MAGAZINE
Published February 18,2017
http://magazinereaders.blogspot.com/
Fugitive filmmaker Roman Polanski plans to return to the United
States and is seeking assurances he will do no further jail time over
unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.
The award-winning director of “The Pianist” and “Chinatown,” who has
been on the run for almost 40 years, claims he reached a plea deal in
the case that would keep him out of prison, his attorney Harland Braun
told AFP.
Braun has written to Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Scott
Gordon to unseal a secret transcript of the testimony of the prosecutor
in the Polanski case, which he believes will confirm the deal.
The Paris-born director was accused of drugging Samantha Gailey — who
now uses the surname Geimer — before raping her at film star Jack
Nicholson’s house in Los Angeles in 1977.
Polanski, who also has French citizenship, admitted having unlawful
sex with a minor, or statutory rape, and spent 42 days in Chino State
Prison before being released.
But in 1978, convinced a judge was going to scrap the plea deal and hand him a hefty prison sentence, he fled for France.
Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in 2009 on a U.S. extradition
request and spent 10 months under house arrest before Bern rejected the
U.S. order.
The United States then asked Poland to extradite Polanski in January
2015, but the country’s Supreme Court ruled in December that he had
served his time under the plea deal.
‘SAFE IN MY COUNTRY’
Braun believes the secret testimony of prosecutor Roger Gunson
collected in 2010 in the U.S. supports Polanski’s claim that he had an
agreement to serve just 48 days and that — taken with the Polish
decision — it should convince the U.S. authorities Polanski has served
his time.
“After we confirm the contents, we will urge the court to recognize
the Polish decision resulting from a litigation initiated by the
(district attorney) and in which the DA participated,” Braun told AFP.
“If the court accepts the principle of comity, Roman can come to Los Angeles and to court without fear of custody.”
Polanski’s French legal team told AFP the filmmaker was not intending
to be present at a hearing scheduled for next week in Los Angeles to
consider a request.
Polanski told the private news channel TVN24 after the Polish court
had ruled in his favor that he was “happy this business is over once and
for all.”
“I only regret that I had to wait so long. I’ll finally be able to feel safe in my own country.”
Polanski, who lives in France and had been avoiding Poland because of
the case, said he planned to visit his father’s grave in the southern
city of Krakow.
The filmmaker has been engaged in a decades-long cat-and-mouse game
with U.S. officials seeking his extradition for trial, before a global
audience split between continuing outrage and forgiveness for his acts.
Born in Paris in 1933 to Polish Jewish parents who later brought the
family back to their native country, he saw his parents arrested by the
Nazis in Krakow’s Jewish ghetto and sent to concentration camps.
BRUTAL SLAUGHTER
He roamed the countryside, trying to survive at the age of just
eight, helped by Catholic Polish families, in a country occupied by
German troops.
The experience lent a gripping autobiographical authenticity to his
2002 movie “The Pianist,” the story of a young Jewish musician trying to
evade the Nazis in occupied Warsaw.
Lured to Hollywood in 1968, Polanski shot his first big international
hit, “Rosemary’s Baby,” starring Mia Farrow as an expecting mother
carrying the devil’s spawn.
But tragedy struck the following year when his heavily pregnant wife,
the model and actress Sharon Tate, and four friends were brutally
slaughtered in the director’s mansion by cult leader Charles Manson and
his followers.
Devastated, Polanski left for Europe, then returned to achieve
arguably his greatest triumph in 1974 with “Chinatown” — an atmospheric
film noir starring Jack Nicholson nominated for 11 Oscars.
He has avoided the U.S. since the statutory rape case — not even
returning to accept the Oscar for “The Pianist” — and jousted with the
Justice Department for years after.
Geimer herself called for the charges to be dropped, complaining that
in dogging Polanski for so long, antagonists had made him her co-victim
in a case she wanted to put behind her.
“The publicity was so traumatic and so horrible that his punishment
was secondary to just getting this whole thing to stop,” Geimer told CNN
in 2003.
Polanski wants to visit Tate’s grave in Los Angeles, the celebrity
news website TMZ reported. He has also not been able to visit his
daughter in London, it said.
[source]
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| Roman Polanski/photo file. |
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