Samantha Geimer pictured in 1977 on the left, and now on the rightPolanski was arrested in the late 1970s and charged with giving drugs and alcohol to a 13-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer, and having unlawful sex with her at Jack Nicholson’s Hollywood home. He maintained that the girl was sexually experienced and had consented.
Samantha Geimer (pictured above) has previously (and repeatedly) asked that all charges be dropped against Roman Polanski, stating that the continued publicity over the decades-old event "causes harm to me, my husband and children".
Two months ago Roman Polanski asked a California appeals court to overturn a judge's refusal to consider his request to throw out the 1977 case in which he pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Judge Peter Espinoza agreed there was misconduct by the original judge in the case, but said Polanski must return to the US to apply for dismissal.
The 2008 film, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, notes the judicial misconduct, purporting to show "a judge more interested in his image than his word or the law."
Roman Polanski now lives permanently in Paris, and is considered by some an international fugitive. It should be noted that the age of consent in Europe ranges from 13 - 17 (Spain is the lowest with 13). His Academy Award for best director, won for the 2002 film "The Pianist" was accepted by Harrison Ford, who had previously starred in Polanski's 1988 thriller, "Frantic."
Frederic Mitterrand, France's culture minister said he “strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them." He is, fo course, speaking of the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the Manson Family, but also of the treatment of Polanski's family during the Holocaust during WWII.
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