Roman Polanski Mugshot (Wikipedia)
Samantha Geimer, the woman who Roman Polanski raped in 1977 when she was just 13 years old, is speaking out in the Oscar winning director’s defense. Roman Polanski admitted the rape, which came after he plied the girl with alcohol during a private photo session when he took pictures of her.
Geimer was interviewed by none other than Roman Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner in the French magazine Le Point.
“Let me be very clear: what happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me,” Geimer told Seigner. “I didn’t even know it was illegal, that someone could be arrested for it. I was fine, I’m still fine. The fact that we’ve made this a big deal weighs on me terribly. To have to constantly repeat that it wasn’t a big deal, it’s a terrible burden.”
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Geimer also explained that for her sleeping with an adult man was no big deal because it was something people just did back then. “I remember the time when I was starting to work,” she said. “I became a model at 14 years old. All the girls, the models, slept with the photographers and I was no exception. But sex was something normal, a natural aspect of life. There wasn’t all this drama, all this darkness surrounding sex.”
Roman Polanski, a Polish/French Holocaust survivor, is known for his many relationships with younger women. He was 44 when he raped the 13 year old Geimer. Polanski was ten years older than his second wife, the actress Sharon Tate who was murdered by the Mansons. In 1989 he married the actress Emmanuelle Seigner, who is 30 years his junior.
Roman Polanski fled to France in 1978 after he heard a judge planned to void his plea deal for the rape and would sentence him to hard time. Polanski has not returned to the United States since then, but was still able to win an Oscar for best director in 2013 for the movie “The Pianist.”
