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UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times reported this morning that LA prosecutors planned Roman Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland after learning he would be accepting a film festival award in Zurich. Prosecutors sent a provisional arrest warrant to the U.S. Justice department which presented it Swiss authorities.
News outlets report that Roman Polanski was arrested by police in Switzerland today on a 31-year-old international warrant as he arrived at the Zurich airport to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Zurich Film Festival. (The organizers expressed “great consternation and shock”.) The Swiss Federal Justice Department was holding the 76-year-old Oscar-winning director in provisional detention while preparations were made to possibly extradite him to Los Angeles to face that 1978 arrest warrant following his conviction of drugging and having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old minor in the home of Jack Nicholson. Facing a prison term, Polanski fled the United States just before his sentencing. But in the ensuing time, the girl, Samantha Geimer, has publicly forgiven him, and, with Hollywood’s backing, lawyers have tried over the years to get the case dismissed as recently as last year, arguing among other things that he was psychologically shattered after his wife Sharon Tate was killed by the Manson family. Also cited has been a documentary called Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired showing what Polanski’s attorneys have said was “a pattern of misconduct and improper communications” among Los Angeles officials regarding the case. In Paris, where Polanski fled and now lives, the French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand said in a statement that he was “astonished” by the arrest.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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how is it double-crossing???
i can’t stand our puritanical society but we’d have already hung a non-celebrity for this crime.
if some lower-income black person had had sex with a girl and then fled the country, we wouldn’t rest until we found him. but since it’s Polanski, we let him off the hook.
i hope the case is dropped in a US Court of Law.
No we wouldn’t. If this were a non-celebrity, no one would have noticed or cared.
If Polanski wasn’t a celebrity would France have shielded him from extradition all these years? I doubt it.
I love, love, love Polanski’s films, yet that is the reason I have to do my best to remain unbiased. Yes, it’s been a long time since the alleged crimes and yes, there seem to have been many improprieties in the state’s prosecution, but he is not above the law despite his renown. And no doubt Law enforcement and state prosecutors are attracted to high profile cases like flies to you-know-what, but we as members of the film community and citizens in general must have the moral courage to view him in our hearts and minds as someone who may have committed a terrible crime, fled the country and now may finally have his day in court, as with anyone else regardless of social standing.
He did a crime. I say that he deserves whatever punishment he is to get. It doesn’t matter if the girl has forgiven him. She was 13, and that is illegal. I say it’ll be good for Polanski to get his jail-time behind him, so he can come back to the US.
Oh wow! This is going to be a freaking circus! I can already see the headlines….” Liberal Media ignores arrest of Polanski in attempt to get the French to support Obamacare, possibly ACORN connection found!”
But seriously, if he makes it back to LA, this is going to be a circus.
YOU’RE MAKING EXCUSES FOR A MAN WHO HAD SEX WITH A THIRTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL!!!!!!!! Thirteen. Double crossed? Are you kidding me? In case you don’t already know, It’s called rape. A 13 year old girl is deemed incompetent to give consent. He is a pedophile, a molester. The victim’s forgiveness has nothing to do with the crime. Nothing? Neither for that matter does his academy award. It means nothing. Check yourself lady and wake up. Your liberal bias has led you to a place where you can excuse the rape of a thirteen year old girl. Pitiful.
Child rape laws should be enforced, even if they happen to apply to people who directed overrated movies during the Nixon administration.
What is the penalty for what Polanski did in California today? Do you go to jail or is it a slap on the wrist to have sex with a thirteen year-old? Just asking.
I’m not sure she’s forgiven him. She’s said it’s painful every time it comes up, and she also accepted a settlement.
Dude drugged and raped a little kid. Probably not the only time he did it.
Man, that was a shocker!
I can’t call it. Perhaps he should just go back and sort it out properly this time.
Who knows, it might end well for him.
While I’m appreciative of the fact he mentally collapsed in the wake of Sharon’s Tate murder I will never be appreciative of any notion of letting these charges slide, even in the face of protestations from the vistim. Society is owed a debt by him and all those who fight for his release from this make themselves culpable to a pedophilic act.
That’s what is truly astonishing.
Finally, a post that isn’t defensive or triumph. I think Polanski should’ve just done the time in the ’70s just to get it over with and move on after his release.
If you’ve committed a crime, you have to do the time. Polanski isn’t exempt from this, and I’m ashamed Hollywood supported him despite this. Now while the Manson murders definitely changed him, you can’t excuse what he did five years after that.
What comes around goes around.
Good going, Swiss government. Take it nice and easy on ex-Nazis with their Swiss accounts but make sure you arrest the 76-year-old genius who has suffered the most appalling tragedies his whole life long.
So Joe, are you arguing that a prominent artist should not be held accountable for drugging and raping a 13 year old?
So, what are you saying Joe Gillis…that the man gets a pass on drugging and raping a 13 year? That’s a bit sick; don’t you think.
So your theory is if you have suffered personal tragedy like Nazi’s or Charles Manson in your life you should not have to pay society for your crimes?
Interesting.
Does this apply to abused or poverty stricken children who grow up to be criminals too or just if they get famous and rich?
Well, only if they’re WHITE, famous, and rich.
Touche.
Of course the French, and all liberals, are “astonished” at the idea of punishing a criminal.
I don’t get the politicizing of this issue. This is not a liberal vs. conservative issue, but I guess any chance some of you get to bash “all liberals” is too tempting for you to ignore. I’m pretty liberal and I think the guy should go to trial, just like anyone else accused of this crime. Some liberals will agree with me and some will not– which is pretty evident by the various viewpoints presented in this comment section (although I’m guessing you’re more of the type who likes to give your views without caring to read what other people have to say). It’s fine to read a well thought out conservative viewpoint on here, but yours and the posts like it are completely ignorant.
It about damn time someone had the balls to nab this sicko coward. You know, Nikki, for all your cries of neo-feminism I am astonished you feel sympathy for this spineless rapist/child molester.
He has had decades to work on clearing this up, he didn’t. Had he taken the appropriate actions during Clinton’s presidency I would imagine Mr. Polanski could have finagled a pardon out of Bill when the latter was tossing them around at the end of his 2nd term.
I guess Mr. Polanski had decided that it wasn’t important enough to deal with. Bad call, it appears.
He was “double crossed”? What goes around comes around, right? (Or am I phrasing that backwards…meh, who cares…)
I guess maybe he shouldn’t have RAPED someone…he could have steered clear of this whole mess. And yes, I know that the victim has forgiven him and it was a long time ago. I’m just saying…you or I wouldn’t be let off the hook for this after 30 years, so why should he?
Okay, but wait — he still drugged and had anal sex with a 13-year-old girl, right? We’re not forgetting that part? Even though we like some of his films? Ok, good.
One of the strangest things about this arrest is that Polanski actually has a home in Switzerland where he spends several months of each year.
Seriously…you guys are defending a child rapist? Seriously? He drugged, raped, and sodomized a 13-year old girl. He got her drunk, knocked her out with drugs, and then had sex with her. And she was thirteen.
And not only did he do this, he used his position of trust as an artist to gain access to her. Which makes all the industry support and Academy Awards standing ovations even more sickening.
The feel-good story of the day.
Hopefully, he’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars, where the other inmates will ply him with drugs and alcohol and then force him to be their bitch.
Or is it only OK when he drugs and rapes, but not if it happens to him?
Hollywood morality: Don’t applaud Kazan, but support Polanski.
No one should be raped. No one. Not even criminals.
You’re no better than he is by calling for that.
That’s the point – if it would be wrong to happen to him, it was wrong for him to do it.
Nikki and the rest of the Hollywood apologists (Harvey, come on down!) are morally bankrupt.
And it’s worth noting that his type of behavior; drugging and raping is not often an isolated case. Sure, the known victim has forgiven him, but what of any other possible victims? You don’t accidentally feed a 13-year old girl hard drugs. There is planning and forethought in that. It’s a sign of a self indulgent, solipsistic worldview…a type of mental state that doesn’t go away just because he got caught.
I would love to know what Nastassia Kinski thinks of all of this.
Double Crossed?!
So Nikki will devote an entire article on why she thinks Bride Wars is an egregious form of woman bashing, but she has the nerve to title an article, “Double Crossed” for a man who anally raped a 13 year old girl.
Idiot.
Well said. You articulated my dissappointment exactly.
What he did was horrible and atrocious. Nikki didn’t directly compare what he did to Bride Wars. She simply thought that Bride Wars was a horrible movie. That it really did make women look bad. It did. The situations are totally different matters on totally different planes.
What he did sucked in a big real way. Criminal. Disgusting. On a movie plane…and I am a BIG supporter of the chick flick here…Bride Wars was really really really bad.
‘S’ is unfortunately right.
That’s it in a nutshell. And no talent or background, upbringing etc is an excuse for what he did to that 13 year old girl. He even spoke to her mother during her stay at the house to assure her she was fine.
He should’ve dealt with this in the ’70s (after serving that three month sentence which got commuted). I remember this happened while he was on preproduction on Dino De Laurentis’ HURRICANE (a movie he was forced to abandon when he fled the US).
I’m less shocked that he was arrested than by the fact that people still consider him a “Genius” after his Oliver Twist remake.
I hope he gets everything coming to him the sick molesting bastard. Tell that to all the victims who were sexually abused and their predators still walk the streets. It doesn’t matter if it is 30 years later.
Enough with the victim forgave him nonsense. That’s pablum crap that assuages the conscience of people who identify with Polanski. Is she supposed to walk around angry her whole life and be a perpetual victim. Or continue to displease everyone as there has always been heavy pressure to let him off.
Does Roman Polanski have daughters?
Before excusing Polanski’s behavior, read the girl’s grand jury testimony from 1977.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/polanskicover1.html