Post Properly Pillories Polanski (And The Swiss)

by Bruce Friedrich

Today’s Washington Post includes both a column by venerable columnist Eugene Robinson on Roman Polanski’s unlikely Swiss jailbreak and an editorial slamming the Swiss decision to free the child rapist movie-maker.

The editorial, aptly titled “Director Roman Polanski escapes accountability for raping a 13-year-old,” comments on the absurd Swiss contention that they don’t have enough information.

Maybe they neglected to read the undisputed testimony of a 13-year-old detailing how Mr. Polanski drugged, raped and sodomized her. Maybe they overlooked the transcript of Mr. Polanski’s court hearing in which, pleading guilty to a lesser charge, he acknowledged knowing his victim had yet to turn 14. Or perhaps they missed his unsettling explanation to probation officers of how sex with the girl “was very spontaneous.”

Gene Robinson notes that one Polanski lawyer, who appears to have studied at the Tony Hayward school for public relations, called the decision “an enormous satisfaction and a great relief after the pain suffered by Roman Polanski and his family.” Polanski’s attorney appears to be channeling the great man, who “claimed in a 1979 interview that he was being hounded because ‘everyone wants to [have sex with] young girls’.”

I’m generally celebrity-gossip averse, even when the gossip has to do with a fundamentalist Christian with distinctly unchristian attitudes, but the news that the Swiss have set Roman Polanski free outrages me; it warrants the attention the Post has given it.

By: BruceGFriedrich

Vice President, Policy, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals