Lodi News-Sentinel

Polanski’s victim pleads to end case

-

LOS ANGELES — Roman Polanski’s sexual assault victim made an impassione­d plea Friday to end the fugitive director’s four-decade legal saga, saying she felt more abused by the legal justice system than by the man who she said drugged, raped and sodomized her when she was 13.

“The trauma of the ordeal that followed was so great that, you know, the brief encounter with him that evening that was unpleasant just faded and paled,” Samantha Geimer said outside a courtroom in Los Angeles Superior Court. “It just wasn’t as traumatic for me as everybody would like to believe it was.”

Geimer asked Judge Scott Gordon to either dismiss the case outright or sentence the Oscar winner to the six weeks he served in prison during a court-ordered evaluation before he fled the country on the eve of sentencing in 1978.

“I implore you to consider taking action to finally bring this matter to a close as an act of mercy to myself and my family,” Geimer said.

She also called for an end to “a 40-year sentence which has been imposed on the victim of a crime as well as the perpetrato­r.”

In downplayin­g the crime and saying she empathized with Polanski, Geimer took a position at odds with some sexual assault victims. Victims and their advocates have been outspoken recently about lenient sentences in sex abuse cases.

Gordon, who praised Geimer for her courage and elegant words, said he would take the matter under considerat­ion.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States