potential cleaning of my friends list: my take on Roman Polanski

[drewkitty]

Roman Polanski did nothing that doesn't happen in Hollywood every day.



Armed with alcohol, drugs, prestige and ruthlessness and shielded by reputation and the support of their peers, sordid moguls take advantage of innocent children. They know they are doing wrong, there is no excuse.

I am not outraged by what he did, if only because it is so sadly commonplace. I am outraged by two other factors.

1) It continues to happen every day, and somehow the Hollywood celebrities think that this is somehow OK because money and power washes away sin. (I'm not big on mortal sin, but nonconsenusal sex and child molestation certainly count in my book, and this was both.) Hollywood Boulevard is full of the human wreckage that results. If you are local to L.A., you can see the pimps and players working the runaways that arrive at the Greyhound bus stations.

2) In our eagerness to give Polanski either an undeserved free pass or a drive-by drubbing, we bring our own prejudices and life experiences to the situation. We blame Polanski, who is a tired old director with issues who needs a short stay in prison and the rest of his life in probation and community service -- but we let our cultural leaders off the hook, who create and condone this sort of thing not just in Hollywood but around the world.

From Oakland to Thailand, from San Francisco to New Orleans, *rape is not supposed to be OK*. Yet we have a petition going around that says it is.

"His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals."

Where are the celebrities speaking out and saying clearly, "No, this is not OK?" Where are the billboards with 800 numbers, the celebrities who spend their time in the Hollywood bus station and on the streets where their stars are, the community outreach and the financial support? Where are the detectives knocking on doors? The social workers?

Where is the outrage?

Links:

http://www.rainn.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/roman-polanski/story?id=8705958

http://www.indiewire.com/article/2009/09/29/over_100_in_film_community_sign_polanski_petition/

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090613132146AAoIB5m

http://www.covenanthouse.org/ 1-800-999-9999 and http://www.nineline.org/

http://www.covenanthouse.org/houses/california

Comments

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

I made a conscious decision, very early on, to not have an opinion about Roman Polanski, and I'll tell you why: just in the first few months of the case, let alone over the intervening decades, literally everybody has changed their story at least once. Polanski has. The victim has. The judge has. The prosecutor has. Everybody is lying about this case.

My gut instinct is that justice would have been served by the original plea bargain; once Polanski was told (whether it was true or not) that the prosecutor and the judge were conspiring to lock him up for longer than that, for political reasons, I don't blame him for running.

I keep hearing reports from actresses, as well as from singers and from models, that the "casting couch" lives, and that when someone makes your ability your ability to work in your field dependent on having sex with them, there is no such thing as consent. It's all rape. And on those terms, there's enough testimony out there to convict just about every agent, director, and producer in both LA and NYC. And yet mothers continue, all these decades after Polanski, to do what the victim's mother did: help their daughters, even their underaged daughters, primp and style themselves to be as sexy as possible and then deliver them to the producers. It's unambiguously socially sanctioned rape. There isn't any part of it that doesn't disgust me. Which is the other reason why I'm a little bit hesitant to see Polanski singled out.

I saw something the other day from a lawyer arguing that once the LA district attorney's office has him, they may find it impossible to convict him, predicting that the most likely outcome now is acquittal. Wouldn't that be a heck of a twist ending to the story?

[deedeebythebay.livejournal.com]

I don't care whether everyone in Hollywood does it or not.

I don't care whether it happens every day or not.

It should be stopped.

He confessed to this crime. His plea bargain should have been honored, yes, but he should never have run.

And, quite frankly, I don't care if the victim said yes, or not, or did not fight him physically or not.

I was 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 when my step-father sexually abused me, beat me and emotionally messed with my head. He did the same to my mother. I was taught to just lay still and take it. Many victims know instinctually that that's what you want to do if you want to live.

Now, imagine being drugged in such a way that you don't really have the ability to do more than say no.

Should the mother have been on the set the whole time? Damn straight she should have. Still isn't a 13 YEAR OLD CHILD's fault.

bradhicks, I admit I'm disappointed, quite a bit, for your response. My step-father was held accountable and the only reason he got out of jail was because he was dying from cancer.

Yet they wanted to say that I seduced him, I didn't fight hard enough, AT THE AGE OF 6!!!

She's reached a place of healing. So have I. That doesn't mean the perpetrator of such an act should not be held accountable. And 42 days of pschiatric evaluation is not enough accountability.

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

From what I have read, the victim has actually forgiven Polanski, believes he is not a danger to society, and would prefer everything be dropped, because the continued press and court actions are what is traumatizing her the most now by keeping the memory of the incident alive.

When I read the details of the crime (assuming the version I read was correct), I have to admit I myself was rather shocked. The fact the victim said 'no', and was given alcohol and illegal downers alone makes this a clear cut case of rape, with the young age (13) only adding to the squick factor.

I'm not up on who changed their stories per se like brad is, nor so I know the details behind it, but some punishment should be meted out in this case.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

>> I don't care whether everyone in Hollywood does it or not. I don't care whether it happens every day or not. It should be stopped.

I agree completely with your third point, which is why I must consider the first two.

One question I am trying to raise is whether lenient or harsh treatment of this particular pseudo-intellectual thug will help stop this type of sexual abuse of children in the future.

Another question is why Hollywood generally and these one hundred damned celebrities in particular choose to tolerate and condone what can only be called a culture of rape.

Gentle treatment sends a message that these types of crimes are tolerable, even minor. Weighted against this is the fact that both victims and families are more likely to report what is going on (which usually stops it) if the apparent consequences are less severe. There is also the fear that reporting "does nothing about it" -- the abuse may stop but justice is never done.

Harsh treatment makes reporting and prosecution less likely, not more. This is the classic Beccaria-Bentham (http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/week3.htm) argument in criminology. Harsh punishments are expensive from a systems perspective and only get used in notorious cases or against the poor or other powerless groups. It is not clear that punishment deterrence works at all -- pickpockets worked the crowds which gathered to watch the hanging of pickpockets. Detection deterrence may be more powerful.

I don't have a good answer, except that knee-jerk or over-broad responses tend to be wrong. For many years in California it was the law that convicted molesters of their own children were allowed to stay at home on probation if they participated in 'family therapy' with the victim!

Really (http://www.protect.org/Success-Stories/California/What-the-Passage-of-the-Circle-of-Trust-Bill-Means-to-Children-in-America.html).

"Criminals convicted in California of sexually assaulting children in the home were not just uniquely eligible for probation, there were conditions attached. In order to qualify for probation, perpetrators had to enter a “recognized” sex offender treatment program. And there was only one type of program recognized by the State of California: family therapy. The clear legislative and practical intent of these laws was to create strong incentives for victims to attend 'therapy' with their abusers and return home."

The first step is for the sex abuse to stop -- and we know it has stopped at least while the abuser is in custody. The second step is to put the victim into an environment where they can heal. The third step is to create a just resolution, which necessarily to my mind includes punishment for the abuser.

To that extent, any time spent talking about sex crime as a society is helpful because many people like to pretend that 1) these things don't happen, 2) these things are only done by the poor or deviant, 3) these things are done only by the idle rich ... when in fact 4) these things happen in all societies and all social classes, and are only detected more often among the poor, where no one really cares.

I note your experiences without feeling a need to share mine. No preteen child seduces an adult. A 13 year old is a teenager, an adolescent, who in California is protected by our age-of-consent laws. That the social setting and the age of consent in other places is different is also besides the point.

Flight to avoid prosecution is yet another issue, and with respect to sex crime a side issue. Polanski claims flight to avoid injustice -- he should have come back on his own to face the music when the original judge died. Being dragged back bodes ill for his future as it should.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Here's the victim's grand jury testimony:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/polanskia1.html

You can read 11 through 15 if you have a strong stomach.

I think you have reason to be an excellent judge in this matter. While I respect the victim's preferences, the guilty plea to statutory rape is not in question -- he pled guilty before the unlawful flight to avoid sentencing.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Acquittal on the flight to avoid prosecution is more likely due to the age of the case and the evidence of miscarriage of justice.

>> And yet mothers continue, all these decades after Polanski, to do what the victim's mother did: help their daughters, even their underaged daughters, primp and style themselves to be as sexy as possible and then deliver them to the producers. It's unambiguously socially sanctioned rape. There isn't any part of it that doesn't disgust me. Which is the other reason why I'm a little bit hesitant to see Polanski singled out.

Well said, and exactly my point -- except that I'll settle for singling out Polanski since we can't get them all as much as they so clearly deserve.

[bosn.livejournal.com]

placating the rich needs to stop.

He made a deal, he needs to serve his time. If this was some poor sad pedophile this would not even be in the news, he would be hauled off to jail with a new, extended sentence for flight.

[rue-gingertabby.livejournal.com]

He needs to serve his time.

I have various and conflicting ideas on the whole mess, but I do know this...he pleaded guilty and needs to serve his time.

Regardless of how good a director he might be, he still deserves prison time.