Posted on 03/11/2003 12:00:18 PM PST by Illbay
MARCH 11--It's been 26 years since Roman Polanski's arrest for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl, but the director's Oscar nomination and the success of his film "The Pianist" has again focused attention on the March 1977 crime that prompted his French exile.
Polanski, 69, will not discuss the case and his victim, Samantha Geimer, now 39, has recently said that the sex assault should not color his chances with Academy Award voters. But that, of course, does not lessen the severity of the crime, which is graphically detailed in the following grand jury testimony, which was quietly unsealed four months ago by a Los Angeles judge.
Two weeks after Polanski plied her with Champagne and a Quaalude, Samantha Gailey appeared before an L.A. grand jury and recalled Polanski's predatory behavior in a Mulholland Canyon home owned by Jack Nicholson.
The teenager's troubling--and contemporaneous--account of her abuse at Polanski's hands begins with her posing twice for topless photos that the director said were for French Vogue. The girl then told prosecutors how Polanski directed her to, "Take off your underwear" and enter the Jacuzzi, where he photographed her naked. Soon, the director, who was then 43, joined her in the hot tub. He also wasn't wearing any clothes and, according to Gailey's testimony, wrapped his hands around the child's waist.
The girl testified that she left the Jacuzzi and entered a bedroom in Nicholson's home, where Polanski sat down beside her and kissed the teen, despite her demands that he "keep away." According to Gailey, Polanski then performed a sex act on her and later "started to have intercourse with me." At one point, according to Gailey's testimony, Polanski asked the 13-year-old if she was "on the pill," and "When did you last have your period?" Polanski then asked her, Gailey recalled, "Would you want me to go in through your back?" before he "put his penis in my butt." Asked why she did not more forcefully resist Polanski, the teenager told Deputy D.A. Roger Gunson, "Because I was afraid of him."
Following his indictment on various sex charges, Polanski agreed to a plea deal that spared him prison time (he had spent about 45 days in jail during a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation). But when it seemed that a Superior Court judge might not honor the deal--and sentence Polanski to prison--the director fled the country.
Below you'll find links to Gailey's grand jury testimony, the heart of which runs 36 pages (we've broken the transcript into two 18-page sections for easier navigation).
Click here for transcript pages 1-18
Click here for transcript pages 19-36
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Only recently was Ira Einhorn FINALLY returned to the U.S. to stand trial for a thirty-year-old murder. Now, Roman Polanski, who drugged, raped and sodomized a THIRTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL when he was 43 years of age, is living the life of luxury in France.
What's more, our wonderful "Hollywood" community, who share with France the distinction of such high morality in regard to the upcoming conflict with a murderous thug, have NOMINATED this monster for an Academy Award, and may well give him an Oscar this year.
I wish that we could have someone like Bill O'Reilly bring this up on his program. The Hollywood crowd need to be shown as the moral reprobates they are, with NO moral authority whatsoever to even DARE to criticize a Godly many like President Bush for protecting our nation in conformance with his oath of office.
GRRRRR! This stuff just boils my blood!!!
Former French Premier Michel Rocard is complaining that greed and politics in the United States and other nations that produce light weapons are undermining efforts to control the illegal trade in small arms.
In a letter to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Mr. Rocard said, "Parochial political, economic and security interests of a few supplier states are impeding, if not derailing, the process."
Mr. Rocard and Mali President Alpha Oumar Konare are the co-chairmen of the U.N.-supported Eminent Persons Group of 20 current and former world leaders seeking to limit the flow of weapons such as AK-47 assault rifles that often fall into the hands of terrorists, guerrillas, drug smugglers and criminal gangs.
(* My note : Meanwhile, France sells nuke tech & jet fighter parts to a guy who gets his jollies by keeping the children of political dissidents in prisons that employ tremendous brutality and torture. Go figure!)
Among other measures, they have proposed that all countries support an international registry of the legal sale of those weapons and methods to trace them when they are sold illegally.
(* If they are sold illegally, tracing them will be meaningless if you aren't willing to go to war to take them from the criminals. You aren't willing to deal with Iraq, but i suppose chasing petty thieves and blowing up Greenpeace boats is about the only things within your ability.)
However, the United States, Russia, China, India and Israel object to such tight controls on the legal weapons trade. In his letter to Mrs. Albright last week, Mr. Rocard argued that controls on the legal sales are necessary to deal with the illegal sales.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has reported on the "leakage from legal to illicit sources as a major supply source" for illegally armed groups, Mr. Rocard said. He added that Mr. Annan is calling for a "comprehensive approach to both the trade and illicit traffic."
(* My note : Only nitwits would suggest restricting legal arms sales would interfere with illegal arms sales- the criminals will exploit the good people, who will be hindered in acquiring what they need. )
"Effort by some [nations] to limit small-arms control to illicit commercial activity must be shown as an attempt to avoid [national] responsibility and to sidestep the process," Mr. Rocard said.
(* My note : Nope. These efforts have to do our constitution, and with the ability of good people to find the arms needed to defend their liberty, as well as the fact that your efforts to deny people these arms will only mean the bad guys who ignore UN resolutions and national laws, like terrorists, shall have these arms, while those who adhere to these rules will be degenseless.)
"There is a growing recognition of ever-expanding small-arms proliferation as one of the great humanitarian challenges of our time," he added. "For these are the weapons that kill most people in most wars, primarily in developing countries.
(* My note : like the French really care about people in developing countries when they are busy selling NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS & MISSILES to the most despicable despots they can find.)
"Most of the victims of small arms violence are children. Yet the international small-arms trade remains largely unregulated."
(* My note : Maybe the French should think of these victims before they decide to protect the perps.)
- Source : "'Impeding' gun control," Washington Times, October 30, 2000, Embassy Row James Morrison, News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor., http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-20001030214331.htm
Polanski is not the first great artist in history undone by a personal mistake. And he won't be the last.
Yeah-- a personal mistake. You know, like when you show up late to a meeting or something. Unreal! Fox editorialists obviously need a dictionary to help them when using big words like personal. Not to mention that he apparently isn't exactly undone either. After all, there are still editorialists at Fox News that love watching him in movies. There's even a poster on this thread who's said as much.
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