at fifty years. So much for a more than very ‘special treatment’ of Polanski. His original bail bond was $2500 in 1977, ca. £1300 then. So much for a very steep increase of his ‘value’ to the States. Or at least the subservient Swiss in their name, who apparently have a more than conservative anti-Semitic right wing swing in their current politics.

The Swiss authorities have seized his passport not to go other than home to his cherished family under electronic surveillance, and believing him a reckless ‘flight risk’ at his advanced age and responsibilities is ludicrous, since he has to think of his family and film and is simply too old to risk any of it. Besides that, he’s not that rich to forfeit such high bail bond, unlike many people think or want him to be. For now, it seems the US courts are willing to accept a hearing set for December 10th, he wouldn’t need to attend in person. He’s safer where he is at any rate. On December 4th he was finally transferred to his Chalet Milky Way in Gstaad to begin his house arrest under private security. He is under no police protection or obligations other than stay within his property where his family has joined him without any incidents. Besides, the repetitively inane US argument that he needs to be present in person for any hearing is now moot, since he is under house arrest.

Ever since he was allowed bail, Interpol had issued a Red Notice alert, an international wanted persons notice, at the request of the US Department of Justice, urging the globe’s law enforcement communities to do all in their power to make sure that the Swiss judicial process is allowed to run its course, and if Polanski defies the conditions of his release, no country should welcome, offer safe haven to, or defend his conduct. How ‘noble’ of you Mr American Interpol Secretary General to be so heavy-handed, rather than bother with dangerous terrorists and murderers. Also, extradition must be refused if the individual whose extradition is requested has already been tried for the same offence, which is the case with Polanski, and stipulates that he shall not be detained, proceeded against, or sentenced for any offense committed prior to surrender other than that for which extradition has been granted. But, on November 30th, I found him on the list of ‘Red Notices’. If one reads what his ‘offences’ were, they are in fact noted as ‘crimes against children’. While that can mean anything, it is not only incorrectly plural, but his added reasoning for his immediate apprehension is as hyperbolic as it heavy-handed, since it should state, single statutory rape charge, or of course one count of unlawful sex with a minor, since the term statutory rape is never used in the courts. But who cares about any facts.

Ironically, Mr overzealous Interpol was awarded the Légion d’honneur by the French President, who in fact had a hand in persuading the Swiss to grant Polanski bail. The fact that many knew of the case and suddenly fell silent, but not into his back unlike some, is more than curious. But, maybe the President knows something we don’t, especially since it needed a president with quite some clout to persuade them to grant bail, and has definite airs of political power games by now. After the three judges residing over his dismissal case on December 10th didn’t come to any conclusion, the Swiss have announced as of December 16th, that they put the extradition proceeding on hold until next year. They obviously don’t want to rush things, when it comes to deciding over the future of a law-abiding man who could face further illegal proceedings. Unlike the US asking for extradition fast-tracking at their command, who in contrast are notoriously slow to extradite a wanted criminal to Europe.

Oddly enough, many people see his extradition as a forgone conclusion, missing the fact, that there are several important issues currently still unresolved. First of all, by law, Poland and/or France should have been made aware in advance of any pending arrest. It seems in their overzealous rush to execute the international arrest warrant, the US failed on that part, and wouldn’t be the first time either, or, to tell her or her lawyer of their efforts to extradite/arrest Polanski. Representatives of both Poland and France and Ms Geimer have publicly claimed they were not aware of any such action. Not doing so may very well invalidate the arrest and deporting him would then constitute an act of [terrorism or] kidnapping (in UN terms). That having ‘succeeded’ as it was, he is neither in any pretrial remand prison any longer nor free as bail in fact allows even for captured murderers. He is under house arrest after bail was granted at an extortionate amount not even dangerous criminals need posting in the US.

House arrest has been used since ancient times as an alternative to criminal imprisonment when [their] safety could not be granted, often imposed upon people who were either too powerful [politically] or too influential to be placed in an actual prison. Rulers, religious leaders, and political figures, or today’s ‘celebrities’, whose imprisonment might spur a revolt by loyalists and/or of course the usual blind haters, would be confined to their homes where they could live safely but without any influence other than through their lawyers. House arrest also refers to electronic monitoring programs (paid for by the detainee in fact) in which an offender is sentenced to home confinement instead of prison, since this type of sentence is a cost-effective and humane way of detaining people who pose no threat to others and consequently do not need to be imprisoned at the state’s expense. Nice – but murder suspects can go free on bail.

Furthermore, there are rather unclear passages in the Swiss-US treaty. Since Polanski was made to sit out a term of 42 days, but to some it apparently never came to any actual sentencing for Rittenband’s judicial transgressions, yet everyone else believed his term at Chino was it as so agreed on by all concerned parties, under the treaty extradition requests can only be made for when the US wants to (a) prosecute someone, or, in case they fled, (b) for the escaped person to sit out the remainder of this term in the US, as the US maintains is the case. Since Polanski had been successfully prosecuted, then that request would apply to the remaining 48 days. However, under the treaty, for judges to take the request into consideration, the detainee would have to be facing a jail term of six months or more. Polanski was never officially convicted, as only pleaded guilty before he did some time months later, that plea was reneged on, his entire sentence would have been three months the officials cut in half not to entail more time, and is unlawful to say one thing and then do another. Since he never was sentenced in absentia nor officially to probation, we find ourselves with a legal loophole in the treaty that could be exploited and he could be extradited to face not his flight, but a retrial. Let’s see if the Swiss will spot it.

The US could seek to commute the 42 days US and 70 days Swiss jail time, which amounts to roughly four months, exceeding the 90 days Rittenband had in mind, whereas the by now, January 12th, over two months house arrest, apparently cannot be counted. While we know the prosecution didn’t press for any jail time on the family’s wishes, the judge in contrast was more than willing to send him down for the rest of his life after threatening him with the 48 days and self-deportation, while violent rapists cannot be imprisoned for half than what Polanski in fact thought was the maximum he might face for his unlawful sex offence. In fact, they continue/d refusing to sentence Polanski in his absence for unknown reasons. In 1997 a certain LA judge was preparing a deal with Polanski’s legal team, which would be based on the original plea deal, and see Polanski’s time at Chino turned into time served and he would be released on bail. The deal fell through because Polanski refused to allow the proceedings to be televised. However, his legal representatives can bring this up with the Swiss judges as a sign that the US are not, seeking extra jail term. The treaty in fact disallows to even ask the Swiss to extradite anyone who was to be sentenced less than six months.

While a certain ‘ambitious’ DA, i.e., Steve Cooley could argue, that his extradition relates primarily to the prosecution of fleeing justice, if Swiss judges would accept an extradition request for one crime (fleeing), when it is clear that the real reason for the extradition is the original charge brought upon Polanski, and is the one for which they truly would like him be extradited is another question. Even if the US were after him for evading ‘justice’, there’s the unresolved issue over the judge’s judicial misconduct, and that this then directly led Polanski, having had his right to fair proceedings denied, to flee US soil. The continued claims by the judge that judicial decision can only be made when Polanski himself appears in a US court, a decision which itself is currently being appealed at a higher court asking for the judge’s motivations as to what exactly prevents a judgement being made without Polanski being present – nothing in  fact – will also weigh in Polanski’s favour. Besides, in order for him to be convicted of fleeing, the charge has to appear on the extradition request but in fact doesn’t, and is of course the DA’s ‘hasty mistake’, since he would love to try him for all the dropped counts too, but can’t once a plea was struck and only that one count can be sentenced.

Polanski himself was able to successfully sue a US magazine through UK courts conducted from a French hotel studio in 2005 via video link, which most likely triggered his international arrest warrant, so there is no reason why he could not be tried in a Swiss or even French court without him ever needing to re/appear in the US. Others have been deported to their native country by the Swiss to face proceedings led by the US. There are several appeal opportunities for the original verdict, which then go to the higher court, and then another higher court dismissing that, before it goes back to the lower court only to end up at the higher court again for an ultimate appeal. These will be highly technical and longwinded discussions, where it is likely that any lacunae in the treaty and in Swiss law will be heavily scrutinised. That’s a lot of lobbying, appeal possibilities, and in general, a very lengthy extradition procedure, which could take years beyond Polanski’s or even his original attorney’s advanced age. At this stage, Polanski is a political pawn trapped within legal wranglings between sovereignties, fuelling pro and contra lobbyist battles to satisfy the greedy public, while much more important cases are put on hold.

The legitimacy of the extradition request has major flaws to start with. The very aims of criminal law are usually stated as revenge, deterrence, punishment and rehabilitation. Revenge is universally accepted as illegitimate. In Polanski’s case, none of the legitimate aims seem applicable, since he has not committed any crimes in the three decades he had been living in France and Switzerland, no matter how many haters claim he had or will commit more heinous crimes. The objective of ‘deterring’ him from committing a future crime therefore carries no force either. Nor do punishment and rehabilitation seem applicable, since both are meant to be salutary, not vindictive. Their purpose is to enable the prisoner to return to society and to function in a social setting without committing more crimes. Since Polanski has been living in Paris and Switzerland for three decades as a law-abiding citizen, made films in open daylight in other countries more than successfully and no one considered him any danger, those objectives do not come into play either. What remains is revenge. True justice is the backbone of any civilised society, but, with biased journalism feeding the public more lies to sell more magazines, justice has all but become obsolete.

After it had been reported that the three judges who rejected his dismissal on December 10th on the grounds of the ‘fugitive disentitlement doctrine’, which effectively prevents fugitives to argue their case without re/appearing in the US courts, that was a very sly way of getting around any dismissal for good and only dragged it out even longer. But, if the Swiss would decide on extradition, he can appeal against that too. As of Christmas, after certain parties had a closer look at the shameful backroom dealings and broken promises by the late judge, said they were ‘disturbed’ that the attorney’s office had not addressed these and other accusations of ‘profoundly unethical conduct’ by a certain former prosecutor Rittenband had colluded with, they expressed their dismay and suddenly offered him a possible ruling to be sentenced in absentia, where the integrity of law and justice are more important to uphold than to seek any individual’s punishment after all these years for his offence or fleeing, who had already served his agreed time. Lo and behold, a full 360° U-turn.

If Polanski accepts this deal many indeed welcome, he would have to write a letter asking the supervising judge to proceed without him. In effect, now the 42 days stretch at Chino could be accepted again as part of the original sentence, since Rittenband had ‘mis/used’ it as punishment rather than ‘diagnostic’ already, plus, his 70 days stay at the Swiss remand prison, and will even exceed the original 90 days by three weeks. Suddenly we’re back in 1997 when the judge had offered him the same, had he only not wanted to play Rittenband – live – and it all could have been resolved long ago a second time over. Less painfully, damaging and vindictive. Let’s hope that certain DA will be prosecuted for his reprehensible misconduct then, and his ambitious modern day version thoroughly humiliated for his heavy-handed arrogance. Maybe then he’ll finally get cracking with the current rape cases to keep him in office.

If any case was as controversial as tragic for both parties, then this is the one. Good for a very melodramatic movie too, right in the vein of his own films’ poignant themes of overwhelming tragedies, political intrigue and corruption. If he’s lucky, he can do it himself and I for one wish him all the best, his family, and Ms Geimer. If you however cannot share that graceful sentiment, maybe you should think twice before calling for the noose by understanding both parties wanting to pull together to end this, you have no right to deny them, or again the wider picture they haven’t painted is bound to let them drown for the same reasons of shameful ignorance, scandalous political manipulations and detrimental public hatred we have enough of in this indeed so corrupt and bigoted world already. Of course, the haters ‘hate’, it’s their life, void of love and compassion. Funny how Polanski himself never became a hater, having been exposed to much hatred throughout his entire life, all expressed in his films, which the haters hate even more. Or his success. Besides, after thirty odd years he’s far past all his sexual exploits ever since he settled down again, and a different man altogether since many years. He long has evolved along with the times, and said himself, that his recklessness in those days had caused himself much heartache and ultimate rethinking.

The very strong-willed entity which has survived many tragedies and shocking public abuse since the murder of his second wife that is Roman Polanski, must be kept separate from the tormented artiste besides, no matter his deeply psychological and uneasy films are the creative and painful mirrors of his personal, his very traumatic past par excellence, showing the perverse powers of man over man and their traumas suffered. His powerful portrayals of rendered powerless people being sucked into uncontrollable terror and ensuing paranoia, is of pure genius and a clear reflection of his and all our lives many cannot escape or control. Next to black comedy and absurdist cinema filled with perfectly picked bizarre characters, thrown together by circumstance as a brilliant concept of situation voyeurism, which has surreal allures to the later Monty Python genius. As a filmmaker he is exceptional in his ability to produce works with a disturbing mood and atmosphere of suspense that is impossible to replicate. His hallmark is to utilise seemingly everyday events and situations and then expose the undercurrent of evil that lies beneath; he explores the thin line between madness and sanity with compelling expertise and intuitive mastery. Polanski once said, “Fantasy is always going to be successful, it keeps people’s minds out of an often painful reality”. That’s what so many do in his case – prefer their fantasies they have about him.

“I like shadows in movies, I don’t like them in life.” The shadows that had engulfed him for so long in his life, have never left him. Unlike those in his own movies, one can simply switch off. His very early work marked by random violence done to random people in random situations, is as innovative as it shockingly realistic. Had he lived a less tragedy riddled life, his diverse art would no doubt be less absorbing and controversial. In that respect, we have to regard his critically acclaimed work with even more esteem, and that he literality suffered for it and onscreen besides. Even engaging in his very own little stunts, or bloodletting. His visual trickery and unusual hands-on approach behind the lens left many breathless and with much deserved praise, to achieve a different, his very own cinema of black humour and black tragedy. His much inflated notoriety sadly having overshadowed his bold work at times, with recurrent themes of obsession exposing the dark side of wo/man many simply won’t acknowledge to exist, it all too often has been confused with his own character as it suits them in contrast. And to quote him: “My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instinct, but in a disciplined way.” Indeed, and his moral integrity has been found more pronounced than in most people.

Of course, many scenes were undoubtedly taken from his own life, as seen in his gory Macbeth or the haunted Tenant and the riveting Pianist, but they don’t lend themselves to blindly ‘mis/judge’ him as a person. Only what this person has seen and suffered. And he had seen rape, brutal and irrespective of age committed by the invading Russians, had seen brutal violence and death. He had seen dead bodies strewn everywhere, body parts, and killed and suffering animals half eaten, with screaming victims on both sides of the bloody war that was WWII.  He had witnessed cold murder in front of his eyes as a child, and when he was eight, a Nazi soldier just passing, took a pot-shot at him just for fun, but missed him, maybe deliberate, maybe just to scare him since he could have ‘tried’ again, and he hid out in the fields deep into the night scared stiff. Then he was attacked by a fellow man as a teen out to rob him and left for dead in a bunker, with a fractured skull. And, if one might believe some sources having repeated this, has a metal plate inserted in his skull ever since. And, according to a journalistic source regarding, the attacker had in fact raped him for good measure, who was later hanged for multiple murders in Krakow and only Polanski had survived his killing spree.

Since Polanski only mentions the attack in his autobiography, but leaves out one or two other fairly important accounts he had stated otherwise publicly, one can only speculate this harrowing assault to be true, and maybe didn’t want to be reminded, let alone do it to someone else. Polanski saw what pain and violence was and did to people, he would never do it to others. And, he had seen and felt extreme pain and great hunger like many had then, and only endured it by escaping into his world of art and film. And, he had almost died again in a car crash with his driver friend in the Fifties leaving him with another fractured skull trauma, drifting in and out of consciousness once at a hospital. And he had seen blood. His own, and that of plenty others. He had smelled it all around him, even in his own home many years later after his wife and friends had been butchered, and every time one speaks of Sharon, the pain returns to his eyes. Yet he had survived these horrors, is a very private and loving, complex and tortured man, who expressed these experiences in his art to stay sane, protect his feelings. But then all geniuses do, or those who had experienced such atrocities unfolding before their eyes, only to be tormented some more by blind hatred and jealousy.

He is someone who reflects his inner world through the eyes of his pioneering and utterly uncompromising artistry, as he unflaggingly deflects his outer world through a face of inscrutable nonchalance, not to suffer its more than unjust and brutal dealings with him. After dodging Nazi officers, his mother was gassed at Auschwitz and father sent to an Austrian concentration camp but survived, Polanski bounced from filthy shelter to uncaring foster families, to hardly any school to film schools in a culturally restricted communism, the national and international events that influenced his rising fascination with film. His father had paid a family to look after Roman and he was moved from one place to another doing anything he could to survive. There were times of play amongst the ruined buildings of Poland with other children, yet he would always be a witness to brutality and depravity as the war continued and scenes of inhumanity. He had to forage for food like so many, was left to his own devices, and later had recurrent nightmares of his traumatic past deep into adulthood. These scarring events inevitably created this intense and egotistical shelled up character to survive it from the ‘outside’, resulting in his inability to invest emotionally in [older] women and endurance of more abuse.

He taught himself languages and everything related to film into absolute mastership. He fashioned himself into this pleasure-seeking artist obsessed with film making, perfectly cemented by his eternally youthful looks and diminutive stature, attracting the right followers with his immense sexual charms and ‘foreign’ joie de vive. Women loved him for his love of women, his childlike fascinating with film and story telling, and his unprecedented talents. He is a tragic figure of his brutal childhood legacy forced on him, which he redesigned as best he could, played his charades as a youth to take himself out of the harsh reality. Only to end up with indifferent uncles who mentally abused and occasionally lashed him with a belt until he screamed in pain and tears, for his daydreaming to endure the misery around him only to receive more. He never really received any vital love from anyone when it was most important, let alone his cold father and shallow stepmother who never were around much later, while constantly seeking more casual sensual pleasures later as compensation, especially after Sharon’s death that had finally struck a fatal blow.

His is an incredible paradigm of shining survival, his keen instinct and iron will to defeat all odds that made him as expressive as an artist, as hypersexual as the man, so that no one could touch him deeper emotionally, or hurt him again His is an amazing example of the tragicomic masks and safety barriers of hedonism he set up for his self-protection to suffer no further ills, shrugged off all seen and felt horrors and pain not to hang himself one day, recreated his own world around the cruel world that never gave him a break from day one, lost in endless challenges and tragic tribulations. Ever since Tate’s shocking murder, the US most of all suffer/ed from dangerous but typical delusion that Polanski was and still is fair game to be ab/used for any blind crusade of moral outcry, and believe that absolutely nothing of his life should be accredited, and to smear him mercilessly should be an honourable duty whenever possible in their gloriously self-righteous self-obsessed Puritanism. There is sadism behind Puritanism, cruelty behind these damaging anti-sex laws that enforce it with perverse relish to punish something that should be enjoyed without guilt.

His films are a clear expression of his own evolution as a man and/or filmmaker already, that of the sexual times, and his own extremely complex background. Though not strictly ‘autobiographical’, he used his characters as a projection of his eternal guilt of survival, who then will either perish or prevail. His overcoming his own traumas by first childlike/rapidly maturing (war/ghetto) distance, then ‘swinging’ overconfidence and superior skills/knowledge, and then total ignorance to public opinion once settled down finally are all clearly there, or in his interviews most don’t know of either. He doesn’t owe them anything. On the contrary. Going from the surreal, paranoid and claustrophobic Tenant to a suddenly beautifully serene and landscapesque Tess, the themes of misconceived exchanges between ‘young and old’, culture and belonging, are always present in his films, which ultimately goes wrong for them ending in either tragedy/inanity, or maturity/survival. Just like his earlier lure of the younger flesh was rather interest in how a young women could be vulnerable and vengeful at the same time, with the capacity of cruelty. As seen in the dark vision of Repulsion – and Geimer’s real life case.

His restless mind gave form to his disturbing celluloid fantasies to reflect his unprecedented experiences, as he gave his willing body to those who wanted it, to deflect his fragile feelings that could leave more invisible scars. He knew many exploited him, only to be used by even more shallow publicity seekers and the ever more abusive and downright nasty media. Even Huston said he’s a depressed man, and his probation officers. I’m sure they knew better. Ignorant people keep believing only her old story despite no hard proof and her later continuous pleas to forgive him. No, in fact the only proof they had already then was that the medical and circumstantial evidence didn’t even support her allegations she later more and more came to downplay, saying amongst other things, “He didn’t hurt me. (Indeed, since dry [double] sodomy DOES hurt and rips you apart, so much for that already unproven allegation.) He wasn’t forceful. (Just like his evaluation officials had stated.) It wasn’t rape.” Quite.

I’m certain people instinctively gather that his past had shaped him, like it would any man, and that’s why they’re so adamant to dismiss it as important factors to explain his predilection for younger woman. If people keep denying him his past and/or ordeals, then NO ONE else’s have any significance either, and I’m sure no one would accept that for themselves. He is a visionary enfant terrible of past times everyone wanted and desired, and then simply destroyed once he broke their bigoted conventions and dared their narrow-minded morals. There are simply too many too quick to judge and too slow to walk in the other’s shoes not even being half his age, and it’s about high time to stop the public hangings and blood lust from ignorant and sanctimonious moralists, or obsessive ultra feminists who by now openly called to boycott his films in a pathetic show of McCarthyism witch-hunt fanaticism. Voices like this or demanding sickening punishment or even his death beyond any common sense, are redolent of exactly such fetid Nazi sentiments, and must be replaced by sympathetic voices of reason and justice, not blind revenge. People saying, “Just tie him up in a prison for a year so he can be raped repeatedly and then kill him,” are simply put, scum, blindly condoning worse crimes than the one they think was committed. Alarming.

The sum of a man’s life has to be weighed by the balance of ALL he did, and any objective consideration of Polanski would more than qualify to make him eligible for clemency compared to countless other people, or those calling for his castration and whatnot other painful tortures. Whoever takes no charity in his life, his own suffering, speaks of and demands such insanities done to him, is all but void of the tiniest shred of kind humanity. All civility murdered by irrational hatred. Ms Geimer in contrast has that gracious compassion and important understanding they all desperately need to acquire, to let it finally rest and stop the insane demonising and persecution by people who have absolutely nothing to do with either of them. Let alone what they both had shared, and the only thing Polanski said he regretted, was what happened afterwards. Of course, as one might expect, none of the media reports ever mentioned anything to his defence, let alone that the medical evidence would throw serious doubts on the [double] sodomy claims, despite the fact that they were readily available online. The same applies to articles that claim that she never changed her version of him having all this done to her, but neglect to mention that she in fact went back on her own words more than once and is of course to maintain a one-sided picture.

It’s nothing but a concerted effort to mercilessly smear him, omitting vital facts, manipulated by the DA’s office that ‘allowed’ floating her testimony, to precondition the greedy public, which is blind enough not to question them, the timing, his sudden arrest, her continuous pleading and inconsistent interviews. With all the renewed attention, apart from the endless stream of incorrect and wishful thinking headlines and comments like, ‘convicted [and/or confessed/admitted sodomy] (and/or drugged child or even baby) rapist’ [or of course the favourite, paedophile] or the usual contemptuous slur not allowing any room for his side, of course some publication was bound to post pictures of his family out and about in Gstaad within dubious and the usual inflammatory context, and he is suing several French magazine now over breach of privacy. He might be immune to his own continuous public abuse, but when it comes to his children and wife he will strike out. According to the law he still has a right to privacy, especially since he is staying with his wife and their children. According to the editors the pictures were taken on public land outside his home, but French [or Swiss] privacy laws still prohibit paparazzi photos taken on public beaches [for possible nudity] and in shopping malls, other than their private property obviously. The lawsuits asking for ca. £700 000 ($1.1 million) will be heard January 12th.

As of December 28th, Polanski has finally broken his silence. Through a French friend, he published an open letter on his journal to thank his plenty supporters from all over the world, and according to the typical derisive comments, it looks like the dumb haters hate that even more. Poor souls. Ms Geimer stated often enough that she would like Polanski freed and forgiven, and so should you. For now, a court representative said an LA judge has scheduled another hearing for January 6th, to convene a status conference on the case. The judge did not say if he would schedule an evidentiary hearing, to determine whether there was misconduct by Rittenband or prosecutors and others during the original proceedings, but hopefully will if he doesn’t want to face the same allegations of procedural improprieties, or all those still alive got away with it. He suggested two legal options that could lead to his freedom now: file a motion to be sentenced in absentia, or drop the extradition fight, return to the US and be sentenced in person, most likely not resulting in additional jail time. I doubt Polanski will choose the second.

As of January 7th, Polanski’s lawyer have presented a letter from Polanski, saying, “I request the judgement be pronounced against me in my absence,” which was dated December 26th and signed in Gstaad. The Superior Court judge accepted the letter, but said he wants to see legal briefs to be presented by January 15th, stating why sentencing Polanski in absentia would be appropriate, for the DA’s chance then to possibly appeal against that by January 19th. Now the next big question is, what his possible sentence could be, and another hearing is scheduled for January 22nd. And if he were to either sentence him for longer, Polanski’s team can in fact appeal against that again, or have the case reopened [if Polanski withdraws his plea], which no one wants, and while the Swiss still ponder his extradition, according to a spokesman, it could be January or even February before they will come up with any concrete decision.

This entire case is one big mess ever since Rittenband had his own ideas, and as of January 8th, Polanski’s lawyers are seeking a quick ruling on the absentia request, for a potential witness, who was not named soon to become less readily available to the court. Since only Polanski, 76, and his original attorney, Dalton 80, are both of very advance age by now, it can only be either. Unless it’s the colluding DA about Polanski’s age to die any day, Wells, or the original prosecutor, Gunson. But the judge also said that there is no rush, since any statement could be recorded ‘for posterity’. True, and a good sign that judge Peter Espinoza takes his time and doesn’t want to repeat his predecessors’ ‘hasty oversights’. If that would be Dalton, his loyal fight to clear his client however has failed, unless the judge truly wants this retried to give him that very chance as he had stated, and in fact should. But Dalton has a son working on the case alongside him who could take over.

Espinoza has the ultimate authority to withdraw the court’s approval of Polanski’s guilty plea, whether or not Polanski himself requests him to do so, and can reject his absentia request the same. So let’s see if he does so, which is the only way to prove his innocence. If the dying party would be Polanski himself, which I doubt, it would be just another tragedy striking, if he were to leave us and his devastated family at the very event of a final ‘judgement’, left a most tragic figure of terrible miscarriage of racism fuelled in/justice, after dubious allegations by a girl sitting before a sympathetic panel giving her highly equivocal accounts that were never tried in any court to be substantiated, and the following disturbing public abuse hardly anyone has ever suffered. Funny how people vocally protest racism motivated treatment of others, but in his case of course couldn’t care less happily doing it themselves. Of course, it could be anyone else, since the ‘grave illness’ of the ‘witness’ is not necessarily age related.

According to a ruling as of January 13th, Polanski’s lawyer who handles the lawsuits, announced, his right to privacy was violated by photos in the French press, which showed his family and him  upon his return to his chalet in Gstaad. They were an invasion of his and his family’s right to privacy, since, under the house arrest terms he has the right to actually leave his home to venture out within his property, not only stay inside his chalet, but of course, with the media vultures hovering around, that would only cause more trouble. The man is effectively a prisoner in his own home. Many delight themselves in that fact, while others find it more than disturbing. Funny thing is, no one cares about someone like the former President of Israel, who was accused of much more serious rape and sexual harassment, who committed two vicious assaults on his subordinate when he served as Minister of Tourism in 1998. Or of course anyone else, publicly known or not, committing serious crimes right now under their very noses. The shady history of this notorious case is entirely based on her never seriously impugned testimony, and no one ever challenged it. And it’s obvious why they’re hounding Polanski now [again], and none of their own [celebrity] criminals; he’s not ‘American’. It has always been a racial issue people simply don’t realise.

As of January 16th, Polanski has been awarded one of the lawsuits against the French press, and the others will be ruled on later. The LA prosecution team has lodged their own brief as to why Polanski should not be sentenced in absentia, so let’s see how Espinoza will handle their arguments by next week, since he can take them into consideration, but not as any directive. Time, and most of all too many people have not been kind to Roman Polanski, and in a most unsettling way, the once so human belief of innocent until proven guilty never occurred to many in this case, just because a less than credible thirteen year old, whose boyfriend had testified that she ‘always acted’, had cried rape and sodomy, both of which could never be proven by medical evidence even then, or in any trial that never was. And if Polanski will be really sentenced in absentia, those who believe/d her highly unsound statements, will never cease to see him as this sordid child rapist he never was, while those who don’t, will forever lament that he did not, or could no longer, take up a last chance and fight for a new trial to finally exonerate himself.

Now as of January 19th, after the Swiss had requested that the prosecutors’ account of the case be ‘totally transparent’, including a description of claims of wrongdoing by officials, which they obviously failed to do, no surprise there, the treaty between the US and Switzerland clearly states, fugitives who would serve less than six months in jail are not subject to any extradition. Looks like Cooley has no first clues after he thought Polanski’s plea was ‘airtight’ when it was not, or that the other counts are back on the table, when that would only be after his plea were withdrawn by a judge. But of course, he knows exactly what went on and simply tried to tweak specifics for the Swiss, since he was already thirty when the case broke and in the course of becoming a by now very bent DA even the Californians want to get rid of again. Polanski has been in prison now far beyond his original 90 days Rittenband wanted, and his house arrest cannot be counted. Unless he Swiss let him go, he’s stuck in limbo. Cooley & Co is playing his sick game again – for reelection, and the prosecuting DA Dave Walgren, is no better with his ‘child rapist’ rhetoric. So much for Polanski having once more been proven right, that the US ‘legal’ system is corrupt to its very foundations. It’s happening again.

As of January 21st, Ms Geimer announced that she too wants Polanski sentenced to time served. As if that would make any difference. Let’s see what Espinoza will announce by the 22nd. But, whatever his ruling, it would have no immediate impact because either side would likely appeal his decision, ending in more time wasted. As of the 22nd, Espinoza rejected the request by Polanski to be sentenced in his absence, just as I thought, for one being unable to judge on a case he never heard any defence of, and insisted that he must return to LA. After the usual mud slinging between the DAs, of which highly unprofessional Walgren complained that Polanski’s lawyer Chad Hummel kept returning with arguments that had already been rejected, i.e. the failure to supply the Swiss with all the facts, and then some, he referred to Polanski with a litany of names. Calling him ‘this criminal’, which he so far hasn’t in fact been officially declared, ‘this fugitive’, which is the only thing he’s guilty of after his plea, and his favourite, ‘this child rapist’, which he of course had never been found guilty of in any form, he however drew a deserved rebuke from Espinoza finally, warning him, ‘that this [behaviour] is not helpful’, and rather not inflame this case. Quite.

Of course, the next thing that’s going to happen is Polanski’s team will appeal, and then the prosecution will appeal, and then we’re back at square one. Espinoza said he was acting to protect ‘the dignity of the court’ by wanting to see Polanski back in court, and there I was wondering why no one had done so in the three decades prior by tackling all the legal transgressions first, or why he even bothered offering him the absentia option when he never had any intentions of granting it. Looks like Espinoza is going through the motions of what the law allows him to do and doesn’t really want to see to any justice done, just stringing Polanski along like Rittenband had since two years now in fact. First he declined him the case be dropped, and her in fact, then he demands him to appear on the grounds of the fugitive disentitlement doctrine, then he turns it all around by offering him the absentia option once they noticed the shocking amount of judicial failings, she in fact supported, then he refuses to act on it, and now he wants him back again ‘to preserve the integrity of the law’, which had let Polanski down several times now already to begin with. No surprises there.

No, the reason he refused the sentence is clear: Polanski foremost could appeal it, and automatically forces the courts to deal with all the old backroom dealings they cannot ignore anymore, to actually correct all the judicial improprieties committed over three decades now. He seems ‘competent’ enough by not rushing things, obviously knows of Rittenband’s shady ‘intentions’ and the il/legal shenanigans back then. Let’s see what he’ll do next. Or rather not, since to tackle all the mess from three decades is a daunting task I’m sure he’ll rather give a miss. Of course, if the Swiss will block extradition, and I believe they will, at the unsoundness of the request on several levels, Polanski has the freedom to go where he wants in Switzerland and France. On the one hand, it is in the Swiss’ vested interests not to block and let the appeals go through so they can more earn more interest from his millions, since on the other, if they let him go, they have to return the bail money. Such may seem cynical, but scorn is merited when one regards just how the courts have treated Polanski so far, abominably, and that by now this is  nothing but a politically motivated money grabbing charade with little focus on any justice served, or of course any attempts to correct decades of judicial improprieties.

As one might expect, after his wife publicly spoke in his defence, saying, “My personal truth is that Roman is a marvellous husband and [faithful] man. He is an impeccable man and I have nothing to reproach him for,” there just have to be the blindly meddling voices out there thinking her delusional or trying to rationalise his rape, when of course she knows he didn’t rape or sodomise anyone, just so to keep believing he had, unable to see that she of all those who defend him simply knows him better, and that the times were very promiscuous and crazy in general and sleeping with minors was nothing special. As it seems Polanski is never one to waste his time idly, for now stuck inside his Chalet, he is said to have plans on working on a film adaptation of the play God of Carnage, since of course all Roman Polanski ever did was motivated by his desire to please others, to create and show his art, and once believing in the good of man and any religion, or justice, after Sharon was murdered which was the only watershed in his life to this day, it had reinforced his faith in the absurd. Not people. Or the law.

The renowned playwright who wants him to direct her play, knowing him since decades and having planned it long before his arrest, standing by him, she has this to say in his defence. “People do not understand the complex and contradictory events or the real history of this case, nor the two people involved. What gives the public the right to condemn him suddenly? What distresses me is the vociferous outcry expressed without any legitimacy. Why a respected man for thirty years, our country was proud of to celebrate when he received an Oscar, a Golden Palm, a man we have decorated several times, who was made a member of the most prestigious institutions in French, while everyone knew the reasons for his exile, suddenly becomes a criminal because the wind blows from a foreign court having arrested him? There were biographies, films, articles, how is he guiltier today than yesterday? Mob justice and people using their freedom of expression, becomes immediately free of charge, without compassion, restraint, attempted understanding, which are all forms of intelligence?”

Quite. Which seem all suddenly lacking in these self-righteous, self-important little voices rising in a most unsettling way, thinking they are oh so right to know better, or this successful artist equally deluded herself, of course, when they know absolutely nothing. Johnny Depp in contrast does know him and is defending him publicly by now, saying, that this stinks pretty much of political shenanigans and dirty money exchanging hands to pursue this case. “Why now? Obviously there is something going on somewhere. Somebody has made a deal with someone. Maybe there was a little money involved, but why now?” Polanski’s lawyers had already alleged that Cooley made ‘mistakes’ in the extradition process, claiming, he was ‘directing or at least condoning his office presenting a false record of Polanski’s to the Swiss government, all in an attempt to extradite him without revealing facts that render extradition impermissible’. Quite.

For now, the  future of this politically exploited case hinges on exactly these beleaguered and undoubtedly misled Swiss to keep the old man under house arrest, or not, and I for one, doubt they will extradite him. As of January 31st, a final decision on whether to extradite Polanski to the US may be a year away, the Swiss justice minister said. While the Swiss authorities are to decide within the coming weeks whether or not to comply with the formal US extradition request, Polanski can appeal to the Federal Penal Court and then the Federal Court, which then could take from several months to a year, as we have already seen. Others have died under house arrest, and if the Swiss simply drag it out, and then more appeals are lodged to drag it out even more, Polanski might join the list of ‘in/famous’ people who slipped eventually into controversial oblivion while being incarcerated in their own home. Which at one point, could lead to his bankruptcy – if US film distributors keep denying him his rightful royalties – and of course, the courts to drag it out for him to be forced to keep paying his legal staff over mounting costs, unable to get his bail bond back.

Her lawyer, having  joined her more than serious efforts by now to see the case dismissed, based his calls, ‘to end this victim’s suffering’ on her apparent ill state of health – while no one seems to see the much greater suffering of the accused – when she could have simply chosen to stay anonymous or of course explain things better. But, instead she suddenly declared her open support, ask him to be forgiven, filed all these petitions, gave all these conflicting interviews after an apparent ‘undisclosed settlement’ was reached, in which she more and more declared herself to his side, and now pleads to be left alone after all the renewed media ambushes. You don’t ‘campaign’ for your rapist, ever – unless of course, he isn’t, which she often enough had said, to demonstrate her own ‘complicit’ part in it without directly perjuring herself after all these years in the only way she can. She tried her best to rectify her tweaking certain specifics her too ambitious mother had forced on her, in form of her open support for him as an adult woman, which is still failing since no one listens to her tries to end this entirely corrupted case. The political money wheels are turning and no one can stop them – except Death and the Maiden.

The lawsuit over Sharon’s slander had forced him to relive the horrors of 1969, his murdered wife and unborn child, his friends. He had faced the same old accusations of then, and the same old unrelated allegations from 1977. Many untruths had been published about him he simply ignored since he had no legal resources of defence first of all to confront them, thereby help self-perpetuating the grotesque picture people have of him, prefer to believe. But these lies could not go challenged, and he had won in the face of more fabrication. He adored Sharon, and she was brutally ripped from him, only to never visit her grave again, after one moment of thoughtless passion with a girl that wanted to become an actress, like Sharon, followed by a lifetime of unprecedented, unforgiving public lynching, while other repeat offenders having committed much more horrible crimes are forgiven. But never him. Except the woman who never became that actress, for her mother’s own selfish agendas that permanently tainted both their futures, playing the fame game at everyone’s costs. Polanski’s problem had always been ‘situational’, trying to be too brutally honest and direct, which often enough backfired when others couldn’t match his demands. He was an adult even as a kid already because he was forced to be, used to be, grew up much faster, having needed to look out for himself, assuming others were ‘mental adults’ too.

Like Ms Geimer many described as ‘fast’, who was physically fully developed beyond her apparent age and everyone took for a very grown-up young lady. Yet, despite the fact that her mother proudly pronounced her to be very precocious, she suddenly appeared this naïve little child once before the Grand Jury, unable to express herself more prudently all of a sudden. She came across as very unnatural, realising all her words to the effect of being afraid and unwilling appear put on, are out of synch with her overall behaviour and findings. Her apparent incapability to live up to her mother’s high expectations suddenly, and those of Polanski, lie in stark contrast of his saying that she posed with aplomb and never gave him any signals to stop his advances. He apologised often enough over his actions, after she had put on a confident show of posing several times, trying to ‘act’ as mature as possible. That no one had noticed her apparent reluctance is more than odd, before they finally tried to salvage the escalating situation with that plea bargain, once it went awry at her claims not supported by the overall evidence of forcible rape and sodomy. But then it all failed to be resolved quickly with Rittenband having his own ideas no one had anticipated, and has haunted them ever since.

As of February 1st, it has been exactly thirty-two years to the day Polanski had left US soil – during which time he made more of his acclaimed films, endured waxing and waning media and again rising public abuse, yet prevailed ever more, gained more friends and supporters, with still no justice in sight. If it ever shall arise for either of them, unless she declares herself better, and Polanski stops fighting but allowing himself be heard finally too. There’s no way around it. After a very popular Johnny Depp, classy actress Sigourney Weaver too declared her support for him openly, saying, “I have great affection for Roman. He is a man devoted to his family, a father of children. I am outraged, hurt by the way he is vilified. He is a victim of a witch-hunt. The violence of his arrest is scary. People see in him this devil because they are confusing the individual with the movies that he made. I am thinking of Rosemary’s Baby. But Roman has changed. I confess that I would love to see him freed to visit the United States and hug him.” Quite.

Despite intense lobbying with the Swiss justice authorities, the organisers of the Berlin Film Festival have been unable to secure a 24 hour remission for Polanski that would enable him to attend the premiere of his political thriller The Ghost Writer. The Berlinale kicking off on February 11th 2010 and running until the 21st, will show his film on the 12th and 13th to sold out tickets. Polanski however has already seen the finished version based on the acclaimed Robert Harris novel, The Ghost, and pronounced himself delighted with the result like in fact many objective reviewers. He watched the film on DVD at his Chalet in Gstaad with Harris, who also co-wrote the screenplay and was more than happy that he is satisfied with his work.

While murderers and political criminals can receive remission to attend an important event, the harmless old Polanski is not even allowed to view his own film even if he were to be accompanied by clandestine security, held like a dangerous terrorist in his own home. The double standards are an insult to all human/e civility. Instead, he will probably watch the spectacle on TV, and the press conferences given after his film’s premiere. It will no doubt be a frustrating event not to be there in person, but after he was already humiliated in the most disgraceful form, when they arrested him just before he would have received his lifetime achievement award in Zürich, I doubt he needs all the unwanted attention his presence would generate. Polanski had stated that the officers had treated him with respect, just like the remand prison staff, unlike it had been in the US. Some wondered if this ‘Award’ in fact was not a ruse to get him to Zürich, but it is a legitimate award and listed as ‘won’, except the winner still hasn’t received it.

So let’s see what the general public and critics will make of his latest foray into celluloid corruption. Or his loyal supporters, and blind haters. But then again, they’re probably picketing the doors with pro and anti-Polanski banners shouting abuse at each other in an absurd show of hijacking another festival. Let’s hope the German police are as efficient as ever to shut them all up. But until then, Polanski’s notoriety and the political nature of the film are likely to boost the profile of Berlin, which has come in for a critical thrashing in recent years as it struggled to compete with other major festivals like Cannes. That no doubt has changed alongside the man’s own fate who is dubbed to have created another great masterpiece since his glorious Chinatown outing.

In a to many expected victory for Polanski, a Swiss justice official said on February 12th, that authorities will not extradite him to the US until the LA courts determine whether Polanski should serve more time, since it would make ‘no sense’ to remove him from house arrest at his Chalet while he seeks to resolve his case in absentia, as long as the question is still open if he is subject to further time behind bars, or not. Why should he be extradited, the Swiss justice ministry’s deputy director said, as long as this question is still open, and their decision depends on that one crucial point. Just as I said – they will NOT play the US game to see him back in their courts, when they can decide on that ‘point’ without him. The DA’s office had already misled them into a quick decision, but the Swiss obviously were more conscientious than they had expected/hoped. As it seems the appeals have to be churned over by March 24th, Polanski can breathe for a while longer.

As one might expect, his latest film having opened the Berlinale, the European press dubbed it, ‘his most purely enjoyable picture for years, a Hitchcockian nightmare with a persistent, stomach-turning sense of disquiet, brought off with confidence and dash’ – while Hollywood was more circumspect, and described it as, ‘sleek and hypnotic, but once the credit roll frees you from its grip, it doesn’t bear close scrutiny’. And then of course, there’s always one of the few dissenting voices slashing Polanski[’s mastery], unable to judge the film on its own merits, sneering, ‘all the ingredients are here for a rip-roaring political thriller, but Polanski simply transfers Harris’ undistinguished prose direct to the screen and there’s little wow factor in the revelations as they appear’. In short, it’s a superior suspense driven masterpiece with clever twists and turns and first class performances.

They either love or hate it for the very same reasons, or of course for who the notorious director is, and even manage/d to shred the author himself just for spite. No one but Polanski could have pulled it off to finish his film in a jail cell, literally editing it himself as the technical master he is. With a daunting knowledge of all branches of filmmaking, his hands-on approach reaches far into supervising all that stands behind the camera, with full control over his project from first to last scene as always. If he wouldn’t have been arrested over some three decades old misdemeanor that should have long been resolved had the legal system not failed him, long been forgotten, they’d still all hail him as the superior auteur of his distinguished art, since everyone knew of the case and still gave him all these awards without judging his past ever since he had to flee the US.

That seems to have changed suddenly for obvious political exploitation reasons people finally realise, with the typical [US] hypocrisy having successfully manipulated the bias-prone public turning them into malicious witch hunters, suddenly defining the man by a single act from a decade they have no knowledge of, forgetting all else that made and shaped him, he has created. They say he’s a ‘bad person’ not ever having met him and therefore nullify others’ better knowledge of him who have, but a good artist, simply in order to say he is a ‘bad human being’, while others say they don’t care about the artist either, in turn nullifying his entire life as that artist and his work sprung from that life. Except of course, the more intelligent and objective thinkers not taking part in this ludicrous slew of bigotry and unprecedented demonising. As it is customary with conservatives when it comes to Polanski, launching another inane attack on anyone involved or in support of Hollywood, or his latest polit thriller said to hold pole position to win, their favourite pastime is whipping this old boy because he seems to have a lot of liberal supporters and of course fans, and just the right talent their own cannot match. It’s called rightwing jealousy.

Swiss legal experts said it looked increasingly possible that Polanski could beat extradition, especially since he’s been incarcerated for such a long time now, and it’s not even clear if the courts want him anymore, since all his time can be commuted to any coming sentencing. He’s been 42 days at Chino, 70 days in Swiss detention, 23 days in December, 31 days in January, 17 days in February at his Chalet as of today – that’s all in all, 183 days or half a year now being locked up, when his original sentence would have been three months, had Rittenband truly only intended to send him back inside to sit out the other 48 days – on the unlawful condition of self-deportation – or go down for decades as everyone feared. Had the old judge not threatened him with illegal deportation, I’m sure Polanski would have grudgingly submitted to going back for the remaining 48 days despite no one asking for it and to let him be freed on probation.

But, no one was certain had Polanski done so, if Rittenband had not come up with something else to torment him some more, before finally sentencing him to god knows what against all recommendations, he would have needed to appeal, rendering him unable to withdraw his plea. Rittenband played [with] him for public sports before he was removed unfortunately too late, or Polanski would not have run. Looks like inept Cooley is losing his own cat and mouse game sooner than later too now, after making blunder after blunder to begin with. The law thrives on appeals, and this case has died on them long before the DA reopened a very old can of very nasty old worms he thought his certain ticket to reelection. Both parties wanting to pull together since years now – the corrupt law however has its own ideas for political gain, as usual, or they would need to tackle all the old worms, and sanitise their courtrooms of an utterly corrupted case he should never have touched. There will be no quick remedy for Roman Polanski or Ms Geimer.

With the prize handouts done and over at the Berlinale, as of February 20th Polanski has won the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin Film Festival for his widely acclaimed political thriller, The Ghost Writer, while a Turkish film took the golden for best film in a surprise decision. Polanski of course could not accept the prestigious award and said, “Even if I could, I wouldn’t because the last time I went to a festival to get a prize, I ended up in jail.” Couldn’t blame him, really. So that’s the current state of the embattled director as superior artist – another Silver Bear for his large collection of over four dozen prizes already, if only everything else could be so swiftly done and resolved.

As one might expect, The Ghost Writer having opened in the States first, to sold-out tickets mind you, it was or is merely screened in four big cinemas in LA and NY, while Scorsese’s own film Shutter Island not winning anything at the Berlinale and was trounced on by Polanski’s much hailed film, it opened to the average of three thousand. The political thriller having made $179,000 (£115,686) over the weekend, an average of $44,750 (£28,921) per screen, in contrast, Scorsese’s made an average of just $13,440 (£8,686) per screen. Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland may have stoked interest in the title, and people obviously want to see it, but now they can’t, because the other US cinemas are basically not showing the film when they could make lots of money with it. Scorsese was the one who made Taxi Driver with that underage prostitute in 1976.

But of course, Scorsese is Hollywood and American, despite being far below par Polanski’s superior technical skills and artistic talents with only a handful of awards. Polanski is a foreigner and current fugitive and must be boycotted where they can, or of course won’t let him make any money with it himself through royalties, despite the American people actually wanting to see his excellent film, able to set the old man apart from his art and a case from three decades ago everyone messed with. His film would be top of the US box-office list now not Scorsese’s, and maybe the $ figures will make the distributors reconsider, since all the industry wants is it to make money, and show it more widely. His intense thriller being a French-German-British co-production and not US, neither these countries nor the rest of Europe in contrast will be stupid enough not to show it at any cinema available. That said, critics falling over themselves with praise say things like, the movie burns with so much style and sophisticated technique, inevitably inviting another attempt to scrutinise it as an autobiographical piece Polanski may or may not have intended.

If that were the case, he’d known to be arrested and surely avoided that. Nothing in the storyline relates to Polanski’s private life, except the ‘exile’ aspect perhaps, and someone’s offhanded remark, that, ‘kids today are so much more puritanical than we were’, and at that moment you can almost hear the chuckle of the director in the wings, to show off the current ‘youth’, so blind and unknowing as to what was going on in the Seventies. Or with the case. In its very limited US release, The Ghost Writer now expanded from the four to forty-three theatres by the end of February, and took in a healthy $870,000, or more than $20,000 per location. Its total after 10 days is $1.1 million. If they had shown it in the same amount of cinemas as Scorsese’s latest, it would have blown his Shutter Island out the water, which still has only grossed $41 mill in contrast despite being shown in three thousand theatres. Looks like everyone wants to see Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor, rather than DiCaprio. Now, reaching into mid March the film is playing in more but still only a hundred thirty-seven theatres in the US, with no jeering or public boycotting in sight. The critics must have been right – it’s another masterpiece and triumph for the auteur and people can set the man or his past apart from his art.

On a more personal level, Polanski’s wife told the Warsaw magazine Viva! early March that her husband’s house arrest has upended her family, but that she’s convinced ‘the matter will be solved’. She and her children don’t live in Polanski’s Swiss chalet, but visit him frequently. She said the situation has left his children feeling disoriented and afraid, and that she herself is no longer a carefree person. No wonder after all the unprecedented media hunt on Cooley’s behalf and the subservient Swiss having sold Polanski out to the US for their banking deals. She did not elaborate on how she believes the case will be resolved, but Polanski’s legal battle received a boost when extradition proceedings were put on indefinite hold until the California courts made a definitive ruling on whether he could be sentenced without returning to the US, after Espinoza’s refusal to sentence him in absentia months back. Having spoken out further in more interviews, she declared her unshaken love and support for her husband. Having told their children what their father’s arrest was all about, and their daughter having known of the case already, they had never lied to them about the facts, and that it was forbidden for their father to sleep with someone because of the girl’s age. Therefore their love for their father is as intact, just as it should be.

As of today, March 11th, the day he was arrested now thirty-tree years ago, it looks like the US still cannot sort the three decade old mess they had created then, let alone prove he was up for a longer sentence to allow extradition. Now incarcerated in various places for exactly 205 days, the Swiss are biding their time garnering nice interest on his bail bond the longer it takes. Polanski however seemingly unfazed as usual, he is pondering his next move in regards to his resumed project, God of Carnage. What else is there to do than use his ‘spare’ time more creatively stuck in his Switzerland home, while his lawyers and the courts battle it out on US soil. This will be a very long appeal war. Now mid March, the Ghost Writer screening was expanded even further to be seen at two hundred and twenty-four US theatres, which is still hardly ten percent of the amount of screens Scorsese’s Shutter Island is being shown and nothing more than boycotting Polanski’s film in a very devious form.

With another nail in the coffin of justice revealed in the unending Polanski saga, his lawyers have filed a new appeal into newly uncovered misconducts outside the ones already exposed, saying recent testimony from a key player in 1977 reveals prosecutors knew of the misconduct from the start and concealed it from the defence. The 68-page petition (which I in fact read) asks the California appeals court in LA to act on an emergency basis, arguing that the court should free Polanski by imposing an immediate sentence to time served, or at least make the sealed testimony about wrongdoing available to Swiss authorities. The attorneys say that prosecutor Gunson secretly testified this year about the judge’s conduct in the case and want the transcripts of his alleged testimony to be unsealed. The appeals writ filed March 18th by Hummel, McCallum and Dalton jr, described a series of sworn interviews in February and March this year during which Gunson described misgivings so severe, that he had actually drafted a motion to disqualify Rittenband long before Polanski had fled, and not only after the two weeks he had filed his dismissal along with Dalton believed so far and Rittenband was finally removed.

After attorneys Trott and Montagna met with Rittenband, they talked to Gunson, and then told him that Rittenband admitted to misconduct, but that he could not file paperwork seeking the judge’s removal from the case, according to the court documents. In the new petition, Polanski’s lawyers say Gunson described being troubled, amongst other things, by contacts between Judge Rittenband and another defence lawyer, Wager, who wanted to become involved with the case either on Polanski’s team or by helping to get him convicted. Polanski’s lawyers have long argued that he should not be extradited, because Rittenband had promised — and Gunson affirmed in his sealed testimony — to sentence him to no more than 90 days in jail, and an extradition treaty between the US and Switzerland applies only to those facing sentences longer than six months. Dalton said in the statement that, “The evidence suggests they went behind my back to confirm the misconduct with the judge himself and never informed me. If proven, this is as bad as I have seen in over 50 years as a former prosecutor and lawyer in our system. Now to hear, through entirely new evidence, that high level deputy district attorneys in the summer of 1977 learned of misconduct by the judge in this case and never told the defence about it, that’s inexcusable.”

It is indeed, and nothing really surprising, or to hear that even the prosecution tried to unseat the judge months before they finally had the following February 1978 after Polanski was released in January, but simply wasn’t allowed to with more hands messing with the case on the side and not only that other colluding DA Wells who had goaded the judge into sending Polanski to Chino, despite Gunson’s and Dalton’s protest and illegality to use it as punishment, before both eventually joined forces to file for Rittenband being taken off the case. But by then Polanski had fled, when they had known of these transgressions even before he had pleaded, which was reneged on at any rate and they could have avoided altogether with a new judge. Montagna said he had never talked to Judge Rittenband about the case and Trott only commented, “I’m staying out of that completely.” They both should be held responsible, apart from Wells. And the judge posthumously, if not even Gunson, since he could have told Dalton about it right then and not wait three decades to spill the beans finally. Polanski’s lawyers accused the current judge Espinoza, of failing to follow recommendations in the appellate ruling last December. Nothing new there.

Wager said he never talked about the case with Rittenband, only that he had tried to join Dalton on Polanski’s legal team, and then later talked about the case with Gunson, while concealing from Dalton that he had spoken with Gunson. “I lied to Dalton,” Wager said. The petition also said the current LA DA Cooley had allowed the case to become ‘politically charged’ and to serve as a platform for a run for the California Attorney General’s office. Cooley’s deputies had misled the Swiss by concealing evidence of illegal dealings already, and to this day has done nothing to remedy the utterly corrupted case either, except play with it to advance his career on the back of Polanski and an entirely reprehensible string of legal misconducts on several levels. Nothing new there. So much for the US justice system being corrupt down to its very foundations – just as Polanski always had said – and I believe I have stated that before already. I just wanted to highlight it – again. Some Justice had declared, that, “Our country takes pride in requiring of its institutions the examination and correction of alleged injustice whenever it occurs. We should not permit an affront of this sort to distract us from the performance of our constitutional duties.” Yeah right.

Well now, it seems Ms Geimer might have been fifteen at the time, not thirteen. According to US peoples finders her birthday might not be March 31st 1963, but Jan 9th 1962 or if it’s a number switch for the American way of stating the month before the day, Sept 1st 1962 – 9.1.62 or 1.9.62. Apart from the fact that the Grand Jury hearing clearly states that her birth certificate was a copy only, this for one would instantly lose the sodomy count (unless proven as forcible), since it was only unlawful to have anal sex with a minor being more than ten years older when the minor is under fourteen. If she really was fifteen at the time of the events, it would account for how mature she looks in the pictures from that time, particularly the ones taken by the Euro press and Polanski, and would also make her mother allowing her go with him by herself more understandable. However, a student could simply skip a grade and doesn’t have to be 14/15 in a 9th grade as it ‘should’ be, and can be older or younger. A grade does not tell a student’s actual age in any form. So let’s assume Ms Geimer skipped a grade, that usually means she had an above average IQ that allowed her teachers to make that decision and would comport with her mother’s words of her having been very ‘precocious’. Then we have to focus on how old she was mentally and what she comprehended with that advanced ‘mind’. Which means, she must have been more intelligent than others in her age range and it doesn’t really matter if she was just three weeks short of turning fourteen or fifteen, it would only mean what she was able to mentally comprehend far better and quicker than her peers for being socially and psychologically more mature. Bisset for one said that she was very ‘fast’ and ‘hip’, and the caretaker that she behaved like a lover with Polanski.

Meaning, she knew perfectly well what she was doing, and to give us this picture of a ‘helpless’ and ‘coerced’ teenager who couldn’t resist Polanski’s advances, seems rather dubious since Polanski pointed out how experienced she was, and Huston did not think her a ‘scared little chick’ and up to twenty-five years of age. But, while sitting in front of that jury panel she ‘reverted’ to this ‘innocent little girl’ Polanski too had noticed rather mystified, since she did not act like that in his company. Significant too is that what the Gaileys told the jury varies slightly between them in certain areas and is rather suspicious. Their testimonies differ in regards to who had called Polanski’s friend to complain about the photos e.g., when Polanski said in his autobiography his friend had called him at his hotel from their home after they ‘suddenly’ didn’t ‘like’ the pictures anymore and the sister had testified that she had phoned her boyfriend, NOT Polanski, from their home, who was rather ‘edgy’ before he even looked at them. We have no idea if what they told the Grand Jury was really said at home after Polanski had left, and the discrepancies are rather telling. Everybody knew of Polanski’s ‘reputation’, and to leave a ‘minor’ in his ‘care’, who looked like a twenty year old, was physically very provocative, not unschooled in sex, drugs and alcohol matters even to the DAs and Rittenband own words, a sexy young woman as Polanski liked them, very bright (Polanski in fact too found attractive in a woman, see Sharon, Kinski, Emmanuelle), and was ‘not’ on the Pill, appears rather ‘sloppy’. Or planned. Polanski always had his suspicious of a set-up and he might as well have been right after all. Either way, I’m content in the knowledge that it wasn’t forcible rape let alone [double] sodomy – regardless of her age.

Now with the end of March, it looks like it was the former prosecutor Gunson who is the party that might not be with us for long, since his latest bombshell testimony, which is now sealed, is the newest subject of controversy in the deeply fraught case. It was taken in a conditional examination normally used to preserve the testimony of a witness who may not be available later. Gunson is around Polanski’s age, and seems to be too ill and burdened with his knowledge, that he needed to confess to it finally. A deathbed does that to people, and better late than never. In fact, the former prosecutor is currently undergoing treatment for cancer. He was the one who said in that documentary that he would have fled from Rittenband’s own brand of ‘in/justice’. He obviously knew better, but never told Dalton. A defence brief disclosed earlier that Gunson testified he was so concerned about Rittenband’s inability to be fair to the prosecution that he drafted an application to disqualify the judge and intended to file it before Polanski entered his plea. Had he been successful, the judge taking over later who simply put it on ice, would surely have done a better job and we wouldn’t be talking about this case in any form anymore. Gunson said he took his petition to two of his superiors (Trott and Mantagna) who then conferred with the judge (how very bright) and refused to allow him to file the challenge. Nice justice.

Because of that, Polanski’s attorneys returned to the Court of Appeal this month for Espinoza’s refusal to sentence him in absentia and for the main reason of Gunson’s new secretly given testimony. A certain Doyle taking over from Gunson some time back, had left handwritten notes from a 2002 session in the current appeals petition during which Gunson had briefed Doyle. The notes referring to Gunson’s having actually drafted a motion to disqualify Rittenband, said: “Roger prepared 170.5, 20 pages laid him out. Was told not to file.” (Cal. Procedure ‘umbrella’ Code (sections 170.0-170.5) for disqualifying a criminal court judge.) Cooley’s filing says that his current deputy in charge of the case, Walgren, only weeks ago discovered those notes among ‘folded papers on the bottom’ of some boxes, and promptly gave them to the Polanski lawyers after deciphering them with Doyle’s help in late February. Really? The LA courts said they have acted ‘with the utmost openness and integrity’ and provided Polanski’s lawyers with the discovery of all the evidence. The same notes refer to a supposed attempt by a lawyer and lifelong friend of Rittenband, Wager, to join the Polanski defence team in 1977. “He met with judge — ‘blackmail’ to get on case,” the notes said, without further explanation. ‘Notes’ can be so telling. And blackmail.

The Swiss judges obviously didn’t think that they had acted with ‘integrity’, after the Swiss foreign minister already took a rare public distance from her colleagues, chiefly the justice minister, (the one who denied that they sold Polanski to the US in exchange for their dirty banking tax policies) by suggesting the arrest had shown ‘a lack of tact’. That’s an understatement. But then it seems Cooley’s ‘court’ isn’t big on discretion and tact at any rate, with unethical statements like, ‘allowing Polanski to avoid extradition from Switzerland hurts the integrity of the judicial system more than revelations of alleged misconduct by Rittenband’ – and there I was thinking it should be the other way round. According to the current prosecutors it’s Polanski’s fault now not only for Rittenband’s misconduct against him, but also for not being able to discipline the disgraced lawmaker and all that followed – because the judge in question is long dead and the others are untouchable with the original prosecutor to follow soon. The integrity of the judicial system was ruined once ‘the hammer’ and Gunson took over the case, and that was certainly not Polanski’s fault either. But let’s blame him for that anyhow out of principle.

With Polanski’s lawyers having filed a last legal volley in the Appeals Court on April 6th, saying that the case and its lengthy delays have been an assault on the state’s judicial system, the attorneys filed more papers so that the court should order an investigation of judicial misconduct in Polanski’s original case and that he should not have to pay for it, an indication that he is running out of funds. The 76-year-old has mounting debts and no way of earning a living while in custody, (especially not with his latest film being boycotted in  the US cinemas) and the defence made their latest plea in response to arguments from prosecutors who say Polanski must return from Europe to face sentencing. The defence argued that Polanski should be sentenced in absentia to time served, and that it is unjust for a defendant’s constitutional rights to be held hostage to the district attorney’s office’s outright refusal to investigate the misconduct in which it was involved. The filing was a recitation of facts that have been raised repeatedly by the defence since they first went to court seeking Polanski’s freedom several years ago. They contend the now deceased judge committed serious misconduct in the case, (and then some with each after him not correcting them) and that the judge’s private statements clearly said that Polanski left the US after pleading guilty to the count they had a plea arrangement with, and that he had served part of a 90-day period in prison for this ‘diagnostic study’ Rittenband had unlawfully used as punishment.

As we know, Polanski’s departure after ten months of Rittenband stringing him along was prompted by his private statements that he planned to renege on their agreement and that the study would be Polanski’s full sentence, according to documents filed in the case. The original prosecutor in the case, Gunson, recently giving his closed door testimony to that very effect (finally), and his defence lawyers Hummel and Dalton jr said that the misconduct allegations should not be buried just because the trial judge is dead and some participants are no longer in the DA’s office. The lapse of time does not make the misconduct or its consequences go away or mean that they are not deserving of full exploration, (except in Polanski’s case of course, which Cooley and Co obviously want to spin out the longer the better, by now having definite airs of contemptible revenge rather than any justice) suggesting an investigation by a special counsel could deter similar misconduct in the future. Which so far has failed big time as seen with the new name-calling DAs, despite the Appeals Court having urged them to investigate these claims already last December, and that this court should put a stop to this now, by recommending that special counsel be appointed and by ordering that Polanski be sentenced to time served. Since Espinoza didn’t sentence Polanski months ago as he had offered him only to deny him that closure, and Geimer, they obviously play the same nasty game with Polanski ever since day one.

No, in fact, they first played a nasty media game with him since Tate’s, their unborn son’s and friends’ brutal murders, and then the even nastier judicial game instigated by Rittenband, which amounts to a full forty years now of mindless persecution, resulting in added blind abuse by the just as nasty public not aware of the full details of the case, or the highly contemptible judicial mess it’s in. I’m sure to most people that is barbaric treatment of a so called celebrity, except in his case of course. The fact that crooked DA Cooley is under investigation himself right now for a series of serious misconduct on a grand scale since he took office many years ago with a class-action suit filed against him, alleging his office committed what amounts to identity theft by obtaining a list of 650 prosecutors who supported the union and a judge’s finding that the actions by the DA are ‘rampant’, rather than remedying the situation of course, it was lodged by the affected parties right on the same day Polanski’s team filed their last appeals against his office to end his witch hunt of Polanski, which doesn’t seem to bother anyone in the equally highly corrupt LA courts either way. No surprise there.

During the 2001-2007 Bush-Cooley’s reign of terror in Los Angeles, hundreds of victims of police brutality and police misconduct cases were charged with baseless and fabricated criminal charges. Cooley and the LAPD worked together on fabrication and manufacturing of false evidence against victims. Am I surprised? Nope. It ain’t ‘Lethal Weapon’ style justice there now. With federal protection evaporated under war criminal Bush, hundreds of innocent victims were convicted and sent to prison to face dangers from real criminals and rapists, and State convictions guaranteed that the LAPD was shielded from future civil rights lawsuits. Nice. During the above period, no LAPD officers were ever charged with any crime arising from fabricating of false evidence, the residents of Los Angeles were left defenceless against forces of the extreme right, which implemented a policy built on deception, fraud, perjury, and criminal conspiracy. Looks like the Italian or Russian Mafia could learn from them. With the help of Cooley, and under the protection of the former warmongering Bush administration they have succeeded in establishing a police state in the most populous county of the US.

With substantial support from Bush and the local forces of the extreme right, the LAPD, PPL, and Cooley have succeeded in transforming the 4,000-square-mile Los Angeles County to be ruled under a sophisticated and well-engineered police junta composed of the LAPD, Cooley, and an army of 600 mostly corrupt judges who owe their reelections to financial contributions from LAPD’s PPL. Am I glad to live in the crappy old UK where such detestable actions are very very rare and don’t happen on such a mega scale. And that highly despicable criminal eyeing the office of Attorney General, god forbid Cooley will ever win it, has set his sight on the least of dangerous men to be dragged before his corrupt court and sent into the same hell. Not a chance. Since the Swiss judges did not buckle under the DA’s despicable lies they had given the authorities from the day they overzealously had executed the equally unsound arrest warrant under continuous pressure, it looks like the peace-loving Swiss aren’t in the same high corruption league as the Californian il/legal and police [state] systems. Good. A visit to Switzerland might be in order for my holidays this year, stopping off at Polanski’s Chalet door for a little chat.

With The Ghost finally premiered in the UK on April 16th (as the film is called here after the book), Brosnan has revealed that Polanski is working on his next film while under house arrest. Brosnan, 56, plays the lead role in Polanski’s new political flick and revealed the director was brilliant to work with and is already working on his next project. Brosnan said to the BBC the other day: “I’d heard the stories of a truculent, petulant man, and I heard the stories of the great compassionate man and he’s all of those. (On set he’s a little tyrant to get results and off set he’s the very opposite and very loving.) He loves the camera, he loves to make his movies – under house arrest, and he’s working on the next film.” Exactly, and good for him. That’s what he does; film is his life, regardless of any public or political witch hunt. Film made him survive life from childhood on, and filmmaking will be his continuous saviour till he dies. And his loving family and supportive friends. The new film is God of Carnage, in corroboration with the playwright and friend Yasmina Reza, who stood firmly behind Polanski, and did not look for a new director for her stage play adoption to screen they had decided on long before Polanski was rearrested. That’s what friends do – they stand by them.

According to a short item in the French paper L’Express, Polanski apparently has penned a letter to President Obama asking for his help with efforts to be sentenced in absentia and find closure of this old sex case. French President Sarkozy presented the letter to Obama in person during his last visit to the US, who had supported the director behind the scenes and could ‘convince’ the Swiss authorities to grant Polanski bail and be put under house arrest. In this communiqué, the filmmaker told the President that the 70 days he had spent at the Swiss remand prison, added to his 42 days at Chino in 1977/8, amount to more than the penalty of his original plea bargain of three months the prosecution and defence had agreed on, (before Rittenband had reneged on it). And Polanski added, his extradition would only result in his continuous humiliating by the US media. I’d rather say exploitation by the crooked courts and leering public. So much for his persecution being a political power game by now. A spokesman for Obama’s press office had not heard of any such letter as of April 19th, while Polanski’s attorney declined to comment. But L’Express reported that Sarkozy handed the missive over to Obama during last week’s nuclear safety summit in Washington. Though the details of this exchange are still unclear, this wouldn’t be the first time that the French leader had stood by Polanski, obviously knowing better of what really happened, and how corrupted the case has become by now.

Though Polanski didn’t ask for a full clemency per se only to be declared sentenced finally, the presidential power to pardon is granted under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. “The President shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” Obviously, otherwise any president could pardon himself. No one is liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings for an offence for which he or she has already been fully acquitted or convicted of in accordance with the law, also known as ‘double jeopardy’. Someone can be pardoned of a pleaded offence without ever having been sentenced and convicted of that offence. Since it was State vs Polanski, Obama could well pardon him, though technically that doesn’t erase Polanski’s admission of guilt to the one count he pleaded to or the offence itself; it will only be impossible to try him in regards to it or any of the dropped and already statute expired counts, again, since only a plea withdrawal can see a case be tried on all counts but not after a pardon either. To withdraw his plea would be spitting into their own disgusting abuse of power and string of legal misconduct soup, no one wants to even look at, or Espinoza had done so ages ago. Or, sentenced him in absentia, since then the courts have the obligation to see to all the allegations being litigated, and that they of course want to avoid at all costs. Polanski’s continued costs.

Now that I was finally able to watch The Ghost Writer myself at a London cinema, all I can say is, whatever all the favourable reviews had to say about it, and there were only favourable, they are all most certainly true in their own objective way able to judge it on its own merits. And since people are so keen on drawing parallels to Polanski’s life, The Ghost (UK title) has zero, except the ‘exile’ aspect of Brosnan’s character, and best of all, to cite someone else, Polanski is no more inclined to ingratiate himself to his [current] audience with happy endings than he was to give his Chinatown masterpiece in 1974 with its perfect, tragic denouement. Just so to reflect tragic life more realistically. As usual. Which promptly followed on his foot, when Polanski’s latest appeal to have his case reviewed by a special counsel, or to be finally sentenced in absentia, was rejected by the California Appeals Court on April 23rd, despite new evidence showing until recently undisclosed [further] corruption in the case. The testimony Gunson gave behind closed doors in January. Polanski’s bid last year to have the Los Angeles Superior Court disqualified from any hearings as being prejudiced against him was also summarily rejected.

Polanski’s fate therefore still lying in the hands of the Swiss authorities, they no doubt have long regretted to have soiled their hands by ‘offering’ Polanski last September to the US, in exchange for their IRS investigations to go easy on their shady UBS ‘banking taxes’ dealings. The Swiss Justice Ministry had been waiting for Cooley’s court ruling before deciding whether or not to authorise Polanski’s return to LA for sentencing, but stated on April 24th, that the Ministry would not rush into any hasty decisions. Good. If they ultimately approve extradition, Polanski could still lodge further court appeals in Switzerland itself, which would delay his possible return to the US even further. Polanski’s defence team have long argued that Polanski should not have to be present to be sentenced on the one count he had pleaded to, but be finally sentenced in absentia to time served, which by now amounts to more than what even Rittenband had in mind by sending him back to Chino to sit out the remaining 48 days of that ‘diagnostic study’ (on the threat of self-deportation) he had unlawfully used as punishment already.

The LA court’s decision said, “By petition for writ of mandate filed March 18, 2010, petitioner requests relief from this Court on the basis of new evidence (given by Gunson) and asks this Court to overturn the magistrate’s order sealing a conditional examination transcript. (I.e., to unseal Gunson’s testimony.) Petitioner has failed to present this evidence to and request his desired relief from the trial court, and he has not established that he lacks an adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law. Petitioner has also failed to demonstrate that the trial court lacked the discretion under Penal Code section 1193 to refuse to approve petitioner’s absence at sentencing. (Code applies to the section of the defendant’s ‘need’ to be present in court for sentencing, based on that ancient ‘fugitive disentitlement doctrine’ they first had applied, then overturned by offering Polanski to be sentenced in absentia they subsequently flat-out rejected, and then simply reinstated to drag it out.) The petitioner for writ (court order) of mandate (to unseal his testimony for examination) is summarily denied.” If refusing to allow Gunson’s evidence with not the slightest interest in closing this case isn’t demonstrating deliberate manipulation of any outcome, or to purposely drag it out against all logic isn’t sheer vindictiveness, I don’t know what is.

If Gunson’s vital testimony means zilch to these jackals, have repeatedly rejected Geimer’s own pleas since years now to have the case dismissed, or Polanski be sentenced in absentia, what chances does Polanski have to receive final closure of this ever more corrupted case. As it looks by now, it’s nothing but spite and total ignorance of tackling these mounting misconducts in any form, after Gunson had finally brought forward that he thought Rittenband had acted improperly. That’s an understatement. After Gunson was deliberately failed by his two superiors to have Rittenband removed, (who both are now judges and in Cooley’s ‘court’), and after more months of delay finally managed to see him ‘step down’ with help from Dalton, after Polanski had unfortunately already fled his arbitrary court antics, Gunson’s testimony therefore remains sealed. I.e., is impossible to be used for the defence, released into public domain, or to highlight the plenty misconducts for the Swiss. So much for justice shown to their own, or justice per se. But then again, Gunson had technically joined the defence team by coming clean finally, and Cooley obviously is not interested in a former attorney who was not half as dishonest as he is to allow his testimony in aid of Polanski’s cause. More misconduct from an entirely crooked DA, who faces a class-action lawsuit on a mega scale, no one seems to be interested in litigating. Of course not, it’s Cooley’s own corrupted court he rules supreme.

The authorities in Switzerland have repeated they will not act on the request for his extradition until the LA courts make Polanski’s status clear, and will only extradite him if he faces a sentence longer than six months. Cooley still argues Polanski faces up to two years in prison, (the two years they had implemented already back in mid 1977 before Polanski had pleaded to the one year minimum to maximum fifteen to twenty years for unlawful sex in August, no one had told him about) despite Gunson, in agreement with Dalton and Geimer’s mother, not having asked for any further jail time, but probation of indefinite sentencing. So, we’re back at square one, and Cooley doesn’t care that no retroactive sentencing can be more than the minimum penalty of then, or if a lighter sentence is available today, it so shall apply. Two years is not lighter. But, even if Polanski were sentenced to time inside, rather than probation, the time Polanski has official spent behind bars by now, must be taken into account as time served. A Swiss Justice Ministry spokesman has said a decision usually comes within a year of a person’s arrest, and since Polanski was arrested last September, that would mean a decision can only be expected in five more months this September, and Polanski will go nowhere, yet, but stay put at his Chalet.

The Swiss spokesman said, “We first have to receive the official information from the US, (which they so far have failed to deliver already, unable to prove Polanski was up for more time inside, after presenting the Swiss courts falsified records of Polanski’s ‘crime’ in addition) and then we will examine it. We can’t make a decision based on media reports. We have to study the ruling. We must have some patience.” Patience is all Polanski has, loyal friends, family and fans, and he could still seek to end the case in California otherwise by appealing to the state’s Supreme Court, which will not only delay any extradition even further, but, if only one of these judges is in Cooley’s pocket, will seek to overturn his appeal, again. Hummel and his team have not indicated what their next step will be, and it is clear, that no one is interested in any fair ruling, abide by laws other than their own, but riding out the utterly contaminated case like none other in LA court history ever. Shameful. “One gets the feeling that there’s the desire to see him arrive in shackles, when there’s no reason why Roman Polanski should be extradited, none at all,” Polanski’s French lawyer Témime told radio Europe1.fr. Quite.

“Now it is up to the Swiss authorities to tell the truth and give back Roman Polanski his freedom once and for all, regardless of the uproar and unbearable pressure of an ill-informed public,” Témime said in another statement to Agence-France-Presse. Swiss authorities had already stated in February that a decision on whether to extradite Polanski could not be made until the filmmaker had exhausted his US appeals. So, even if the Swiss will decide on extradition, proceedings could take a year in general, once appeals by Polanski against his return – or by US authorities if a Swiss decision was negative – have been heard by Switzerland’s highest courts. Meaning, whichever decision by either side, there’s always another appeal possible, and Polanski will not go anywhere. If ever. Judging the Swiss courts, they obviously do not live in self-obsessed Cooley’s crooked world. They are perfectly capable and willing to engage in dispassionate justice and to accept the valid argument that there is no legal rationale for extraditing Polanski, so he can face the possibility of further incarceration and punishment, more overzealous media attacks and possible physical harm. Cooley and too many sanctimonious ignorami cannot see cruel and unusual punishment when it occurs. The Swiss authorities can recognise it.

Polanski’s original attorney Doug Dalton who had retired some while back and his son Bart ever since then is handling the case, had issued a statement on April 23rd, reiterating that the Court of Appeal decision, ‘did not decide the question of extradition’. “The formal US extradition request unquestionably contains a false sworn statement by Los Angeles prosecutors about Polanski’s punishment (or crime), which we have asked the United States Department of Justice and the Swiss authorities to investigate. The DA’s office has known the true facts for over 30 years.” Quite, but, Cooley doesn’t care, he’s too busy at the moment with fighting Union members who have filed a federal lawsuit against him, that he violated a judge’s order that he stop retaliating. The federal suit alleges that Cooley demoted and reassigned pro-Union workers and cut their benefits. Union members have also filed more than a dozen unfair labour practice complaints with the county Employee Relations Commission, which were largely undisputed, and District Court Judge Wright II issued a preliminary injunction ordering Cooley to stop discriminating and retaliating against employees on the basis of union membership.

Ms Geimer had already said in January, that the court’s insistence for Polanski to appear in person for the dismissal hearing back then, ‘a cruel joke’. Ms Geimer said in her written declaration to the court, “If Polanski cannot stand before the court to make this request, I can. I have urged that this matter come to a formal legal end. I have urged that the district attorney and the court dismiss these charges.” Obviously, because they were never valid accusations or they’d gone to trial. While Walgren filed a motion describing the incident in ‘graphic detail’ in his court papers I actually read, for the Swiss authorities, albeit of course from her original testimony she came to moderate over the years more and more, with nothing of what Polanski had to say about it in his defence, Ms Geimer said, she believes this is a ploy to deflect accusations of wrongdoing in the case made more than thirty years ago. She added that her feelings should have been taken into account before the legal papers were submitted. Of course it is a ploy, but, Cooley doesn’t care either way, or about her let alone Polanski.

When The Pianist was up for an Oscar in 2003, she had declared, “He never should have been put in the position that led him to flee. He should have received a sentence of time served 25 years ago, just as we all agreed [on].” That obviously never happened and only forced Polanski to seek shelter in his more forthcoming home country. While no genuine rape victim would ever say any of that, let alone plea for the charges be dropped, campaign on her ‘attacker’s’ behalf, her original testimony has long become a far cry from her later statements. While Polanski insists it was consensual, the only thing she clings to is that it was not, since the law of course didn’t allow her to consent, but she never said that he had violated her in any form. That’s NOT rape in my book, even if she just let the sex ‘happen’ as she had said some years back. This merciless pursuit of Polanski is a disgraceful Human Rights violation, an unacceptable violation of her own rights, and that of both their pleas to find dignified closure. A scandalous abuse of power. Nothing more. There’s no equivalent of any person having to suffer house arrest for years who ever slept with a minor. Only war criminals and politicians so far have been detained that way.

According to Dalton, in September 1977, prior to ordering his ‘diagnostic study’, Rittenband had stated to Gunson, a probation officer and himself, that the study at Chino would constitute Polanski’s [entire] punishment and that there would be no further incarceration. In fact, at the time, Rittenband stated that he expected a favourable report from Chino. While Gunson and the officer stated that the use of the study punishment was an improper utilisation of that provision, Rittenband replied that he would use this method of incarceration rather than the county jail because Polanski would be safer at (state prison) Chino, and, that 60 days would be sufficient time in custody to constitute his [entire] punishment, (since Rittenband obviously realised that there was no drugged rape and sodomy involved.) Which Polanski completed with indeed favourable reports, after the already favourable reports from the independent psychologists. Rittenband’s promise was, that he would not sentence him to [further] prison, after the study was completed, but, after his apparent anger however that he did not serve out the 90 days, which is of course not under his control but that of the state prison, is not Polanski’s fault that they released him after 42 days. Then, Rittenband’s subsequent plan to send him back to Chino to complete the 90 days, and then go back on their plea agreement, was abuse of the system.

Quite, and, that’s the very problem Cooley and his court faces, not only Rittenband’s misconducts, but they cannot [legally] prove Polanski was to serve more time, and clearly shows that Rittenband, no matter his unprofessional antics and stringing Polanski along for months, had not intended sentencing him to more than he had threatened him with. On the self-deportation ‘condition’, of course, and Polanski thought, what’s the point of staying if they want him out the States, unable to work there any longer. The case was reassigned to Judge Breckinridge, who had never sentenced anyone in absentia, either, and had no intentions of doing so, and, if Polanski might return, he’ll ask for a new probation repost and deal with it then. That’s how things stood for many years, and if Polanski had returned, he’d been arrested without bail, the case reopened, and of course entailed a new report and more time at Chino. The fact of his fugitive status would have been taken into account, as would be the affidavit charging Rittenband with bias, unprofessional conduct and engaging in ex parte communications, and might have ended the case right there, or rather not, as seen. In any legal or practical case, Polanski’s return would have presented one problem: as soon as he arrived in Paris in 1978, his multiple entry visa to the US was declared invalid. I wonder if that in fact can affect the extradition request, since NO non-US citizen can enter the USA without any visa. Interesting.

To recap the case in counts taken from the original extradition papers, all of which bar one (3) had been dropped, are expired and cannot be tried in any form, unless his plea is withdrawn by a judge to go to trial, which in fact is hardly ever done even if the defendant requests it, just so to force the accused into being stuck with their ‘guilty’ plea, ‘guilty’ or not. Any other declarations, e.g., ‘child molestation’ people keep bringing up, are incorrect, since Geimer was not considered a ‘child’ anymore by the law for her age, and the doctor’s medical reflection of an ‘adult female’ for her physical development.

Count 1: furnishing a controlled substance to a minor (not proven since they found the Quaaludes in Nicholson’s bathroom, she could have refused and then took part of herself, and his stating he did not ‘give’ it to her to begin with.) Funny too, how her parents were never done for making them available at home, or the marihuana smoking boyfriend, or Ms Geimer and her once drug abuse institutionalised sister for filching/using them.

Count 2: lewd and lascivious act on a minor under 14 (any kissing, caressing Polanski had admitted to.) Oddly enough, her mother’s boyfriend was never charged with the same he basically had engaged in with her while in Gunson’s own office of all places. Kissing and caressing is ‘lewd’? Great.

Count 3: unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor (the only count Polanski admitted and also pleaded to.) So what about her own boyfriend, when the US is so keen on locking up men who slept with their own girlfriend? Or the others Dalton had unearthed? And possibly her mother’s boyfriend? And those ‘wild boys’ she hung out with later once dropped out of school, to become pregnant with 17/18?

Count 4: rape by use of drugs (in conjunction with count 1) (very questionable since the medical evidence discredits rape outright, and the drug furnishing itself and effect on her were more than vague.)

Count 5: perversion (now called oral copulation, i.e., cunnilingus, NOT oral penetration by a penis) (more than questionable accusation, at no such words from him and no other proof to back her up in any form.) I wonder what fellatio would have been called then.

Count 6: sodomy on a person under 14 (the one count most impossible to prove let alone the [‘dry’] ‘double sodomy’ she claims, at not the slightest physical evidence, any admission from him, Huston’s original testimony to the contrary of having witnessed them engaging in it, and also no logic to sodomise anyone to still withdraw and ejaculate outside when coitus interuptus is general practice to avoid pregnancies, which Polanski had engaged in that day.) Hence, no trial on all counts.

That there never was any count for the alcohol plying accusation is equally telling, and in fact hard to fathom, after Ms Geimer had made extra efforts to say that he ‘gave’ her the champagne. But that was obviously not correct or it had been included as indictment count, most of all because they found the booze in Nicholson’s fridge she took herself in the company of the caretaker and could have refused as well, which also throws even greater doubts on her claims to have been ‘pretty drunk’, at half the bottle still full Huston had found. The count of flight was not included in the extradition request for some obscure reason and cannot be pursued/punished therefore either. Only count 3 is up for sentencing – unlawful sex with a minor – since all other counts, other than to what he admitted to, could not be proven and therefore are not fact. That’s why they invented plea deals to cut a very uncertain case short – except in Polanski’s case – now the longest running court case in Santa Monica Courthouse history for ‘sex’, since first no one wanted to bother with it anymore, or litigate the legal mess, and now they don’t want to close it out of spite and all those lovely judicial holes glaring at them like a Swiss cheese barrel in danger of falling apart.

As we know, the Appeals Court panel had denied Polanski’s request to unseal Gunson’s secret testimony, now, on April 29th Polanski’s lawyers had asked a[nother] judge to unseal it to help Swiss authorities decide on his extradition, on the ‘technical ground’ that they had not yet formally made the unsealing request to the trial judge before presenting his writ application. Lousy excuse. Hummel and Bart Dalton said they need to submit his testimony to the Swiss authorities as soon as possible and that these transcripts are urgently needed. The motion said the transcripts will prove the extradition request is based on false and incomplete statements by the DA’s office. I.e., Polanski’s ‘crime’ and his reason for fleeing, only citing Ms Geimer’s long-found incorrect side of things and no medical findings. I read the extradition report and it’s more than ‘false and incomplete’ legally and factually. Seeking a May 10th hearing before Espinoza, the one who had refused to sentence Polanski in absentia several times now, Gunson had testified months back in what is known as a conditional examination, which reserves the testimony of a witness who might not be available for future hearings. In that case it might not be Gunson to leave us soon, but someone else he might be mentioning in that vital testimony.

Either way, Espinoza kept the transcripts sealed based on his ‘interpretation of the law’ governing such examinations. The defence protested that the ‘interpretation’ is wrong. It’s just another delay tactic, nothing more. Prosecutors and defence attorneys were present at the closed sessions and the defence had paraphrased parts of Gunson’s testimony from his own notes in a petition to the state appellate court. Hummel and his team want to provide his exact words to the Swiss authorities. They noted the DA’s office previously asked that all hearings and conferences in the case be public so as to appropriately respect the public’s right to know. Obviously, so that they can stoke the leering witch hunters into more false beliefs of what this case is all about, which is certainly not rape or flight from ‘justice’, but injustice, and simply won’t allow Gunson’s proof that they all had lied and/or known about the facts and misconducts. They argued that the same right to transparency should apply to Gunson’s vital testimony, and that Swiss officials needed access to the sealed transcripts to fairly determine whether Polanski should be extradited to the US, or not, and that it should be this court’s role to assure that the complete and true facts of the events for which this court is responsible are presented to the Swiss. That’s exactly the point; they don’t want them to know the ‘facts’.

That said, if they can prove once and for all Polanski was up for what Rittenband had declared, nothing more than the rest 48 days to make up the three months at Chino, though on the already unlawful self-deportation threat, (or would send him down for good which amounts to blackmail) the extradition request was more than unlawful, which substitutes an attempt at forcing the Swiss courts into committing an act of kidnapping (in UN terms) had they fallen for Cooley’s lies and handed Polanski over, rendering his house arrest entirely illegal. Since Polanski was incarcerated in two prisons now for more than these three months and must be commuted, the Swiss have no choice but to release him, since they won’t extradite anyone for anything that didn’t entail more than a six months sentence at any rate. Good luck, Cooley, to prove that you didn’t lie to the overzealous Swiss, after the Swiss Federal Office of Justice had whistled on Polanski’s arrival at Zürich to the US Office of International Affairs, who then offered Polanski to Cooley’s office on a silver platter, in exchange for the dirty UBS banking tax evasion deals. Just Polanski’s luck (still) to be the little ball in this international ping pong game of mounting judicial misconducts and shady politics. Nothing new there. That’s a Human Right violation on a grand scale.

I guess it’s more important for rich people to bank tax free than grant an old man final justice in this utterly corrupted case, and have his sentence commuted. Gunson’s testimony includes Rittenband’s original sentencing plan from 1977, the 48 days to make up the 90 days, and Gunson’s testimony would prove that the extradition request filed included a false depiction of this sentencing plan. And then some. Besides, it was also documented in newspapers in February 1978, and that 2008 documentary in fact, that Rittenband wanted to and would have sentenced Polanski in absentia, but was prevented from dong so after Gunson and Dalton had him removed days before, so that no one absentia sentenced him finally is pure vindictiveness by now. The extradition request said that Rittenband sent Polanski to prison for a ‘psychiatric study’ so he would be, ‘in a better position to reach a fair and just decision’ before final sentencing, while Gunson, according to Polanski’s current lawyers and Gunson himself, has testified that his prison stay at Chino was to constitute his entire sentence, since there never was a case of rape which needed prosecuting at a trial or required longer sentencing, and lawyers Dalton and Silver speaking for Ms Geimer all had agreed on that now thirty-three years ago already and maintained ever since.

The fact that Polanski fled Rittenband’s arbitrary court was down to his unlawful self-deportation threat, it doesn’t change anything in regards to their original demand that Polanski be put on probation and set free. Looks like the Swiss after all are just as uninterested in facts other than what the corrupt US courts feed them. So much for justice. Walgren had said in the extradition report that he attempts to try Polanski on all counts, which in itself is not possible since the request is only valid in regards to the one count Polanski pleaded to that can be sentenced, or it would, for one, mean that they demand cross-examination of Ms Geimer as well, who will simply pledge the Firth, since she had made it clear already years ago that she will not testify against Polanski. Not because she doesn’t want to ‘relive’ the events, but because she would seriously perjure herself by now. Besides, the argument doesn’t quite stick, since she’s given enough interviews and appeared on TV talk shows talking about the affair rather candidly, and that is was NOT rape.

While it is unlawful to demand extradition for one thing and then intend another, by enacting laws or concluding treaties or agreements, countries determine the conditions under which they may entertain or deny extradition requests. Common bars to extradition include: Failure to fulfil dual criminality – generally the act for which extradition is sought must constitute a crime punishable by some minimum (retroactive) penalty in both the requesting and the requested parties. Which is exactly the point in Polanski’s case, since the two years Cooley wants are not ‘minimum’, and the Swiss only extradite people who face more than six months.. Possibility of certain forms of punishment – some countries refuse extradition on grounds that the person, if extradited, may receive capital punishment, face torture or degrading treatment. A few go as far as to cover all punishments that they themselves would not administer. Questionable, since even if the sentence might be lenient, if Polanski would face time inside rather than probation and certain danger of being assaulted, that would render extradition unsound since there is no rampant prison rape in Switzerland and he had done his time in 1977/8 already.

The European Court of Human Rights held that it would violate Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights to extradite a person to the United States, if it was due to, for one, the distressing conditions while on remand and the uncertain timescale within which the sentence would be executed. These restrictions are normally clearly spelled out in the extradition treaties that a government has agreed upon. Countries with a rule of law typically make extradition subject to review by that country’s courts. These courts may impose certain restrictions on extradition, or prevent it altogether, if for instance they deem the accusations to be based on dubious evidence, (or evidence obtained from torture) or if they believe that the defendant will not be granted a fair trial on arrival, or will be subject to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment if extradited. That inhuman prison rape is a daily occurrence in US jails or even while on detention doesn’t seem to bother anyone at the Swiss courts. I’m sure what the Swiss might consider ‘degrading’ is daily routine in US courts, where rape victims are assaulted, or innocent inmates are being raped in prisons regardless of age or race, and even if Polanski would not face physical dangers for being held on a more secure tier as it happened at Chino, a stay for months would be inhumanly stressful for his age. All for sleeping with a minor three decades ago who cried rape.

Even Panama has a law that says, anyone over the age of seventy is exempt from serving even longer prison sentences for any crime/s committed and is automatically entitled to house arrest on humanitarian grounds as an act of mercy. That of course could never happen in the oh so civilised US, where people Polanski’s age are incarnated like everyone else with hardcore criminals, who might only be inside for some non-violent misdemeanour. Whereas Polanski had been treated with respect by prison staff while on Swiss remand, that cannot be guaranteed in the US, the most inhuman country in the western world that sends innocent men into hell for having sex. The cases are plenty, the misery is endless, and the damage done to these young and now even old men lasts forever. I’m sure Cooley and his court henchman would think twice to send their own grandfather inside for having done nothing else than the rest on this planet, have sex, and apply every possible il/legal means to see him freed.

Ending his long silence, Polanski  has finally addressed his possible extradition to the US with a statement that accused authorities there of “trying to serve me on a platter to the media of the world,” instead of honoring their plea agreement made decades ago. “I have decided to break my silence in order to address myself directly to you without any intermediaries and in my own words,” which was distributed to the news media on May 2nd. The 908-word statement was circulated by Bernard-Henri Lévy, who is a friend of Polanski’s and the director of the French magazine La règle du jeu. What follows is the English transcript available on that journal.

ROMAN POLANSKI in his own words.






I can now remain silent no longer!











Roman Polanski

I have nothing to add.

As it seems the Swiss authorities don’t believe they have any ‘jurisdiction’ to consider the criticisms made by Polanski against ‘American justice’, they argue, Polanski should defend himself before the US law. He is doing so it seems. The NY Times is reporting that the LA courts have scheduled a hearing for May 10th, in an effort by Polanski’s legal team to unseal Gunson’s testimony after all, describing Rittenband’s misconduct and his intentions of Polanski’s sentence at Chino having been his time served. Today May 5th, it seems the Swiss courts have refused to block extradition. Whether the California court has been guilty of illegal collusion and misconduct is irrelevant to the Swiss authorities, they insist these allegations need to be clarified in the USA.

True. But if they are part of a testimony that can explain any sentencing limits that can foil extradition, i.e., were set below the max six month allowing extradition, it’s vital to take them into consideration. Of course, it’s not the first time in American legal history that a judge cared less about legal correctness than about the publicity surrounding his own person. Or any ambitious DA seeking reelection. This whole charade is about politics and money, not any ‘justice’. Since thirty-three years have elapsed now, after such a long time fair procedure and judgment are impossible, especially in a corrupt case like this. How only can Switzerland demonstrate credulity that extradition is acceptable, after Polanski went unchallenged for years, visited the country many times? Has property there since years? I think none. We know who whistled on him, and why. Just so to see what the Extradition Treaty between the US and Switzerland is all about, after it was amended in 1997, here it is.

Art. 1 An obligation to extradite

1. The Contracting Parties undertake, in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty, to surrender to each person who is prosecuted for having committed an extraditable offense, who have been convicted of such an act or who is sought to purposes of enforcing a security measure by the competent authorities of the requesting State.

2. If the offense was committed outside the territory of the requesting State, the requested State shall comply with the extradition request provided:

a) such an offense committed in similar circumstances is punishable under the law, or

b) that the person sought is a national of the requesting State or is sought for an offense committed against a national of the requesting State.

Art. 2 Extraditable offenses

1. A violation is considered extraditable only if the offender is liable to a penalty or a measure involving deprivation of liberty for more than a year under the laws of both Contracting Parties. If the request for extradition relates to a person sentenced, extradition shall be granted only if the balance of the sentence to serve the detention or both of at least six months.

2. It is immaterial for the purposes of this section

a) or the offense is not defined in identical terms in the law of the Contracting Parties, or

b) whether or not an offense for which the federal law of the United States requires proof of the use of means of inland transport, the use of postal or other means for the purposes of national or international, since these elements serve only to establish the jurisdiction of a federal court in the United States.

3. When the conditions set out in paras. 1 and 2 are met, extradition is granted in case of attempt, complicity or conspiracy (conspiracy), provided that the offense is also a violation of Swiss federal law.

4. If extradition is granted, it is also for any other offense recognized as such by the law of both Contracting Parties, regardless of time restrictions specified in para. 1.

Art. 3 Offences political, fiscal or military

1. The requested State refuses to grant the extradition if the acts for which she has been sought is a political offense or if the request appears to be motivated by political considerations.

2. Under the present Treaty, breaches the Contracting Parties, through multilateral international agreement, pledged to punish or extraditing the offender, or by loading their own authorities to prosecute him, are not regarded as political offenses and are therefore treated in accordance with the provisions of the multilateral international agreement in question.

3. The requested State may refuse extradition for acts

a) that violate legal provisions governing matters of an exclusively monetary, commercial or economic;

b) whose sole purpose to reduce taxes or fees or

c) that are criminally punishable under military law only.]

Art. 4 Non bis in idem (‘Double jeopardy’ clause)

1. Extradition is not granted if the requested State has already found the person sought for the acts for which extradition is requested.

2. The executive authority of the United States or the Swiss authorities may refuse extradition if the offense for which extradition is requested is under the jurisdiction of the requested State and that he will prosecute the perpetrator of the offense.

3. The fact that the competent authorities of the requested State have decided not to prosecute the crimes for which extradition has been requested or that all criminal proceedings were instituted against him that led to a dismissal does not preclude extradition.

Art. 5 Limitation

Extradition is not granted if the prosecution or the execution of the penalty or measure imposed is prescribed by the law of the requesting State. (? Shouldn’t it say, ‘not prescribed’? I.e., tell them what sentence it might entail?)

Art. 6 Capital Punishment

When the perpetrator of the act for which extradition is requested is punishable by the death penalty under the law of the requesting state, but it is not foreseen in the law of the requested State, extradition may be refused if the requested State considers that the requesting State has not provided adequate assurances that the death penalty will not be executed.

Art. 7 Default Judgement

When the person sought has been tried in absentia, the executive authority of the United States or the Swiss authorities may refuse extradition if the requested State considers that the requesting State has not provided sufficient guarantees in respect of human defense.

Art. 8 Extradition of nationals

1. The fact that the person sought is a national does not allow the requested State to refuse extradition unless the prosecution of the person for the acts in respect of which the extradition request was made not under its jurisdiction.

2. If extradition is refused under para. 1 and if the requesting State so requests, the requested State shall submit the case to its competent authorities so that they lead the prosecution. The documents and evidence concerning the case are freely available to the requested State. The Requesting State shall be informed of the result was given to his request.

Art. 9 Request for extradition

1. Extradition requests are submitted through diplomatic channels. They are accompanied by a translation required under art. 11.

2. All requests for extradition shall contain:

a) indications concerning the identity, nationality and place of residence of the person presumed to which refer to the documents listed in paras. 3 and 4 and, if possible, physical description, photograph and fingerprints;

b) a brief description of the facts, including date and place of the offense;

c) Statement of laws describing the main elements of the offense for which extradition is requested, the designation of the offense, a description of the scope and nature of the punishment for that offense and the time Limitation of prosecution or punishment.

3. If the person is not convicted, the extradition request must also contain:

a) a certified copy of arrest warrant or any other act displaying similar effects;

b) a brief presentation of the facts, key findings and evidence to accept that allowing the person sought has committed the offense for which extradition is requested, if the request comes from Switzerland, this summary is written by a judicial authority and if the request is submitted by the United States, it is drafted by the Attorney General and served with a copy of the indictment.

4. If the person sought has been convicted or has not been convicted, the request for extradition shall also include:

a) a certified copy of the criminal sentence or, if the person was convicted but the sentence has not yet been issued, a statement respecting the judicial authority;

b) a copy of the indictment stating the charges which the person sought has been convicted;

c) a certified copy of arrest warrant or the declaration under which the person sought to be adopted for execution of criminal judgments;

d) whether the sentence has been pronounced, a certified copy of this pronouncement as well as a statement on the balance of the sentence to be served.

5. If the person sought has been tried in absentia, the requesting state provides the documents listed in paras. 2 and 4.

Art. 10 Additional information

If the executive authority of the United States or the competent Swiss authorities estimate that the documents accompanying the application do not contain all the necessary information, they require additional information. The review of the application is continued on the basis of this information completed.

Art. 11 Translation

If the request for extradition is made by Switzerland, the request itself and all accompanying documents are written in or translated into English. If the request for extradition is made by the United States, the application itself and all accompanying documents are written in or translated into one of the official languages of Switzerland. The official language is determined case by case basis by the Swiss authorities.

Art. 12 documents admitted as evidence

The documents accompanying a request for extradition shall be admitted as evidence:

a) whether, if the request comes from the United States, they have been authenticated by a judge, magistrate or officer of the United States and sealed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs;

b) whether, if the request comes from Switzerland, they were signed by a judicial or other competent Swiss authority and authenticated by the first official diplomatic or consular of the United States to Switzerland, or

c) they have been certified or authenticated in any other manner permitted by law of the requested State.

Art. 13 Provisional arrest

1. In case of emergency, either Contracting Party may request the provisional arrest of the person sought. The request for provisional arrest or the application for extension thereof shall be transmitted through diplomatic channels, either directly from the federal Department of Justice and Police in the Department of Justice of the United States or vice versa.

2. The application must

a) indicate that a request for extradition;

b) indicate the existence of an arrest warrant, a document having the same legal force or criminal trial and the date of the document and the name of the authority that has established;

c) designate the offense, indicate the maximum penalty by the author and, if applicable, the balance of the sentence;

d) contain a brief description of the facts indicating the date and place of the offense;

e) contain information concerning the identity, nationality and place of residence of the person alleged claimed.

3. Upon receipt of the request, the requested State shall take the necessary measures to arrest the person sought. The Requesting State shall be informed promptly of the outcome of their application.

4. Provisional arrest shall be terminated if, within 40 days after the arrest of the person sought, the executive authority of the United States or the competent Swiss authorities have not received the formal request of extradition and the supporting documents. Upon request, this period may exceptionally be extended by 20 days.

5. The release of the person sought, under para. 4, does not it is again arrested and then extradited if the extradition request and supporting documents are sent later.

Art. 14 Decision and Surrender

1. The requested State shall immediately inform the requesting State through diplomatic channels of its decision on the extradition request. Any complete or partial rejection of the application must be motivated. The requested State shall also inform the requesting State the duration of detention pending extradition suffered by the person sought.

2. If extradition is granted, the surrender of the person sought is held within the time prescribed by the law of the requested State. The authorities of the Contracting Parties agree on the date and place of delivery. However, if the person is not taken outside the territory of the Requested State within the prescribed period, it can be released. The requested State may refuse extradition because of the offense for which it was requested.

Art. 15 Postponed or Temporary

If the extradition request has been accepted, but that the person sought is being prosecuted or serving a sentence in the territory of the requested State for other acts, the requested State may

a) postpone the surrender until the conclusion of the proceedings against the person sought or until it has completed all the sentences to which the person was convicted or is about to be, or

b) temporarily surrender the person sought to the requesting State so that it can conduct the prosecution. The person so surrendered shall be kept in custody by the requesting State, then at the end of the procedure, returned to the state required under the terms agreed by the Parties.

Art. 16 Rule of Specialty

1. A person extradited shall not be prosecuted, sentenced or detained for any offense committed before surrender other than that for which extradition, or extradited to a third State, unless:

a) the executive authority of the United States or the competent Swiss authorities agree there, before making its decision, the requested State may require to be consulted on the accompanying documents and a position in writing of the extradited to the offense in question or that

b) the extradited person has not left the territory of the Requesting State within 45 days although she has been allowed, she has returned on her own after leaving or has left the territory of the requesting State and that it was forbidden and that it be returned.

2. The requesting State may however take all measures necessary under its laws, including the use of a default procedure to interrupt the limitation period.

3. When the definition of the offense for which the requested person was extradited is amended during the procedure, the person sought may be prosecuted or tried

a) if the offense as it has been redefined in the law is an extraditable offense and its components are the same as those that motivated the request for extradition, which are contained in documents accompanying and

b) if the sentence is not more severe than the maximum penalty for the offense for which extradition was granted.

4. A person extradited may be prosecuted, detained or tried for any crimes committed by them before extradition

a) if, in cases where extradition has been granted by Switzerland, the extradited person agrees, by declaration or recorded minutes of being prosecuted or having run the judgments for all these offenses, after he explained what the rule of specialty and that he was informed of the legal consequences of his statement, or

b) if, in cases where extradition has been granted by the United States, the executive authority of that country waives the request of the competent Swiss authorities, application of the rule of specialty for all these offenses.

The executive authority of the United States attached to its application a copy of the statement. The requested State shall immediately communicate its decision to the requesting State.

Art. 17 Concurrent requests

If extradition is requested by several States for the same offense or for different offenses, the executive authority of the United States or the competent Swiss authorities decide to which country the person to be extradited. The requested State shall decide taking into account all relevant factors, including but not limited to, the relative seriousness of offenses, from where they were committed, the dates for receipt of requests for extradition, the nationality of the person sought and the possibility of subsequent extradition to another state.

Art. 18 Simplified Extradition

If, after the competent judicial authority was personally notified of his right to be a formal extradition proceedings and the protection owed as a result, the person consents in writing and irrevocably to his extradition, the requested State may grant extradition without initiating formal extradition proceedings. When extradition under this section is granted by Switzerland, the specialty rule is applicable.

Art. 19 Surrender of Property

1. If extradition is granted, the Requested State shall surrender to the requesting state, to the extent permitted by its law and subject to the rights of others, all objects that can serve as evidence that result of the offense or have been acquired in exchange for such objects that were found in the possession of the person sought at the time of his arrest or discovered subsequently. These objects are, if possible, returned to the requesting State at the same time as the person sought, even if it has not specifically requested. The items must be surrendered even if extradition having been granted, can not take place.

2. The requested State may condition the surrender of property on the condition that the requesting state to furnish sufficient assurances that the property will be made available as soon as possible.

Art. 20 Transit

1. Each Contracting Party may give permission to transit through its territory of a person surrendered to the other Contracting Party by a third State. The Contracting Party requesting transit shall send his application to the State required for transit through the diplomatic channel. The request for transit shall contain a description of the person concerned, a summary of facts and confirmation that there is an arrest warrant, an act of the same legal force or criminal trials. The request must be dated and should acknowledge the authority which issued it. The submission of a request for transit is not necessary if it is done by air and no landing is scheduled on the territory of the other Contracting Party.

2. In case of unscheduled landing on the territory of the other Contracting Party, the transit takes place under the provisions of para. 1. The Party in whose territory the landing place can hold the person in transit for 72 hours pending the request for transit.

Art. 21 Fees

1. The cost of translating the documents supporting the extradition request and expense of transporting the person sought until the point of sale on the territory of the Requesting State shall be borne by the requesting State. All other costs resulting from the request and extradition proceedings are borne by the requested State.

2. The requested State shall ensure that the requesting state is represented in all proceedings in the extradition request.

Art. 22 Application

This Treaty shall apply to all criminal acts punishable under Article 2 of which were committed before or after the entry into force of this Treaty.

Art. 23 Effects on other conventions and national law

If a procedure provided for in this Treaty would facilitate extradition settled in another treaty or law of the requested State, the procedure is conducted in accordance with this Treaty. Extradition settled in another instrument of international law or national law of the Contracting Parties shall not be affected by this Treaty and this does so excluded or restricted.

Art. 24 Consultation

If a Contracting Party so requests, a consultation is held, either generally or in relation to a particular case regarding the interpretation, application or implementation of this Treaty.

Art. 25 Entry into Force and Termination

1. This Treaty is subject to ratification. The instruments of ratification shall be exchanged at Washington as soon as possible.

2. This Treaty shall enter into force 180 days after the exchange of instruments of ratification.

3. Upon the entry into force of this Treaty, the Extradition Treaty of May 14, 1900 and the extradition treaties of the additional 10 January 1935 and January 31, 1940 between the United States of America and the Swiss Confederation repealed, but they continue to apply to extradition proceedings under way.

4. Either party may terminate this Treaty at any time upon the expiry of five years from the entry into force, with written notification at least six months in advance.

In witness whereof , the plenipotentiaries, being duly authorized thereto, have signed this Treaty.

Done in Washington, DC November 14, 1990 in English and German languages, both texts being equally authentic.

Well, so much for that. Funny how it says in Art. 9 b) ‘a brief presentation of the facts, key findings and evidence to accept that allowing the person sought has committed the offense for which extradition is requested,’ when the extradition papers only give her more than outdated testimony, no ‘evidence’ to back it up, no ‘key findings’, nothing at all otherwise or anything the extraditable party said in his defence. No ‘proof’ at all, since all she said to this day is supposition. Not fact. Art. 7 says: ‘Default Judgement. When the person sought has been tried in absentia, the executive authority of the United States or the Swiss authorities may refuse extradition if the requested State considers that the requesting State has not provided sufficient guarantees in respect of human defense.’ That means, even if they had sentenced him in absentia, he still could be extradited, for what purpose is another question when someone was pronounced already. Unless the sentence entails a prison term sentence, which however can be turned into time spent at a prison of his own native country.

Art. 10 says: ‘Additional information. If the executive authority of the United States or the competent Swiss authorities estimate that the documents accompanying the application do not contain all the necessary information, they require additional information. The review of the application is continued on the basis of this information completed.’ Funny how they had said before that the US has been less than ‘transparent’, and now suddenly don’t want to know of Gunson’s proof that extradition cannot be granted, on the grounds of Polanski not having been up for more than the three months, which were cut in half certainly not his fault, at no further jail time demanded by anyone. Let alone the ‘victim’. Looks like they want to get rid of the entire chain and ball case they had set into rolling when they called on the US if they still ‘want’ Polanski, while much more important cases are ignored and I’m sure they harbour anyone much more dangerous to be sent down.

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the Head of the Federal Department of Justice and Police of Switzerland, the one who had denied that they sold Polanski to the US for their offshore banking deals, apparently has written an ‘official letter’ concerning Polanski’s house arrest. It is unclear to whom she has addressed that letter, OR IF IT IS AUTHENTIC (I in fact doubt and sounds more like an anti-Polanski propaganda piece), but a senior US news editor posted it on his political website, which follows.

“I am making a plea to you not only as the head of the Federal Department of Justice and Police of Switzerland, but as a mother of three children to revoke the house arrest of child molester Roman Polanski and place him in a secure facility. Almost thirty years ago, Roman Polanski was arrested in the United States and charged with drugging and raping a thirteen-year-old little girl. The girl, Samantha Geimer, accused Polanski of giving her alcohol and drugs, and then, despite her repeated protests, he raped and sodomized her. Polanski denied these charges, yet pled to a lesser charge of unlawful intercourse with a minor. The United States justice system afforded him his right to counsel and due process under the constitution. Despite the fact that he pled guilty to the charges against him, he fled the country before being sentenced. He has had an outstanding arrest warrant against him in the US since then, and five years ago, in 2005, an international arrest warrant was issued against him. Instead of paying for his crimes and providing a victimized child with some semblance of closure, Polanski took the path of a coward and escaped sentencing. I do not mean to use the word coward in an inflammatory manner, however the definition of coward is “a person who lacks courage in facing danger, difficulty, opposition or pain.” This is exactly the kind of character Roman Polanski demonstrated by fleeing the United States before facing his sentence. Last week, Roman Polanski lost a pivotal appeal on his case to be heard in absentia. This will force a political issue in the coming months of whether Switzerland will extradite him to the United States. This, however, is not why I am requesting you revoke Polanski’s house arrest. I ask, instead, that you consider the nature of a coward. Cowards, without fail, take the easy way in life. Despite the fact that doing so may hurt others, it is not in their nature to care. By definition, a coward will never be one to protect another human being, because doing so may cause harm to themselves. Mr. Polanski proved himself to be just such a person when, despite the harm it would cause to the young girl he assaulted, he fled sentencing simply to protect himself. If Roman Polanski is not placed in the custody of a secure facility in Switzerland and is allowed to remain under house arrest, it is almost certain that as the hour draws closer for him to finally have his day in court, he will yet again flee another jurisdiction. I plead with you as a father and hope to empower you as a mother to do the right thing. This man gave up any right he had to leniency the second he left United States soil. Please do not give him another chance to escape. It is within your power to make sure he faces punishment for what he did to that little girl nearly thirty years ago, and his sentencing is long overdue. Your consideration in this matter is greatly appreciated. Respectfully Yours, Head of Federal Department of Justice and Police of Switzerland.”

Why it says, ‘nearly thirty’ years ago is a mystery, which only proves that ‘whoever’ wrote this, hasn’t even got the basic details right of the case, let alone any of the finer details or seems to know he was at Chino. Another self-righteous busybody who simply takes the ‘little girl’s’ words for fact just because she said so, and that three decades ago just because she was a minor, disregarding her own wishes as an adult woman now besides to see this ended, not dragged out, calling Polanski a ‘coward’ for fleeing. Funny how Gunson of all people would gave done the same knowing of Rittenband’s own ‘emotional blackmail’ tactics, but I don’t see the author calling Polanski’s own former prosecutor a coward. How unbecoming to appeal to others in the typically emotional blackmail manner, right in the vein of ludicrous calls to protect our children from the monstrous director, while no one is allowed to appeal for clemency in Polanski’s case in a similar form when pointing them to the facts, when Polanski never hurt any ‘child’, let alone the only woman who had accused him of rape. Funny how he never raped anyone else, or that he seems to stand in for every rapist in the world that needs securing like a dangerous animal. In shackles of course. And it stinks of right-wing racism. I’m sure whoever composed this defamation would be happy for their own father to be kept at home, not in prison, were he to be extradited for having sex three decades ago.

Admittedly for a case of unlawful sex he had sat out, but if anyone is a ‘coward’, than that’s empowered people like her selling others out for dirty banking deals, not any ‘justice’. And, ‘closure’ for the ‘little victimised girl’? According to Geimer long grown up now and past any of this forced ‘scandal’ she never wanted, after mom didn‘t quite listen to her not to drag in the law, that would have meant no one to touch the case again, no one to call on the authorities to arrest him again, but someone to have the case dropped to avoid testifying, or to finally sentence him in absentia to litigate and close this corrupted case, not meddling people demanding ‘special treatment’ to put an old man behind bars who violated no one. This ‘author’ like so many has no idea about the ‘little girl’s’ family background, her commonly sex, drugs and alcohol pervaded Hollywood upbringing, her wanting to get into the into the industry, her motives to drop the case, erroneously judging from their own ‘ordinary’ life far away from Hollywood without the slightest clues of the circumstances of that day, or the legal status quo of it. All the ‘author’ does is believe her long self-amended words, utterly ignoring the fact that they were never proven in the first place. And ‘not care’? Polanski is known to be very caring, otherwise he in fact had demanded a trial, but he didn’t want to put the girl into the limelight, whose identity no one knew of at that point. And he cares for his friends, family and his loyal fans.

What’s with this jaded ‘little girl’ rhetoric anyhow. Ms Geimer was a perfectly grown adolescent, not ‘child’. Only the law made her an disempowered ‘child’ and now she’s almost fifty. How would Ms Geimer put it, cut the crap. That not meant in any form as affront. Astonishing how people keep on about her ‘little girl’ image that never was, let alone a little ‘innocent’ girl. These people have to bash the bible of Polanski the monster he never was by default now, or turn minors into powerless little infants. Astonishing. He was a sex infatuated director like so many, not paedophilic rapist, they’re mutually exclusive in fact. Otherwise he must be the only ‘onetime rapist’ ‘child molester’ in history then. Amazing. This is looking more and more like a political persecution from both ends now, and to think he would flee ‘again’ is more than ludicrous, since he could have done so throughout all these months he was under house arrest. Why he would only do so when ‘his day in court draws closer’ is a mystery. How would he manage that? Run from the plenty officers being almost eighty? Deserting and shaming his family for what exactly? Where would he go with a face more recognisable than Obama’s by now? Such indeed ‘inflammatory’ and uniformed rhetoric is more than preposterous. And, ‘afforded him his right to counsel and due process’? Yeah right.

This ‘author’ has obviously no idea about the man she calls a coward in another show of pathetic over-reaction after Widmer-Sclumpf had lied to us already, about someone who has more ideas and memories about ‘facing danger, difficulty, opposition or pain’ since his childhood, through the ghetto years, the Manson tragedy and endless media persecution, than they will ever know. It’s an insult, and this author is part of this lynch mob. Polanski has to think of his family these days, wants to go to home to his wife and kids. But people like ‘this’ deny him this final closure out of spite even the so called ‘victim’ demands, who had lived in perfect oblivion and peace for all these decades, unlike Polanski, before she made herself known. That was up to her, no one else, and is long part of this debacle Rittenband had forced on her and Polanski. Ms Geimer said she was glad he ran, and I’m sure that Widmer-Schlumpf never made any protestations in regards to Polanski’s before he was rearrested, with her very own help. These people are destructive witch hunters without any sympathy or even the slightest moral understanding of the case let alone any integrity, not even having the full facts, but would beg to have mercy shown to them. No surprises there.

To recap, a plea bargain is based on the following rules, ‘the plea bargain is negotiated at the request of counsel for the prosecuting party and all the parties involved (i.e., prosecution, defence, and the judge on the recommendation of probation officers, psychiatrists etc.) shall agree on the nature of the offence and the sentence, thus avoiding a trial.’ That was done when the mother demanded the plea deal, Polanski then pleaded to the one count in exchange to drop the other unproven charges, and that no jail time was demanded from all parties. Except Rittenband changed his mind after he had sent him to Chino, and everybody was in agreement that was it. And to remind people, the purposes of incarceration is (a) to protect society from the offender; (b) to (possibly) rehabilitate the offender; (c) to serve as a deterrent to others; (d) to punish the offender for his or her crime. The Polanski case is a perfect example of a, b, c, or even d not being applicable at all since he never ‘reoffended’, certainly won’t need ‘rehabilitation’ and did his time. Jailing him now after all these years won’t serve as a ‘deterrent’ either given the time between the events and his rearrest. Espinoza could have given Polanski an absentia sentence, which would have given the Swiss clarity in regards to the extradition, instead of leaving the ‘sentence’ in dispute.

If Espinoza says, “Nothing precludes the possibility Judge Rittenband’s original promise will someday be enforced. I don’t disagree that the intended sentence was the time Mr. Polanski already spent in a state prison under psychiatric evaluation,” and Polanski is only facing time served, and that’s what the extradition request is for, but will not sentence him in absentia, which then would conclude this never-ending saga, this has done nothing to stop Cooley continuing with the extradition request. The word vengeance comes to mind. Cooley is known to be vindictive and more than corrupt after years in office now, and as many others see it, and myself, this seems to be more of a get-rich scheme to add more clout to his well-known lust for power and dirty money, so that Cooley can be the next Attorney General of California at the expense of another famous person, Polanski. Who in addition to already having served his time at Chino, has proven to be as harmless as can be after over three decades and has sat out another 70 days on Swiss remand, both covering more than the three months Rittenband had in mind.

Let’s not forget, if Polanski had been such a ‘moral threat to society’, not even media whore Rittenband had let him run loose in Europe to get on with his film, or if Polanski’s intent was to flee ‘justice’. He only fled injustice, once forced into the situation of a Catch-22 type can’t-win position in 1978 where he was damned if he stayed and damned if he fled the judicial and hidden prosecutorial corruption engulfing him, since he wanted to keep working in Hollywood, when Rittenband wanted him out the country. So why stay to sit out the other 48 days and then be deported against all counsel anyway. That’s unlawful and vindictive, and was even caught on film in that documentary. Polanski’s case is not the only one of foul play where DAs seek promotion to become AGs, who will keep on victimising the defenceless in order to gain promotion, using unlawful power strategies and bribes, not matter whether you’re rich or poor, famous or not. Cooley keeps on stooping in like an ugly vulture in search for a defendant’s vulnerability, and with each different victim comes a different promotion opportunity. Instead of comparing his case to the mass murderers who are not prosecuted, it would be more egalitarian to compare Polanski with the countless wo/men in US prisons who do not have the resources he had to combat the political manoeuvring by overzealous judges and prosecutors who put them there.

Polanski is unjustly made to look as if he ran from justice instead of injustice, and now he’s crying out for the world to see what is happening in LA, where people like him are being sold out for banking deals and denigrated like mass murderers, their lives ruined again and again, so the County of LA and California officials can sweep rampant corruption under the rug, receive ‘respectability’ and praise from the people who don’t know better, another promotion at their expense, dubious advancement of their careers, cover up their own corruption, and that of other officials’ corruption in the go. As the Federal Appeal Courts are currently helping this to happen with no recourse, Cooley seems to feel that the taxpayer’s dollars are his personal monies or to mis/use celebrities like Polanski to seek higher office is just. The Swiss should take a stance and tell the US courts to go and pack their bags and leave an old man who never harmed anyone in peace. If people like Widmer-Schlumpf can abuse their own power, and people calling him a child molester without qualms, since he’s such a threat to other ‘children’, and surely would try to ‘escape’ again with his family waiting for him to come home not wanting to find him in a river, I would call this situation gone completely out of control by now.

Fuelled by misled feminist and child protection agendas and personal issues that have no place here, this case has long become a political time bomb, and Polanski should sue the LA courts for their continuous misconducts and defendant’s rights violations on a grand scale. But of course, for that he’d needed to be there, which is the Catch-22 trap, since Espinoza has agreed there is misconduct, but in order to litigate it, he’s forcing him to appear in person, which in turn needlessly exposes Polanski to dangers of additional suffering both physically and mentally. Maybe Polanski should consider The European Court of Justice or The Hague as an option to highlight the more than blatant US Human Rights violations committed in his case. Many by now also think the ‘victim’ should be put on the stand and cross-examined not simply taking her old testimony for granted, withdraw Polanski’s plea to have a fair trial, start from scratch, and finally make clear what really happened, since all her original claims have run more than dry through her own later statements painting a very different picture many never saw either.

They finally want to hear what Polanski has to say about the course of events, since of course the majority still has no first clues about the bare basics, let alone concrete facts or anything from his side. Let alone are aware of the judicial mess this case is in ever since day one. Ms Geimer’s GrandJjury testimony is full of Swiss cheese holes and blatant absurdities if one considers her allegations logically, objectively, the entire course of events, mostly in regards to the ‘double sodomy’, which of course most people never noticed either, with many of them probably having sex abuse issues stemming from their own backgrounds, or for an experience of genuine rape, clouding the facts of this case, or in contrast never had anal sex to know better, while many genuine rape victims support him knowing what Ms Geimer ‘suffered’ was nowhere near any actual sexual assault. By blindly joining the witch hunters, they’re getting a sort of ‘third-party’ justice against their own abusers that probably escaped justice, and now rally against Polanski as their little whipping boy for all the sexual abuse/assault cases on this planet, to finally get their pound of flesh.

Congratulations Roman, after all the public/media abuse you’ve suffered already ever since Sharon’s cruel loss, you’re now the world’s only ‘onetime rapist/paedophile’ a second time over. If Ms Geimer really had been as drugged and drunk as she claimed, ‘dizzy’, she wouldn’t have been able to say anything, do anything, be on her feet over several hours, posed, smiled, and then had even the sex she described. No, she’d been ripped apart, battered and bruised, exhausted from all the crying and protesting, and Polanski would have had to drag and push her about the house, force her into it all on several levels. At no signs of physical abuse, no words from her that he threatened her, hurt her, caused her pain, no words from Huston to back her up in any form as an interested third party, all of Ms Geimer’s claims of ‘drugged rape’ and ‘dry double sodomy’ are as hollow as her later attempts to have the charges dropped, once it became too close for comfort to credibly uphold her claims. Teenage fantasies can be so damaging when they suddenly turn into nightmares, once the more serious laws get hold of transparent lies to make them last forever no matter what the adult woman says later, just for more ‘legal’ fun and public amusement Californian/Swiss style. Roman, you’re one unlucky bastard genius. Lucky you have a loving family and friends to help you get through this nightmare.

Of course, as one might expect, Cooley’s court argued Polanski’s request for access to Gunson’s sealed testimony detailing the misconduct should be rejected because of his ‘fugitive status’. Polanski’s attorneys have said it will help their efforts to fight Polanski’s extradition from Switzerland. Indeed, but who wants that. Name-caller Walgren wrote in the filing that the request should be denied because Polanski has repeatedly refused to return to LA for sentencing. He said allegations of misconduct in the case can and should be dealt with at Polanski’s sentencing. Funny that they need him there for that and probably will find some other clause to deny him to actually do so. Even funnier is how they can ‘sentence’ him, when the testimony clearly states that Polanski had done his time, no one wanted any further incarceration, and has already been behind bars for longer than what Rittenband had in mind. According to the court filings, Gunson had tried to challenge Rittenband, wanted him disqualified from the case because of multiple misconduct, but his supervisors prevented him from even filing it after they consulted with the judge, and Gunson was simply denied. Nice justice. Walgren also blasted comments by Polanski’s attorneys that prosecutors’ requests to Swiss authorities for his extradition contain false and incomplete statements. The allegations are ‘completely baseless and reckless allegations’, Walgren wrote. ‘Baseless’, really? Polanski fled after Rittenband made private, unlawful ex parte, remarks that he intended to renege on their agreement reached by all parties, and then threatened him with equally unlawful self-deportation. I’d call that more than ‘misconduct’ months down the road. Let’s see what May 10th will bring.

Oh, and here’s a nice little nugget for all the hypocrites out there to chew on till then, guess what? Cooley’s very own Governor Arnie, had an affair with a former ‘child actress’ starting when she was sixteen in 1975, yes, underage I believe in California then, causing muscle man Schwarzenegger, then thirty, to temporarily decide not to run for governor of California at that time. The woman, Goyette, said in interviews to have had a brief sexual encounter with Schwarzenegger that year. Sounds just like Polanski and Ms Geimer to me. And in the late 1980s she said, they had a once a year affair over seven years at an Ohio annual fitness convention he hosted then. And guess what? He paid her off with a lot of hard cash not to disclose their affair, but that seems to have gone wrong. The National Enquirer wrote about Goyette and her relationship with Schwarzenegger in spring of 2001, when he was first contemplating a run for office. In 2003, Goyette told the Times, she heard again from American Media, this time asking to buy the exclusive rights to her story, a deal she assumed would lead to a book. More money I’d say. Yet the company never published any more stories about their relationship, and in fact steered clear of most gossip about Schwarzenegger during the campaign. I guess, Polanski was a juicier fish to fry than ‘action hero’ Arnie running for governor, by floating Ms Geimer’s testimony to foil his receiving The Pianist Oscar in 2003, which however failed. A professor of political science had said, “If he [Schwarzenegger] paid off a woman to not talk about his relationship with her, he’s conspiring to keep information out of the public domain that’s relevant to the way people judge him.” I guess, Arnie’s campaign to shield him from ‘moral scrutiny’ worked just fine, who married into the powerful Kennedy family, and no one called him a ‘thick-accented’ ‘child molester’ or dragged him into court for ‘statutory rape’ then or decades later. Of course, this you won’t find in Wikipedia either, except some ‘groping sexual misconduct’ with several women. I wonder why.

The roots of Arnie’s well-documented chauvinistic attitude toward women lie far away in his homeland of Austria. When his father observed that the seventeen year old Arnold had never had a girlfriend and was obsessed by bodybuilding — an activity which has always had gay connotations and rumours circulated that he indeed was gay and had homosexual encounters — he became worried about his ‘straight sexuality’. So he did all he could to encourage junior to bring girls to their home in Graz; and now get this, he gave them wine, then left them alone together, hoping that the inevitable would happen. His father’s ‘permissiveness’ paid off; by the time Arnie was nineteen, and had come to England to compete in the Mister Universe contest, his appetite for young women was ‘well-developed’ — as was his crude approach to them resulting in all these ‘groping’ allegations. This having been mentioned in several news articles already seven years ago covering all his extra-marital escapades and that underage girl affair, no one seems to have taken any offence at that, or his father’s getting young girls drunk for his son to have sex with them while they were ‘intoxicated’, no matter Arnie’s own younger age. While Polanski was up for his Pianist Oscar prize, Schwarzenegger was up for his Governor post despite all these ‘drunken child molesting’ and ‘sexual assault’ cases which were NOT inventions, after Polanski had slept with only one underage girl who was hardly drunk let alone drugged or raped, and no one cared that her family too had allowed her free access to sex and drugs and alcohol from the age of eight and had an affair with her mother’s own boyfriend on top as documented by the prosecution itself. While Arnie made love to his underage lover in the same hotel as his wife-to-be was staying, no one called him an adulterer, but people keep dredging up Polanski’s affairs he had outside his marriage to Sharon, who in contrast was fully aware of it since they both had an understanding about ‘free love’. But then again, Arnie is the Governor of Cooley’s own corrupt court, and money can buy anything, including a ‘demure’ Kennedy wife to shut up about his blatant infidelities, and underage ex-lovers not to sue him. So much for ‘special treatment’ and double standards.

How did Cooley put it in his court filing from May 6th to deny Hummel’s unsealing request, “The ‘People’ (‘People’? No, ‘state’) believe that the defendant will be extradited to the United States. Once the defendant is securely before this court, (‘securely’? In shackles I guess) a full and fair (‘fair’? As fair as then I guess) hearing can be scheduled at which both parties will be allowed to call witnesses and delve into the allegations of misconduct. (‘Delve’? Depends on when the ‘schedule’ is set, which can be a day, a month, two, three… with Polanski sitting on remand, waiting.) At this same hearing, the People will have an equal opportunity to delve into the March 10, 1977 criminal actions of Roman Polanski. (Really? In that case Ms Geimer has to be there too, and she refused to testify against him then, and will not do so today, and if forced, will perjure herself, and if she pleads the Firth, will draw contempt of court.) With all the evidence in mind, (‘all’? Make sure the good doctors repeat their findings and Ms Geimer’s inconsistent ’recollections’ from decades later, and her boyfriend having said, ‘she’s always acting’) the alleged misconduct, (nothing ‘alleged’ about that) as well as the facts surrounding the underlying sexual offense committed by a 43-year old man against a drugged, scared and vulnerable 13-year old, (‘drugged’? Maybe they should try a Quaalude to see what it really does, or rather not what she had claimed, and, ‘scared’? There’s the unlocked door, no ‘scared rape victim’ would not eye, or ask for help from the woman there, try to escape at any given chance. And, ‘vulnerable’? With her family background of sex and drugs and alcohol from the age of ‘eight’, with a sister once institutionalised for Quaalude abuse? Sure, some call it ‘child abuse’, or, ‘child neglect’ committed by the family) this court will be able to make an informed and appropriate determination regarding the defendant’s sentence. (‘Sentence’? The family didn’t want any ‘sentence’, and they too should have been indicted, for drugs and alcohol furnishing offences, ‘lewd acts’ by her mother’s boyfriend, her own boyfriend sent down for unlawful sex, and others, and and and. Guess not.) The People eagerly await such a hearing, so that this case after a delay of 32 years, may be fairly and conclusively resolved.” ‘Fairly’? With the handy ‘rape shield laws’ blocking vital evidence, like the clerk’s report of her making out with her mother’s boyfriend outside Gunson’s own office? Not a chance. ‘Fairly’ would be to release Polanski on Ms Geimer’s perjury charges. Have they no more pressing ‘cases’ to ‘conclude’? Guess not.

Funny how the ‘court’ said in 1977, that, “You [Polanski] have the right to be confronted by the witnesses against you, and the right to cross-examine. (Really? How come she could be allowed NOT to do so, when she expressly said ‘no’ to stand trial?) You have the right to make a reply to the allegations that you are a ‘mentally disordered sex offender’, (or rather not, as submitted by the psyche reports Rittenband held already, but then sent him down for a ‘diagnostic study’ nobody asked for, could appeal and then were told that was his time and all before Rittenband reneged on that plea deal NOT to seek time in custody) and you have the right to call witnesses in your behalf and present evidence.” Really? Evidence that will simply not be allowed, like the clerk’s report, the panties, Huston’s original testimony, to name but a few. Polanski should have pressed for that trial, not accept that ‘leaving-people-to-believe-in-the-dropped-charges-are-fact’ plea deal. Dalton argued, “In 1976 there were forty four convictions of statutory rape, and none of these individuals went to prison, and only a quarter of them were placed on probation without any time in custody at all. Probation is deserved in this case, since the concept that you can improve on people by locking them up, I think, never was a very good idea anyway. (How true, see all the men sent down for that ‘law’ and being gang raped right now.) I think the experts here have indicated to us that it isn‘t necessarily for the protection of society or for the protection of others, to ask for my defendant be incarcerated.” Indeed, or Rittenband had not allowed Polanski to travel the globe to finish his second to-be-left-unfinished film abroad, and no one ever ‘cried rape’ again. Oh but I forgot, Polanski is the one and only onetime rapist on this planet.

What then followed in 1977 was Gunson’s ‘mock’ argument that Rittenband had asked him and Dalton to conduct, and argue for time in custody, as seen in that 2008 documentary. Rittenbrand scripted this ‘argument’ meant for the media, which is in fact also illegal. ‘Misconduct’ anyone? Gunson made it clear, in the presence of Rittenband and Dalton that the family expressly did not ask for incarceration. Logic permitting, NO mother would ever not ask for her daughter’s ‘rapist’ be set free on probation, even after no trial. Never. Dalton said, “The probation report disclosed that, although just short of her fourteenth birthday the ‘prosecutix’ was a well developed young girl who looked older than her years, was not unschooled in sexual matters, and not unfamiliar with Quaalude, since her tenth year of age in fact. And, the part played by the mother in permitting her daughter to accompany the defendant to the Nicholson home, unchaperoned, is to be strongly condemned, although there is ‘evidence’ that she has asked to go along on that venture.” Sure, she can say so after the fact, and Polanski could not prove otherwise. That’s why Gunson struck her remark, that she was turned away by Polanski or that Ms Geimer said to her ‘she didn’t like him’ while on the phone to her, from the record as hearsay since Ms Geimer never said so herself. In fact, when they both left to the Bisset/Nicholson shoot the mother in fact did not ask to come along, but her boyfriend had queried Polanski where they would go to do the next shoot. So there’s NO way it can be true that the mother or the sister (who was not at home either) wanted to go with them and were returned by Polanski, or that Ms Geimer did not know where they were headed.

In fact, Ms Geimer told Polanski that she didn’t want her coming along before, saying, “Like I hate having my mother around when I’m being photographed, because she says, like, do this, or do that.” Her mother being an ‘actress’, ‘coaching’ her ‘aspiring actress’ daughter. Now, if a mother wants to make SURE she accompanied her kid to a photoshoot with an older man, she MAKES sure she does, not waits for Polanski to call her to tell her they’ll be late for dinner, and only then ask if she’s ok, and Ms Geimer in fact said ‘uhu’, and absolutely nothing about being ‘afraid’ of him, or unwilling to get into the Jacuzzi, or do any of this. Ms Geimer’s mother only heard of the sex as the very last person hours after she was returned by Polanski, despite the two ‘discussing’ the ‘asthma lie’ in the kitchen once she dashed in to intercept her. Polanski stated in his autobiography that she had told the courts about how she came to ‘know’ about the ‘incident’. Now, logic permitting, anyone who was ‘raped’, wouldn’t necessarily ‘brag’ about it to their boyfriend much later, and say, and I quote, “Polanski had sex with me,” nor argue over it with their sister who overheard them, before the mother then entered the discussion, let alone forget to tell their mother about the ‘multiple rape’, but in fact would clamour about such an attack in the kitchen right there and then, and not ask her to lie about any fake asthma, but accuse him right there, not look at his photos. Or at least tell her once Polanski was gone, but she hadn’t, she only told her boyfriend they had sex. That part makes her ‘rape’ allegations even less credible, since, especially after Polanski left them, they had two weeks to ‘discuss’ what to say in court.

Polanski gave her mother a series of phone numbers of the places where he believed they might be going, and there was never any false ‘pretence’, since the mother fully endorsed all three shoots and obviously didn’t see it necessary to call him, and when he called her, Ms Geimer gave no indication that she ‘didn’t like him’. Funny thing is, had she not wanted to get into the Jacuzzi, and Polanski went into the bathroom to switch on the rheostat lights for the pool, they would never even have found the Quaaludes at all. So much for Polanski having ‘planned’ to drug her, in that case he’d brought some along. He was in fact telling her to take some shots first clothed in the kitchen, and then only let her get in the hot tub, and wasn’t too happy that she in fact got her hair wet by diving around. The pictures clearly show her in no form apprehensive, wet hair and all. So much for her being afraid of him. Then she got too hot from the water while he then had a dip in the cooler pool and never joined her in the Jacuzzi for exactly that reason of it being too hot, telling her to get out and into the cooler pool, and she came up with this needless asthma nonsense. Plus, the photo slides he had showed them once he had brought her home, with the mother’s boyfriend present, picturing her already topless in merely ONE shot (from the behind their own house location, the ones arresting cop Vannatter would find since the others in the camera they had done at the Nicholson’s house hadn’t been developed yet), Ms Geimer later explained as ‘having caused them to drop their jaws on the floor’.

That apparently had ‘only happened’ after he left, since Polanski stated that they all had liked them while ‘passing a joint’ and found them perfectly acceptable. Some time later the sister’s boyfriend, who had badgered him to photograph Ms Geimer, called him and said her mother found the photos ‘terrible’, while the friend, who then had a look at them after he told Polanski, said he thought they were beautiful when he came by, but behaved ‘edgy’. That being odd in itself, it’s even more curious that her own sister’s boyfriend didn’t know of the apparent ‘rape’ at that point either, since both Ms Geimer or her mother surely would have told him about that before they told him about the ‘terrible’ pictures, being Polanski’s personal friend. But, obviously, at that point it hadn’t been ‘rape’ ‘yet’. In fact, the mother only called the cops because the sister insisted on it after she had told her boyfriend of the ‘photos’ – not Ms Geimer or their mother, by the mother’s admission. What’s more, in the sister’s testimony she said that Polanski, while still at the house, talked to his friend right there after she had called him on the phone because of the photos – while Polanski had stated that he only spoke to him on the phone back at the hotel to then come by to look at them. Now, why would the mother allow him to take the photos back with him if they were so terrible, and why would the sister say they talked on the phone while still at their home, when that’s not true?

The sister did not say what they talked about on the phone, but it makes no sense either way, especially since Polanski said he had told her mother when he had phoned her to say they’d be late, that his friend is back and most likely will see them later, he did NOT say that he talked to him at THEIR house.What’s more, the mother said she had seen him and her daughter off that day, that Polanski told her where they’d go and she did not make any contention to go with them, while Polanski said he only told her boyfriend where they’d be heading, who, just like Polanski’s friend/the sisters boyfriend, was never part of the Grand Jury hearing. Plus, when they looked at the slides, Polanski did not mention that the sister was in fact there to be, for one pissed off about the photos, and then for him to have called her boyfriend/his friend from there. Furthermore, the mother said he made [‘that’] call at their house, but not to whom unlike the sister, who, to the mother’s words however only, called her boyfriend/his friend to tell him about the photos, not as the sister said the other way round. Also, the sister said Ms Geimer went right into the bathroom on arrival, while she and the mother said she had interceded her in the kitchen to tell her about the asthma [lie]. Now, why would they contradict not only his, but their own version in these points? That’s four, five words against his own suddenly out of the blue. Polanski could have helped Ms Geimer into the film industry despite not really being a match for the likes of Nastassja, but someone cried rape and there went their careers.

Coming back to Widmer-Schlumpf, who is personally in charge of the case mind you, working officially with the justice officials, publicly declared in an interview published by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung today, May 9th, “It depends on when we have the documents we need to consider the extradition request,” in fact referring to Gunson’s testimony. Still vague on when the decision on possible extradition will be concluded, she was the one who denied they had sold Polanski out to the US for that UBS deal, but according to that ‘letter’ ( I doubt IS authentic) wants a harmless old man brought into a ‘secure facility’ like he’s Hannibal Lecter. It’s completely out of proportion in regards to what happened that day, ever since then, i.e., no ‘repeat offence’ lying in direct conflict of what a rapist/paedophile does in real life, had a very successful working life unlike most ‘rapists’ and/or very ‘low-IQed paedophiles’. People play nasty games with the public to stoke the flames or racism and blind hatred. No surprise there.

In her first statement expressed by the FORMER Justice Minister Widmer-Schlumpf had replaced, Elisabeth Kopp, since the extradition request from the US had come in, she in contrast had repeatedly expressed fierce objection to the extradition on the grounds of unclear facts given my the LA courts, i.e., the actual course of events, that Polanski had sat out his time, Rittenband’s antics and plea deal breaking, while the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner demands the extradition to be refused on the same grounds. The French diplomat obviously failed in his intentions to argue that with the US courts, or so far the Swiss authorities, but it is more than clear that this ‘Polanski affair’ has become more than ‘political’ beyond any ‘justice’, where politicians step in to wrangle over pro or contra motions to decide over the literal life of an old man who never harmed anyone, after Sarkozy of all people had to convince the Swiss to grant Polanski bail. According to a French poll asking today if  Polanski should be extradited or not, the yes and no votes are split right down the middle, 50/50%.

And get this – there’s only ONE ‘administrator’ responsible to decide on the extraction at the end of the day, though he is not alone in that ‘burdensome task’, since the Court Director Leupold and Widmer-Schlumpf will have their own say. So, ONE person we have no idea of how he’s handling this with integrity, another ‘court official’ we have even less ideas of how he’s dealing with Polanski’s ‘case’, and that politico will be the only ones to decide if the extradition goes ahead. That’s a mere ‘three’ people, subject to personal bias, rules they can break/ignore, deciding over the imminent future of an old family man! All his life Polanski was a pawn of politics, from the Nazis to the Communists, or people killing off his future to have a family with Sharon’s and their baby’s murders, to finally face [still] unproven accusations of rape, and four decades of more media abuse NO other ‘celebrity’ has ever suffered, now in real danger of losing his current family as well. Or vice versa, in case someone reenacts either of the two darkest moments depicted in his very own latest film. Better not conjure up that ultimate tragedy.

To the Swiss folks however, a lesser ‘militant’ people than the Americans no one can dispute, ‘public policy’ includes obvious ‘incompatibility’ with fundamental principles of the extradition request, or to ask for it after such a long time, or the possibility to hold a fair ‘trial’ in the first place. They speculate right now on, how much ‘evidence’ can already diverge immediately after the events, and easily imagine how much more difficult a ‘correct recollection’ will be after so long a time. As seen in Ms Geimer’s case, since after two decades already she came up with very different ‘views’ on what happened, while no genuine rape victim would ever forget vital specifics unless unconscious during the attack, or say her violator ‘had sex with her’. Even if they had been drugged or drunk during the events Ms Geimer could never credibly prove, they most certainly would say ‘he raped me’, not, ‘he had sex with me’, ‘he wasn’t ‘hurting’ me or ‘mean’ or anything’. That’s just downright contradictive after her implausible ‘oral and vaginal rape’ and ‘twice suffered sodomy’ claims already. Her entire testimony ‘rhetoric’ and exact wording when read objectively denote anything but rape – it denotes simple sex, recreational drugs and fine champagne SHE took herself.

The limitation to allow extradition is in the Swiss’ view, the right of gaining ‘final closure’, by simply refusing this unsound extradition. They ask, can extradition be acceptable, when taking into account the long time passed, no ‘repeat offence’, unclear events that were never challenged in a trial in the first place, the entire legal misconduct clouding it all even further, and most of all, the advanced age and health status of Polanski? Is this principle of ‘proportionality’ inherent in the Swiss legal rights? I.e., who would ‘profit’ from a new ‘trial’, justice of injustice, after the so called ‘victim’ doesn’t even want a trial, no matter for reasons they wouldn’t suspect, thinking she doesn’t want to ‘relive’ the events? This argument might be inherent to the Swiss’ logic, but surely is of no interest to the US courts that mercilessly pursue an old sex case for a corrupt DA to become AG, while letting violent repeat offenders do real damage after they paid him off not to face prosecution. Or clergy paedophiles they have enough of, or violent rapists all bred by their own authoritarian anti-sex laws, and all the other powerful people who committed serious crimes against their own Cooley couldn’t care less about, except send down more innocent folks in glorious California to ‘score’. Hypocrisy anyone?

As expected, Espinoza has refused to unseal the secret testimony given by retired DDA Gunson. During a brief hearing on May 10th, the judge said the testimony was not intended for release unless Polanski returns for a hearing and Gunson is unavailable to testify in person. He also noted the Swiss Justice Ministry said it did not want the testimony to influence whether to extradite Polanski, while his attorneys argued that the testimony is potentially crucial to proving Polanski’s claim of misconduct by the now deceased judge in his case. And of course, proof to his having served his time. That said, the extradition will most likely go ahead at one point, after Polanski appealed the extradition go-ahead, which then will no doubt be refused as well after a few more weeks, and then we’re looking at the possibility that he will be shipped off right before Christmas to spend the holidays in detention, just like he did while at Chino in 1977/8, right into the New Year. That will no doubt please crooked Cooley and his court in no need to tackle much more important cases, and all those wishing Polanski behind bars. By then Polanski will be 77, and no one cares to subject an old man to the distress of the entire extradition procedure, to end up on non-secure remand, wait for the case to be heard, and more months down the road to ‘conclude’ the case.

Although remanded prisoners are usually detained separately from sentenced prisoners, as seen while he was on Swiss remand where he was treated well, due to US prison overcrowding they are sometimes held in a shared accommodation with sentenced prisoners. I.e., not in a safe environment. In most states, cities operate small jail facilities, sometimes simply referred to as ‘lock-ups’, used only for very short-term incarceration—can be held for up to 72 business hours or up to five days—until the prisoner comes before a judge for the first time or receives a citation or summons before being released or transferred to a larger jail. As a general rule, county jails, detention centers, and reception centers, where new commitments are first held while awaiting trial, operate at a relatively high level of security to prevent prisoner-on-prisoner violence and increase overall security, while others may put many prisoners into the same cells without regard to their individual criminal histories. Great. I guess, Polanski is such a great threat to society that they can send him into the company of hardcore criminals at no further bail granted, unlike murder suspects like Simpson who had fled before too and was set free on a fraction of Polanski’s bail only a few years back.

In most countries, remand prisoners are considered innocent until proven guilty by a court, unlike in the US, and may be granted greater privileges than sentenced prisoners, such as wearing own clothes rather than prison uniform and being entitled to additional visiting hours per week, not required to complete prison-related work or suchlike. Remand is used for prisoners who are likely to commit further offences before the trial, as if he ever would, or in contrast are believed to be in danger from accomplices, victims, or vigilantes to attack them, while the dangers inside a prison for someone like Polanski are much greater than his being outside. See rampant US prison rape, or attempts to make an example of a ‘celebrity’, by offing him to obtain a ‘trophy’, unless he will be held in protective custody again, as it happened while he was at Chino where he was kept separate from potential dangers. All in all, a very grim and wholly condemnable outlook for someone who never harmed anymore. Let alone Geimer. Funny thing is, if you type in ‘Polanski’ into the search bar at the Calif. Dept. of Correction & Rehabilitation, only ‘Sharon Tate Polanski’ comes up, since most of those who killed her, are still incarcerated there. With his luck, Polanski will end up at Chino again, or maybe even meet Manson. What a terrible prospect.

As the French culture minister says he’s worried about the health of Polanski in an interview with French media at the Cannes film festival, kicking off today May 12th – 23rd, a petition in support of Polanski has been signed there by a number of film directors, including Jean-Luc Godard amongst other luminaries. The petition said: “They hereby appeal to the Swiss authorities, entreating them not to believe the word of Governor Schwarzenegger and the prosecutors of the state of California.” Lévy added in a statement: “No matter how brilliant the films presented at this new festival, a man will shine in his blinding absence: Roman Polanski.” This petition is a reaction to Polanski’s open letter posted there May 2nd, which brought to light these troubling legal issues surrounding the extradition, appealing to the Swiss authorities. Pointlessly no doubt, but the undersigned finally learned of the existence of this essential piece of evidence given by Gunson’s under oath on February 26th, declaring, that, thirty-three years ago, Roman Polanski served the entirety of his sentence at Chino, according to the decision of Rittenband, before he suddenly ‘changed his mind’ under the pressure of ‘public opinion’, and retracted his decision. THAT is not in any judge’s ‘authority’ when such a ‘decision’ is based on his ‘public face’ he doesn’t want to lose, rather than ‘official face’ and listening to his officials to cut Polanski lose. Conscious of the basic rule of law that maintains, it is unlawful to judge and condemn a man ‘twice’ for the same infraction, they realise that the extradition request is based upon a lie.

Polanski’s legal team had said in the court filing in April that the testimony of Gunson would show that Rittenband had promised in a private meeting with Gunson and Dalton and Silver that he would return the filmmaker to prison for another 48 days as his full punishment behind bars, as long as Polanski agreed to voluntary deportation and to keep the promise secret. That is exactly what Polanski wrote in his autobiography, and was exactly the reason why he fled, since he wanted to keep working in Hollywood and Rittenband had no authority to deport him let alone threaten him into self-deportation. His attorneys today argue that the issue is important, because the US extradition treaty with Switzerland allows the extradition of a defendant only if the remaining time behind bars still to be served is more than six months. Since Polanski was on Swiss remand for 70 days, these rest 48 days are long covered. They note that Cooley’s office filed a declaration in the extradition request that does not mention such a promise by Rittenband. Of course it doesn’t, I read it. But, LA County prosecutors defended the truth of that declaration in court papers, saying that the US Justice Department had reviewed Polanski’s allegations and determined that the statements filed by the DA’s office were accurate. Are they?

Let’s go back to September 19th 1977 to check on that. Why would Rittenband, after having received independent psychiatrists’ reports that Polanski was not a mentally disordered sex offender, or of paedophilic tendencies (no matter what people want to believe) months before Polanski had pleaded guilty on August 8th, (the 8th death anniversary of his slaughtered wife) accept these positive findings, ruled that Polanski was not a MDSO, yet, after further months of Polanski continuing on his film abroad wants him to be ‘re/evaluated’ psychiatrically for 90 days in ‘prison’, unless he would commit to these 90 days being the ‘final sentence’ for Polanski? Given the fact that Rittenband wanted to ‘punish’ him in every sense of the word by sending him to Chino, and most of all because Polanski could not appeal that ‘sentence’, (or withdraw his plea) after Rittenband had been goaded into doing so by ‘ex parte buddy’ DDA Wells, (the one who had denounced he had told Rittenband to do so after saying he in fact had in that Zenovich documentary), the fact that the probation officials released Polanski after half that time demanding no further time served, was certainly not Polanski’s ‘fault’. So the fact that Rittenband wanted him back at Chino for the 48 days to ‘complete’ the 90 days, would effectively be the equivalent of giving Polanski a ‘second’ sentences based on the ‘first’, which substituted his ‘punishment’ under the guise of that ‘diagnostic study’ already the officials then cut short.

More importantly, Rittenband’s ordering that Polanski undergo this ‘second evaluation’ as a ‘MDSO evaluation’, was already redundant to utilise it to establish him as a sex offender since Rittenband knew he wasn’t, therefore the two and the same rulings Rittenband had made at the same hearing were in complete conflict, thus incompatible and most of all unlawful. Meaning, it can only have been his entire punishment, since no one may suffer a ‘second’ or ‘different’ sentence for the same offence. It’s called the ‘double jeopardy’ clause, which is prohibited by international law. If Rittenband said, he would ‘decide’ after the ‘second evaluation’ if that was to be the final ‘sentence’ for Polanski, constitute his ‘entire punishment’, or whether he would order ‘another sentence’ set at the hearing Polanski never attended, this would be like giving Polanski ‘two sentences’ already then (no matter Polanski showed  up or not), which in effect is what is occurring right now with the LA prosecutors arresting Polanski after all these years, since Polanski had already served his full ‘sentence’ at Chino, (no matter people think it was not enough) with everyone forgetting his 70 days in a Swiss prison which have to be counted as time served on top, and thus cover more than the 90 days altogether at any rate.

Therefore, the 90 days have been Polanski’s entire ‘punishment’ already the current prosecution debates, which in fact is what both Gunson and Dalton had stated in the documentary ‘Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired’ in agreement with Silver, where Dalton had said to Polanski needn’t do any further time in custody. Ergo, the 102 days behind bars are more than enough ‘punishment’ for all concerned, plus the more than six months under house arrest that cannot even be counted, especially since no one at that time had done any time behind bars for unlawful sex, and only few were sentenced to minimum probation. The same they had in mind for Polanski – ‘officially’ – since Rittenband, once Polanski was gone and had made a fool of him he of course didn’t find amusing, he decided to ‘sentence’ him absentia announcing that in a press conference unheard of in court history, but was removed by the attorneys before since they could not trust him any longer. Though most people wouldn’t consider being locked up inside ones own home as ‘punishment’, able to have visitors at no restrictions otherwise, I suggest trying it for half a year after two months prison under the scrutiny of the world press tele-lensing your every move, without going bananas, plus being in your seventies when reading more smear attached to unauthorised photos being published in tabloids and online you cannot even sue for more disgusting slander.

And most importantly, Gunson and Dalton had also stated in that documentary, that the September 19th 1977 hearing was ‘staged’ by Rittenband purely for the press, simply to ‘satisfy’ the public to make it ‘appear’ to the press that Polanski will serve more time, but in fact be set free thereafter. This ‘mock argument’ of Dalton and Gunson, Polanski recalled in his 1984 autobiography as having occurred exactly like that. Purely staged to the effect of the defence ‘asking for probation’, and the prosecution ‘asking for a short prison term’ also mentioning that the family demands NO incarceration, with Rittenband then arguing to send him back for the 48 days, that was only to satisfy Rittenband’s ‘public image’ as ‘the hammer’, despite ALL parties having agreed on NO custodial sentence already supported by prison officials and Silver with Polanski being assured that was his punishment concluded. It is therefore an inaccurate account of Rittenband’s ‘intended sentence’ for Polanski, since they had already decided to set him free on probation. Before Rittenband stupidly forced him into unjust self-deportation – or rather into flight – no one had anticipated, after he demanded another sham hearing in open court the attorneys refused to participate in and rather filed for his disqualification.

One could argue, because the ‘mock argument’ can be interpreted as the ‘real argument’ between the prosecution and defence, if one doesn’t know it was staged, and was part of the extradition report looking in fact as being the ‘genuine argument’, the Swiss of course have no idea that is was a ‘show argument’ taking it for the real thing. I read it, and it appeared to me as their real argument, before it dawned on me that this was the mock argument Dalton and Gunson had both talked about in that documentary everyone needs to watch to get the idea, and that everyone had long decided to free Polanski, before Rittenband ‘changed his mind’ on public pressure. Another important factor was, Rittenband had allowed Polanski to finish his film and then recalled him later to serve time at Chino over December/January, after Wells had come up with that infamous photo depicting Polanski at the Oktoberfest surrounded by ‘girls’, (who in fact had nothing to do with him at all), and provoked Rittenband with it into sending him finally down under the guise of that ‘diagnostic study’. Beside, if both attorneys said he had already served his punishment, in agreement with Silver, why would they say such a thing if they had no ‘evidence’? This evidence is on film, and contained in Gunson’s testimony placed under seal the Swiss however don’t seem to be interested in at all. Polanski recalled in his autobiography that this was his entire sentence, and to unseal Gunson’s testimony would prove them right.

If they allow extradition despite these facts, it will be an act of kidnapping in UN terms committed by the US they had engaged in before in fact, enabled by the Swiss, and furthermore result in the unlawful act of sentencing someone twice for the same offence. The fact that Espinoza didn’t absentia sentence Polanski might sound logical for wanting him in his court, but technically he cannot sentence him ‘again’ to whatever term. If they really only want to establish the ‘facts’ of the case, they should have said so, not under the pretence of wanting to ‘sentence’ him, and that not even for fleeing at no such intentions included in the extradition papers. All in all, an even more messy status quo of this case, after Walgren ‘fought for the evidence to remain secret’. “The prosecutor had deliberately failed to disclose this information in the extradition request, when this indisputable fact would lead Switzerland to conclude that extradition is not legally justified.”

That’s the whole idea – he wants to ‘try’ him instead, which is also not possible unless the plea is withdraw first. I read the extradition request and it says: ‘therefore we request that, in the unlikely event of the plea being withdraw, the [given] finding of extraditability allow prosecution of Mr Polanski on all counts’. What he’s evidently missing is, Polanski WAS ‘prosecuted’ three decades ago already, he pleaded to the one count applicable, and he did his time for it no one actually asked for. With the plea not withdrawn, the dropped counts have long expired once pleaded after the statute of limitations. And, to argue they can be tried because he’s a ‘fugitive’, that’s not applicable either since the count of flight was not even included in the extradition request to allow for that. So, NONE of the counts are ‘back on the table’ and can be ‘tried’, let alone a second time since no one may face ‘double jeopardy’ for which they had pleaded to and did their time for.

Ever since Polanski has spoken out publicly to point people to the facts, those in support of extradition dwindle more and more, not only after reading more and more about this ‘secret testimony’, more background facts, Cooley’s corrupt court, and according to the French poll, today, May 12th, those in favour of extradition have fallen from 50% to roughly 40%, those in no support has risen to 59.5%, and those who ‘don’t know’ fell below a tiny 0.5%. Looks like the French people are finally getting the idea of what is going on behind Californian court doors – nothing but more lies – after enough lies already. In short, the extradition request was based on ‘incomplete facts’, i.e., lies, in fact rendering it unlawful, and an act of false imprisonment. Polanski’s 70 days on Swiss remand therefore were criminal incarceration, though they can and will be counted towards the 48 days as ‘time served’ though the 42 days at Chino were already, and his six months house arrest are more than illegitimate, subjecting him to great ‘physical and mental distress’ people like Ms Geimer sue people like Polanski over for nothing. I’m sure many will disagree on that fact, but legally it’s an act of kidnapping, punishable by law. Polanski should sue the ‘People’s court’ of California over that, let’s see how they like their resources dwindling even further, after they’ve spent enough dirty dollar on the persecution of Polanski, rather than use the money to get their own much more dangerous criminals off the streets of LA.

The Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, of which Polanski is an honoured member, said in a statement released May 12th that Polanski showed ‘signs of severe depression’ demanding a ‘quick release’. While it was possible for Polanski to receive treatment for his already longstanding depression he had shown at Chino and again while on Swiss remand, this seems to be unworkable now, since he cannot just go to a doctor, and most likely doesn’t have one in Switzerland at any rate. His colleagues argue, “The penalty originally imposed has been served over thirty years ago, and it remains unclear why the demand for his extradition is upheld.” Learning of their colleague’s distress, caused by his continued detention, a feeling of painful emotions is more than apparent amongst his supporters there. And to his supporters in general, who know of the case ins and outs, know of the condemnable judicial misconduct the courts have no interest in litigating, though ‘acknowledged’ it but want Polanski there to ‘discuss’ it, know of the current court’s ‘lies’, and now it’s still down to the Swiss authorities to decide whether or not to bow to the US and deliver an old man into a very unsafe environment, NO one deserves.

And there I was thinking the state of California had many more important cases to tackle. Apparently not, which is rather surprising, with the USA being the No. 1 country with the most incarcerated people in the word, with many in fact being innocent, sent down on fabrications, especially in LA. Funny how they waste ‘Terminator’ Arnie’s recourses on an old man from Europe when California is bare broke, and the No. 1 thing that is draining California’s economy is its vast prison system housing mostly non-violent criminals, a tax subsidised plantation of a massive captive work force that makes everything from license plates to chairs for a cent. With prison guards earning over 100k a year in contrast. Nice, subsidising gang raping innocent wo/men too. Looks like they really want Polanski to join that ever-growing population – once more. All for sleeping with an ‘aspiring’ Hollywood bred teen, which is of course why so many men end up inside US prisons in the first place doing the same, even for having sex with their own girlfriends. Only to be attacked there in a nice vicious cycle of ‘legislated’ state abuse, while others got and will get a pass who are in a position of power with lots of money, unlike Polanski who is bankrupt by now, to bribe their way out. Or, is it in fact the ‘people’ maintaining this endless cycle of abuse, since it’s always ‘People’ vs Defendant, with the populace so keen to ‘uphold the law’ suddenly in his case, while breaking and bending it themselves as we speak. See Cooley & Co.

Now May 13th, Swiss officials have announced that they are still awaiting supplementary information from the Americans they have not received yet. This statement directly contradicts representations made by Cooley’s court this past Monday, who of course recalls himself on their previous contention that they didn’t need any further details, like Gunson’s testimony, to decide. But it looks as if they finally seemed to have taken heed after what Polanski has publicly declared, since the extradition request does not disclose that Rittenband committed Polanski’s undergoing of what he told the press was a ‘diagnostic study’, would be his entire sentence in the case. This fact confirmed by every prosecutor in charge of this case up to now, Gunson stated that Rittenband had promised that the 90-day diagnostic study was going to be his sentence. Gunson confirmed that, “After Mr. Polanski’s plea in August 1977, Judge Rittenband informed Mr. Polanski’s lawyer, Douglas Dalton, and me that Mr. Polanski would be sent to Chino State Prison under Penal Code Section 1203.03 (the ‘diagnostic study’) as his punishment. At that time, I told Judge Rittenband that the diagnostic study was not designed to be used as a sentence, but Judge Rittenband said: ‘I’m going to do it anyhow.'”

Gunson affirmed those statements in his recent conditional examination that still remains sealed, and in that documentary in fact, so it looks like we know what he had said already anyhow since years now. DA Doyle, who took over the case from Gunson and investigated the facts at the request of Cooley in 2002 stated, “There were many things that Judge Rittenband did that were inappropriate in my view in this case from what I have been told, such as his use of the 1203.03, not for diagnostic purposes but for punishment. His promise was that he would not sentence him to prison after the 1203.03 was completed.” Well now, ‘completed’ or not wasn’t his call, the prison officials released Polanski halfway through, and that’s why Rittenband wanted him back inside. So why did Doyle not come out with this earlier? Now that Polanski finally made a fuss about it they are suddenly panicking. That’s almost ten years now they all knew about this. Contrary to Cooley’s public contention that their statements about it are ‘baseless and reckless’, they now have been finally confirmed by the prosecutors in their own office! None of this was disclosed to the Swiss in the extradition request. Any wonder? Nope. They said, “We can only suspect that the reason for the District Attorney’s deliberate omission of this information from the extradition request is that he expects that this undeniable fact, if disclosed by the United States to the Swiss, would cause them to conclude that extradition is not legally justified.”

I call it lying, or omitting crucial facts to the effect to dupe the Swiss into extradition, since it would be less than six months to allow for it, in intention that Walgren can ‘try’ Polanski instead. Last December already the California Court of Appeal wrote: “If Polanski presents admissible evidence leading the trial court to conclude that Judge Rittenband committed to the diagnostic study as Polanski’s entire punishment, it is difficult to imagine that the trial court would not honour that commitment today. If, after taking evidence, the trial court finds that Polanski’s allegations are true and that the original trial judge agreed that the prison stay for the diagnostic study would constitute Polanski’s entire punishment, a condition Polanski fulfilled, the trial court could find that justice requires that the trial court’s commitment be honored and that Polanski should be sentenced to time served. We are confident that the trial court could fashion a legal sentence that results in no further incarceration for Polanski.” That was six months ago, Gunson testified to that already months back, still Cooley kept the facts from the Swiss, and Espinoza didn’t help much by refusing to unseal the testimony to prove that!

Polanski’s lawyers have presented numerous legal briefs since then on the issue, and the appellate court suggested it was time for the marathon case to be resolved. I’d say. In a section of the appellate decision quoted in the statement, the justices said that the question of actions by the late Judge Rittenband were relevant. Are they now? Finally! Polanski’s lawyers said, however, that if true and complete facts were presented to Swiss officials and they determined extradition was justified, then Polanski would return to the United States to litigate his case. “Our country’s Treaty with the Swiss requires that any further custodial term be greater than six months. If, after a fair hearing in Switzerland at which the entire record of this case is truthfully presented, the Swiss determine that extradition is justified, Mr. Polanski will of course comply with a lawful extradition order and return to California to litigate the issues of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct and be finally sentenced under the law. Such a lawful order should be based on the entire record of the California proceedings, not the misleading and incomplete record provided to date. We stand fully prepared immediately to discuss this issue with representatives of the Swiss or US governments and to present all the evidence.”

This was the first time in the long legal battle that Polanski’s team has mentioned his possibly returning voluntarily. But, it was couched in language that suggested this remains unlikely, simply because his three months penalty is not the six months extradition allowance, and, he has been incarcerated for more than the 90 days at any rate. Time served. The statements by lawyers Doug Dalton, Brad Dalton and Chad Hummel had a tone of exasperation, saying, all they wanted was for Swiss authorities to know about Rittenband’s actions, specifically his intent to treat the diagnostic study in prison as Polanski’s entire punishment. Polanski’s lawyers maintain that LA prosecutors were hiding this fact from the Swiss. Indeed they were. “All we ask on Mr Polanski’s behalf is that the Swiss be informed of this fact by the United States, a fact confirmed by every prosecutor in charge of this case up to now.” Two years ago, in a statement from attorneys Hummel and Brad Dalton, they had said, “This case serves as a classic example of how our justice system can be abused, and defendants’ rights trampled [on], by an unholy alliance between courts and criminal prosecutors,” which still rings true today more than ever with crooked Cooley in command. Adding, the Swiss authorities have indeed requested supplemental information from the US before making a decision, but have not said when they would rule on the extradition filing. One, two months… Well now, ‘Cooley’, found out to have lied again, have we now? No surprise there.



October 2009
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