Polanski: US hounded me after sex with child
ROMAN Polanski has claimed he was persecuted by the US authorities, who attempted to have him extradited from Europe for the alleged rape of a young girl more than 30 years ago.
In a rare interview, the film director said the experience of being abruptly arrested in Switzerland at the request of the US in 2009 was worse than his original prosecution in 1977.
Polanski, 80, said his ordeal was more like that which he endured in 1969, when he faced false rumours that he had been involved in the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson family gang.
“I didn’t have that at all then,” he told Vanity Fair magazine about his original arrest and prosecution. “This was much more like the assassination of Sharon and what happened afterwards.”
Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer during a 1977 photo shoot, but fled the US after it emerged he might be sentenced to 50 years in jail. He was accused of plying Geimer with champagne and a sedative at the shoot at the Hollywood home of actor Jack Nicholson before raping her.
He underwent 42 days of psychiatric evaluation as part of a plea deal in 1978, but fled to France. “It was a nightmare — hell — with this sword hanging over my neck,” he said. “It was such a shock to learn that it’s not finished after they let you out of prison.
“Free! With your bundle under your arm, with the lawyer waiting for you outside, standing there, in your mind it’s all over, it’s finished. And then the judge changed his mind. And I have to go back to prison, and nobody knows how long. I just could not go through that. And that’s when I decided.”
Polanski, who escaped the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, Poland, in 1943, said: “I thought even if I have to go back to Poland and work all my life there, it’s better than going through all this.”
The director of Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby and The Pianist lived on the run for 32 years before being arrested in 2009 en route to the Zurich Film Festival. He spent two months in a Swiss jail before going under house arrest in Gstaad. Swiss authorities rejected the US extradition request.
In an e-mail to the magazine, Geimer said of the incident: “It was rape. Not only because I was under age, but also because I did not consent.” — © The