Names and faces

■ A Los Angeles judge Friday denied the plea of Roman Polanski’s victim to end a four-decade-old sexual assault case against the fugitive director. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon ruled that Polanski must return to California if he expects to resolve charges of sexually abusing a teen. The Oscar winner fled the country on the eve of sentencing in

1978. Gordon’s ruling follows a fervent request by Samantha Geimer to end a “40-year sentence” that she says was imposed on perpetrator and victim. It was issued on Polanski’s 84th birthday and blamed the director for the fact that the case was still alive. Harland Braun, Polanski’s attorney, said the ruling came after the judge asked for proposals on how to resolve the case. Braun’s proposals include several that previously were rejected by the court. Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with Geimer when she was 13. She has said he drugged, raped and sodomized her. The Associated Press does not typically name victims of sex abuse, but Geimer went public years ago. After he became a fugitive, his attorneys have failed to persuade judges to sentence him in absentia and credit him for the 42 days he was incarcerated for psychological testing before he fled. Geimer has long supported Polanski’s efforts but made her plea in court for the first time in June. After her statement, the director’s lawyers reiterated their request for the case to be dismissed, or Polanski to be sentenced without appearing in court. Gordon’s ruling Friday noted that a court “may not dismiss the case merely because it would be in the victim’s best interest.” Polanski has tried for years to end the case and lift an international arrest warrant that confined him to his native France, Switzerland and Poland, where he fled the Holocaust. The warrant prevented him from collecting his Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film The Pianist. Geimer said she didn’t excuse what Polanski did but that she felt he had served his sentence and wasn’t being treated fairly. ■ Noted physicist Stephen Hawking criticized Britain’s health secretary for what he described as the selective use of scientific studies to support changes in the National Health Service. The world-renowned scientist accused Conservative minister Jeremy Hunt of “cherry picking” evidence to support the changes and says the service is at risk. Hunt rejected Hawking’s accusations Saturday, but the public spat followed strains on the health service after years of cost-cutting. Hawking, a supporter of the opposition Labor Party, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1962. He says he “would not be here today if it were not for the service.” Hawking said that when public figures “abuse scientific argument, citing some studies but suppressing others to justify policies they want to implement for other reasons, it debases scientific culture.”

Hawking

Polanski