Sorry. Her consent was irrelevant - she was 13. The law, and I believe it is a reasonable one, says minors cannot consent to having sex. While I disagree with calling "consensual" sex with minors rape, I do contend that many, if not most, of them do not have the capacity to make such an adult decision. Might some of them? I don't know. Neither do you nor Roman Polanski. It is entirely unreasonable to expect a horny guy to make an informed, honest and reasonable determination of whether the 13 or 16 year old that he's hot to bone is capable of consenting to have sex. If he's really serious about this person he'll consent to having a psychological evaluation of both himself and the child and abide by the opinions of the experts. Somehow I don't see that happening a lot. I think the law is right to conservatively say keep your hands off or else.

Certain liberals here have already given me that title for pointing out the truth & facts..

Someone needs to lube up a stick with ICE/HOT and shub it up RP's bung hole a few times!!

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Yes it is. We disagree with flat-earth conservatives on some points, but we share the moral principles of most Americans.

Dottore, you have not made even a single persuasive point.

1. The law is stupid, which is not only irrelevant but untrue.

2. She was sexually mature and consented to it, which she obviously did not, or he would not have to drug her and she would not have been crying and begging him to stop. Sexually mature, is that the old enough to bleed, old enough to breed axiom?

3. He had a deal with the judge and was afraid it would not be honored, so he is a psychic pedophile, that sort of stretches credulity, and he could have just said, "Forget it, I withdraw my plea, lets go to trial."

4. He has a history as a ladies man. He loves women, he does not hate them. Man that is ridiculous, he has a history of nailing little girls, that makes him a pedophile, not a ladies man. John Wayne Gacy loved little boys, he was just a misunderstood clown, n'est pas? The victim wants to let it go and get on with her life? Of course she does, she was raped as a child, and paid off by the perpetrator.

5.The US Govt is corrupt, so are the Swiss, so the rearrest is bogus. Seriously dude, that is an argument, are you freakin' kidding me?

6. The judge was corrupt, the law is stupid, the DA was sketchy etc, etc

One question for you Dot.

If you had a 13 year old child, who was drugged and raped, what would you do?

Leaving aside you think the law is stupid, or the rapist in question is willing to give you a sack of cash to let it go, or a good dancer, or an artistic genius, or his parents died in a concentration camp, or any of the other irrelevant nonsense you dredge up whenever we talk about this POS degenerate, recidivist pedophile who has certainly nailed numerous children.

You have a 13 year old daughter and she is raped. That is really the only pertinent fact, what do you do?

Thank you for the first rational response here.

I don't think her consent (or lack of it) is irrelevant when the charge is rape. On the contrary it is extremely relevant for the person charged with the offense.

And bear in mind Polanski did plead guilty to sex with a minor. And had a plea deal. And spent time in prison. And then a corrupt judge decided to reneg on the deal for his own aggrandizement because he sensed a media spectacle. That's when things went downhill, and Polanski took the only rational option open to him and fled the country. I mean you'd have to be a very highly principled idiot to subject yourself to a complete kangaroo court when there is so much at stake.

In any case, I won't convince the good sanctimonious burghers of PPOT of any of this. Their minds are made up.

So I'm just going to pour myself a few fingers of single-malt, throw a log on the fire and re-read Lolita.

It doesn't matter what you think. In the eyes of that law, it is irrelevant. A 13yo cannot legally give consent. Stop, end of story.

No matter how correct you believe yourself to be or how much you try to spin it dotty, it does not make you any less wrong.

Ironic thing is Polanski clearly knew what he did was wrong and just did not care. You just don't care that it was wrong.

If you would honestly say the same thing about your own 13 year old child, I hope nobody was every stupid enough to leave you alone with any children.

This is a subject that elicits a lot of emotional responses and not much rational thought, hence the hysteria, name calling and venomous rhetoric. Too bad, the subject deserves a rational discussion.

He didn't spend much time in jail and he's no better than the rest of us who are subjected to our flawed court system but don't have the resources to flee. I think the rational, legal, and moral course would have been to stay and fight the courts like the rest of would have had to.

Judging from his previous comments on this thread, my guess is that he would see if he could join in and bugger her himself after the rapist was finished.

He seems to have absolutely NO morals when it comes to this.

Yes, I believe you are right. The only thing that could put an end to the burghers hamming it up here is for Roman to marry the poor girl.

Thanks again for focusing on the issue.

He spent 90 days in jail, as agreed with the DA in his lesser plea for "sex with a minor". That was the deal. That was what he pleaded guilty to.

What I disagree with is your point that fleeing when he saw he was going to be railroaded by a corrupt court was somehow wrong. Surely morality does not come into this decision. What is "rational, legal and moral" about subjecting yourself to an obvious travesty of justice?

The only real question here is whether his decision to flee was rational under the circumstances. With everything we now know about the judge and his intentions, I'm of the view that Polanski's choice was entirely rational.

Imagine if you were thrown into jail in Turkey, knew you were facing a corrupt court and possibly a long and entirely disproportionate sentence? Would you not flee the jurisdiction if you had the opportunity? I know I damn well would.

This is rather rich coming from PPOT's self-proclaimed king of the arse-bandits.

I've met Joe, and i'm pretty sure Joe wouldn't bonk a 13yo.

That would make Roman a bigamist, and that would upset the sanctimonious wankers on this board even more.

Damn, I always forget:

Bigamy - not OK, sodomy - OK

They're trying more and more adolescents as adults nowadays. Perhaps they should convict the girl (now woman) for contributing to the delinquency of a foreigner and call it a wash?

Dari proving once again that he is, in fact, stupid.

actually i think he was being sarcastic.


if so, it's the first clever thing he's said in.... in....? maybe it's the first clever thing he's ever said.

He would not have wanted to have a trial at the time on that charge or issue. Unless her GJ testimony was made of whole cloth, he drugged and raped her. You do realise that if a woman, (or girl, or guy if you swing that way), says "no" and you force yourself on them sexually, it's rape. Right? I'm talking legally here, so skip the obfuscation that I'm just a "sanctimonious burgher" who does not benefit from your more sophisticated worldview.

All issues of criminal law have some moral or value judgement attached to them or why else would we as a society choose to proscribe them? Why not just allow murder, rape or swindling old people out of their life savings. Bunch of sanctimonious burghers... :rolleyes:

He could have withdrawn his plea and had a trial if they were not willing to make the deal that had been discussed. Not sure how familiar you are with the legal system in the U.S. but he and his attorney did not have any legally binding agreement for a certain disposition to the case, only a suggestion from prosecutors as to a particular sentence if he pled guilty to a certain charge.

I think that even his close friends know that he's a sick fk and that he forced himself on that little girl, (which is rape in this country), they just do not want to see him rot in prison. He has led an extremely privileged life in the years since 1977 and if there is any injustice in this case, it was his flight.

All of your claims of "kangaroo courts" and corrupt legal systems are a waste of breath, he was entitled to a trial. he probably would have benefited from the young victim's unwillingness to relive that day on the witness stand and been sprung-free.

I agree with Speeder 100%.

My apologies Denis, I don't consider you one of the sanctimonious arseholes on this board. But having been called every name under the sun for having a different opinion from the others here, it's perhaps possible to understand my response.

But what I quote from your comments above goes to the point: You presume he drugged and raped her. Everybody on this board presumes he drugged and raped her.

This is however a question of fact that should have been tried—but it couldn't be because it was already presumed in the charge of statutory rape.

All we have is the girls GJ testimony which has been called into question by numerous commentators, and which she (the alleged victim) has stated she now regrets.

When faced with a kangaroo court, and trial by the media—why should Polanski have taken a chance and stayed around only to be locked up for God knows how long for something that even the alleged victim claims was really not a large moral transgression in the great scheme of things.

There was a complete disconnect between the crime and the punishment that was about to be meted out, and that disconnect was down to the media and a deeply flawed judicial system.

Sorry, but if my version of these events is right—and certainly from all the reading I have done on this, and the conversations I have had, it seems probable to me that my version is right—then I believe the fact that Polanski fled the country at that time was a completely reasonable thing for him to do, and morally neutral. He had served the time he was told he had to serve.

Also, although I'm not very well versed in California criminal procedure, I believe the plea bargain Polanski made was blessed by the judge in open court—which should have made it binding. Or if it wasn't binding, this was never properly explained to Polanski (see the recent documentary), with the result that he copped plea to the lesser charge without understanding that the whole thing could be set aside by the judge—who most clearly was thoroughly corrupt.

Anyway, this horse is probably well and truly dead, and maybe we should agree to disagree.