Officer Dibble

Phil Spectre also has a similar tale of woe but hes still a criminal.

Autonomy

for the record - I think the whole this is a total mess from start to finish and apart from Polanski, it's the original judge that is the reason for this mess.

Yes he did the crime and confessed to it and should have been sentenced - he was and did the thing he was required to do. The judge reneged. He fled.

Now 30 years on, with the original victim not wishing the case to go forward... it is a circus.

Autonomy

you miss my point, it was not using this as an excuse - i think it was out of order to compare Nazi crimes with Polanski due to what happened to him.

I did not say this is a reason he should not go to jail.

king kong

a crime is a crime , he banged a 13 year old and he was how old ,ermm 40 something . He hasnt paid yet ,so nows his turn to pay .
The reference to the nazis wasnt really a refence to the degree of severity of the crime but more the length of time before these bastards are caught . This was wrong on my part , but i do believe people should pay regardless of the time frame .

Officer Dibble

Im not missing the point but on the basis that people have suffered under circumstances you may think they would have an expectation of justice...even against themselves. Tough titties....

Norm_uk

Torture comes to mind as does rape.

Even the woman who was 13 at the time has asked repeatedly for the charges to be dropped...if the law is there to protect I think her wishes should be paramount not some do gooders who like to get upset on other people's behalf.

In some countries 13 is the age of consent anyway...I know when I was 13 I was hardly innocent or incapable of having consensual sex. I think Polanski's a dirty old bugger for what he did but as mentioned the victim's feelings must come first-that is the point of justice.

Fine him or something...then give the money to rape crisis charities and teenage sex education - lot more constructive than getting Uncle Sam to pay for his incarceration.

N.

MataHari

at 13 I imagine you'd get your first kiss, a bit of fumbling in the bike shed with the boy from the year above who you have sort of fancied for a while...and maybe after all that who knows, things move on...that is the 'normal' way to start having sexual experiences...
I won't call being drugged by a 40 year old 'dirty bugger' and then being taken every which way he could think of 'consensual' sex, but maybe I am a bit prudish...
And yes, it's nice that she has forgiven him and has been able to move on with her life and not got stuck in victim mode...but that doesn't make it less of a crime or does it...or is it only a crime when the victim suffers for lets say 5 years, 10 years or what...

The Dean

Those who are protesting against his arrest (who now include Woody Allen, I notice ) are, in my view, not simply campaigning for the guy to be released - they are pissed off that Switzerland, the mother country of neutrality, should cooperate so blatantly with the Great Satan (ie America).

benzonar

Well Woody Allen has been known to sleep with a girl young enough to be his daughter.........wait a minute....she was his daughter (I know she was adopted)

MacScot

I always saw Switzerland as country of cowardice...the Swiss knew what Nazi Germany was doing in Europe but chose to sit on the fence...they must have known the difference between right and wrong. Switzerland was pretty impregnable but by joining the allies, it could have held up thousands of German troops and aircraft.

spart

Yes - they were well aware of the Sho'ah, and were the bankers of the Third Reich. Blood on their hands and blood on their conscience...

The Dean

........ and it was Swiss Red Cross representatives who visited the concentration camps and called them "... hard but correct..." (John Simpson's autobiog has some eye-opening stuff on this).

MacScot

Hadn't heard of Sho'ah before, which appears to be a now preferred alternative to the Holocaust. However, these terms tend to be associated with the murder of Jews only, with disregard for others who suffered. Mass murder or genocide is probably a more apt term as it is inclusive of all groups that were persecuted by the Nazi regime.

Simon Wiesenthal made this exact point to New York Jewish group (don't know their correct name) he visited after the war and who wanted him to unearth ex-Nazis who were responsible for murdering Jews only. Simon Wiesenthal said NO to that request and that he and his organisation would seek out Nazis who murdered ANY individuals of the groups persecuted (which included gypsies, communists, mentally challenged, homosexuals, Jehovahs Witnesses etc).)

Norm_uk

I was doing more than kissing when I was 13 but then again the girls I was with were either the same age and older...

I'm not aware of the details of what he actually did to sleep with the 13 year old girl, if it was indeed drugging and raping or something less forceful (as I mentioned the age of consent in some countries is 9 - Spain is 12 or 13 if I recall, a number of EU states have 13 or 14 as the age of consent, so it's a huge grey area). If he raped her I would be inclined to support his trial even now after so many years because rape is disgusting - but if not I do feel the victim herself has a say in the matter and she wants it dropped and wants to put it behind her...however it would seem he didn't show up for a court hearing and so I can see why they are still after him. This would probably have been dealt with and finished years ago if he hadn't have done a runner.

N.

The Dean

He got her drunk at Jack Nicholson's house.... then forced himself upon her.

Castration anyone? He'd probably (even in his advanced years) do it again given the chance.