Roman Polanski Accused of Rape

[Sasha2012]

Renate Langer in Munich

Renate Langer, a 61-year-old former German actress, has reported to the Swiss police that the film director Roman Polanski raped her at a house in Gstaad in February 1972, when she was 15.

Ms. Langer is the fourth woman to publicly accuse Mr. Polanski of sexual assaulting her when she was a teenager.

The police in St. Gallen, Switzerland, confirmed that they met with Ms. Langer on Sept. 26. Ms. Langer provided The New York Times with a copy of an email — sent by a Swiss police officer — saying that another office would make the determination as to whether she could pursue a criminal complaint.

Switzerland has eliminated its statute of limitations on child sex abuse cases, but the law limits prosecution in cases that happened many years ago. Ms. Langer said in an interview that she had approached the Swiss police because she believed the statute of limitations would allow her complaint to be investigated.

In an email sent to her lawyer and to a friend of Ms. Langer, the officer who spoke to her in St. Gallen said an interpretation of the law in this instance would be made by the public prosecutor’s office in Bern.

Ms. Langer said in the interview that she had not previously reported anything to the police — and did not confide in friends and family at the time — largely out of concern for her parents. She said she told a boyfriend years later.

Roman Polanski at the Cannes Film Festival in May

“My mother would have had a heart attack,” she said. “I felt ashamed and embarrassed and lost and solo.” Her father died this past summer, and her mother two years ago.

Harland Braun, a lawyer for Mr. Polanski, the 84-year-old award-winning French-Polish film director, declined to comment on Ms. Langer’s accusation. Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty in 1977 to unlawful sex with Samantha Geimer when she was 13, but his lawyer has disputed other similar accusations in the past.

In August, a woman in Los Angeles, identified only as Robin M., came forward at a news conference to report that Mr. Polanski had sexually assaulted her in 1973 when she was 16.

At the time, Mr. Braun said in a statement that Mr. Polanski’s reaction had been “I don’t know what this is about.”

In 2010, the British actress Charlotte Lewis also accused Mr. Polanski of abusing her sexually when she was 16.

Mr. Polanski has been living in exile from the United States since fleeing the country in 1978 on the eve of his sentencing in the Geimer case.

He has since resided in France but has spent time in Poland and Switzerland. France does not extradite its citizens, and judges in Poland and Switzerland have declined to extradite Mr. Polanski to stand trial in the United States. His lawyers have been fighting for his international arrest warrant to be lifted.

In August, a Los Angeles judge declined to drop the case against Mr. Polanski in the United States for the second time.

On Monday, The Hollywood Reporter published an interview with Mr. Polanski in which he said he considered the Geimer case to be closed.

“As far as what I did: It’s over. I pleaded guilty,” he said.

Ms. Langer said she is speaking out now because she had read the account of the woman who came forward in August and because her parents are no longer alive.

By her account, she was introduced to Mr. Polanski after she began working for a modeling agency in Munich in high school and said she had traveled to visit him in Gstaad, with the permission of her parents, because he had indicated an interest in casting her in a movie.

Mr. Polanski, she said, raped her in a bedroom of his home, and she described being unable to defend herself against him despite trying. She left the next day, full of shame and confusion, and said she chose not to tell her parents because it would devastate them.

About a month later, she said, Mr. Polanski called her to apologize for what had happened and offered her a role in his movie “Che?” She said that she accepted after he indicated he would treat her professionally.

She flew to Rome alone and was given a small part in the movie. Mr. Polanski did not make any sexual advances as filming got underway, she said. But one night in Rome, when she was alone in a house that she had been sharing with others, she said he raped her again in a bedroom despite her efforts to defend herself by throwing a bottle of wine and a bottle of perfume at him.

“This had an influence on all of my life,” she said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/movies/roman-polanski-rape-accusation.html?_r=0

 

[HandbagDiva354]

It seems he is a predator. I wonder how many more have been harmed.

 

[hellobyebye]

He's a predator, there's no telling how many young girls he has assaulted over the years. The saddest thing is that he won't ever face punishment for what he's done because of all the protection that he has. I feel for all the women that have had to carry this pain around for so long.

 

[Sasha2012]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/roman-polanski-comments-rape-case-1044796?utm_source=twitter

Roman Polanski Comments on Rape Case: "It's Over"

In a rare press interview, Roman Polanski has addressed the decades-old sexual assault case that continues to dominate any discussion of the 84-year-old Oscar-winning director or his work.

Polanski is currently in Zurich promoting his latest film, Based on a True Story, which stars Eva Green and Polanski's wife, French actress Emmanuelle Seigner. The thriller, which screened as a work-in-progress in Cannes earlier this year, gets its world premiere in finished form Monday night at the Zurich Film Festival.

But it's a strange homecoming for Polanski. It was here, in Zurich in 2009, that the Los Angeles District Attorney's office initiated extradition proceedings against him for a crime he committed back in 1977.

Most of the facts of the case are undisputed. On March 11, 1977, Polanski, at the time the toast of Hollywood as the director of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, was arrested and charged with drugging and raping then-13-year-old Samantha Gailey (now Samantha Geimer). As part of a plea bargain, Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, underwent psychiatric evaluation and spent 42 days in jail.

But in 1978, when he heard that a judge was going to disregard the plea bargain and make an example of him, reportedly by giving him up to 50 years in prison, Polanski fled to Paris. He has remained a fugitive ever since, despite repeated attempts, including several pleas by the victim, to have the case dismissed. Last month, California judge Scott Gordon rejected Geimer's latest request, saying the Polanski case would go forward.

“As you know, Samantha Geimer has been asking for over 30 years for this thing to end,” Polanski said. “But, I'm sorry the judges who dealt with it the last 40 years were corrupted, one covering for the other. So I don't maybe one of them will [eventually] stop doing it.”

Polanski's attorney, Harland Braun has suggested the L.A. court sentence Polanski in absentia to 334 days in custody, which is equal to the time he's already served over the years in detention in U.S. and Switzerland, where he spent nearly a year under house arrest before the Swiss courts rejected the U.S. extradition request and set him free.

“As far as what I did: It's over. I pleaded guilty,” said Polanski. “I went to jail. I came back to the United States to do it, people forget about that, or don't even know. I then was locked up here [in Zurich] after this festival. So in the sum, I did about four or five times more than what was promised to me.”

The controversy over the decades-old case was reignited earlier this year after Polanski agreed to serve as president of the Cesars, France's equivalent to the Oscars. The director eventually withdrew after vocal protests by women's groups. The Polanski case and the controversy surrounding it have been the subject of two acclaimed documentaries from director Marina Zenovich: 2008's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired and Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out (2011).

Speaking in Zurich, Polanski said it was “unfortunate” that his films are now viewed through the filter of the case and surrounding scandal. Based on a True Story was well received by critics in Cannes (The Hollywood Reporter called it “good fun from master craftsman Roman Polanski) and it marks a new turn in the veteran filmmaker's acclaimed career.

“To make a film with two women, I've never done that. I don't mean just two women on the set, but a conflict between them. All my films have conflict between men or between men and a woman. But two females, no. So that was one of the things that really interested me. ... Between men, conflict is more in the open, you know? With women it is hidden. They are more perfidious than the men, in general. In the film, in this story, the real confrontation comes very late. With two men, it would come right after the beginning of the relationship.”

Polanski said he spent much less time rehearsing with Seigner and Green than he typically would on a film “with so much dialogue,” instead letting both actresses come up with their own interpretations of their characters and individual scenes. “I directed them less than I usually direct [male] actors.”

Sony Pictures Classics, which released Polanski's Carnage (2011), will distribute Based on a True Story in North America.

The Zurich International Film Festival runs through Sunday.

 

[Sassys]

I don't understand why these women decide to come forward years later. They lost all credibility coming forward so many years later.

 

[Swanky]

He's so nauseating.

 

[Esizzle]

I don't understand why these women decide to come forward years later. They lost all credibility coming forward so many years later.

Probably psychological trauma or shame about what happened.

 

[cdtracing]

He's a predator & a POS. He won't be punished & Hollywood applauds him. SMDH

 

[berrydiva]

Some of these men with power in the entertainment world are so sick....the things they do to women out of sport is just sad.

 

[bag-mania]

I don't understand why these women decide to come forward years later. They lost all credibility coming forward so many years later.

They didn't think they would be believed. Powerful famous man vs. young unknown girl. This particular woman waited until her parents were dead because she was ashamed of what happened to her.

The entertainment industry is full of hypocrites. They will self-righteously attack the pedophile priests and teachers but then turn around and protect/defend the pedophile directors and producers.

 

[gazoo]

He's a monster. A celebrated monster.

There's no way to predict how anyone would react to such abuse, particularly when it occurs during formative years. Sometimes people block it, sometimes they turn to drugs/alcohol/promiscuity, and sometimes they're strong enough to denounce their attacker at the time it happens. There shouldn't be a time limit on bringing it to light. The ripple effect is life changing not only for the victim and their loved ones, but for anyone who loves them later on in life. It can be a huge ordeal to deal with anyone that has been sexually assaulted. Their PTSD, for lack of a snazzier term, can surface over and over again years later, even if they've undergone therapy. I've seen it first hand.

I feel terrible for every single one of Polanski's victims. I'd bet there are far more we don't know about.

 

[Sasha2012]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsTw

A fifth woman accuses Roman Polanski of sexual abuse, demands he be booted from Academy

A San Franciso-based artist launched a petition calling on the Academy to revoke the membership of director Roman Polanski, claiming she too was abused by the Hollywood hotshot when she was a child.

“When I was 10 years old, Roman Polanski photographed me naked under an open fur coat on the rocks at deserted Will Rogers State beach in Malibu. I believe my mother arranged the encounter,” Marianne Barnard wrote at the start of her Care2 petition.

Barnard’s allegations make her the fifth woman to accuse the Oscar winner and convicted statutory rapist of sexually assaulting her while she was younger.

She first made the allegations in a series of tweets on Oct. 13, in which she said she had thought the photos were for a magazine.

Barnard noted the abuse continued, but that she “never said anything to anyone. Wish I had. Maybe other girls wouldn’t have been molested too.”

She ended her online account with the hashtag, “#ROSEARMY,” a movement kicked off by actress Rose McGowan in wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Barnard’s reveal came less than a week after the New York Times and the New Yorker detailed a pattern of abuse by Weinstein against the dozens of women he’s worked with — among them, McGowan, Angelina Jolie, Ashley Judd and Gwenyth Paltrow.

Barnard said the “Charmed” actress’ “bravery both convicted & emboldened me to speak out publicly. It’s hard to do but, we must so #ThisEndsNow #Silence IsTheEnemy.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences earlier earlier this month “voted well in excess of the required two-thirds majority to immediately expel (Weinstein) from the Academy.”

They issued the following statement: “We do not simply separate ourselves from someone who does not merit the respect of his colleagues but also to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.”

But if that’s true, Barnard contended in her petition, Polanski should also get the boot.

Her harrowing account of sexual abuse echoes that of victim Samantha Geimer, who also alleged her abuse began with a photo shoot.

Polanski in the '70s was charged with sexually assaulting Geimer — 13 years old at the time — at the home of Jack Nicholson, who starred in his hit, “Chinatown.”

He faced six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, but in a plea bargain pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse. Polanski served 42 days in jail and was to be put on probation, but fled to Paris upon learning the judge intended to reject the plea and sentence him to 50 years behind bars.

He’s remained a fugitive to the U.S. ever since, his status as a citizen in France protecting him from extradition.

British actress Charlotte Lewis, who appeared in Polanski’s 1986 “Pirates,” came forward in 2010, accusing the director of “forcing himself” on her in 1982. She was 16 at the time.

A woman only identified as Robin M. similarly came forward in 2017, saying she didn’t speak up sooner because she feared her father might “do something that might cause him to go to prison for the rest of his life.”

And just before the Weinstein scandal nabbed national headlines, former German actress Renate Langer filed a report with the Swiss police, alleging Polanski raped her in February 1972, when she was just 15.

“We’ve stayed silent until now,” she wrote at the petition’s end. “We feared. But, we can no longer be silent and allow this man who sexually assaulted little girls to enjoy fame, recognition or an honored place in history.”

 

[Avril]

How can the Academy expel HW and then not do the same to RP? It’s disgusting how the film industry has minimised the abuse of those poor children

 

[Singra]

I think they’re trying to sort out rules at the moment... Polanski will surely go, he’s too toxic and the Academy is too damaged for it not to happen.

I saw a leaked memo from the Academy... think the issue is how it sets a precedent and how different cases will be handled is what they’re trying to work out. Polanski is an obvious case but there are others that are more of a grey area.

 

[cdtracing]

If the Academy is going to so quickly expel Weinstein, they cannot allow Polanski to remain. While evidence against Weinstein continues to pile up, he has not been convicted in a court of law yet. Polanski is a convicted child rapist. The Academy cannot pick & choose which rapists to keep & which to kick out. If they do not revoke Polanski's membership, they lose all credibility. The Academy has looked the other way on dirty little secrets of many of it's members for years. It needs to take a long hard look at some of it's members & clean house!