Dilemmas and Circumstances

Well, that was an unexpected turn of events, was it not? After having successfully evaded the social covenant of justice imposed for a cruelly mindless act of lust, Roman Polanski has been detained by the Swiss justice system. At the polite request of the Los Angeles Justice Department. And while his friends and colleagues twist their hands in anguish over the unfairness of it all, the utter duplicity of Swiss authorities, they have ample support from official France and Poland.

The man is now 76 years of age, just drop the sloppy mess and do everyone a favour. He is, after all, a brilliant film director, has gifted the world with thoughtfully analytical cinematic treatises on the nature of humankind. And he has, undeniably, suffered greatly throughout his life, from the time he was a child and escaped the tentacles of Nazi determination to annihilate every Jew that came into their deadly clutches, to the horrible dispatch of his pregnant Hollywood wife.

He experienced tragedy that might unhinge any sane person's mental capacity. Of course this was not exactly the case, with Roman Polanski. He was possessed of a steely character, he was a true survivor, not unlike so many other Jews of his generation, who forced themselves to cope, to have hope and to survive. But then he truly disgraced himself; it is not as though there is any doubt on that score. He undertook to avail himself of forbidden fruit. Any deviant can explain to themselves why they might embark on such a journey.

Curiosity, of the idlest sort, perhaps. What it might feel like to exploit and violate a child. Having experienced so many other types of human injustices personally, perhaps he might have felt in a dark recess of his mind that he was entitled to experience what it would feel like to be a predator and expose a child to a grown man's lust. That child was given alcohol and drugs to prepare her for that experience. Children are fairly trusting, and it wouldn't be all that difficult to dazzle a young girl through the excitement of the attention of an urbane man of the world.

His defence? Claiming that the girl was sexually experienced. At the age of 45 he did not alert himself to the simple fact that he was undertaking a personal mission of molesting a child many times his junior; at half the age he was then, it would have been disgustingly inappropriate. What might he have been thinking? Well, not an awful lot, obviously, other than what an interesting experience plucking this low-growing temptation might be.

It is generous of his former victim to express her wish that he no longer be pursued.

But nothing alters the fact of his having raped her and sodomized her when she was a child. And no one but this child knows how agonized she was, how her life, during her maturing years, was affected, the unhappy memories she yet has. It is highly likely he will never see the inside of a California prison system. There will be sufficient outcry to ensure that the notoriety so recently re-awakened, casting a dark cloud over this otherwise-gifted man will be the final outcome.

There are some crimes against humanity, however, that simply are not forgivable.