By Dominic Lawson
April 23, 2010
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/debate/article-1268175/Why-unashamed-child-abuser-Polanski-lauded-repentant-Pope-vilified.html
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| Being held: Roman Polanski is under house arrest in Switzerland for his crimes against Samantha Geimer, whom he pled guilty to raping in 1977 | >
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Last weekend I went to see a new film by a child-abuser. Very good it was, too. Roman Polanski's The Ghost shows no diminution in the artistic powers of one of cinema's most enduring talents: I understand why reviewers have been unstinting in their praise.
Yet Polanski has not been doing the usual TV interviews that accompany critical acclaim. He is under house arrest in his Swiss chalet, fighting the attempts of a Californian court to extradite him for the sexual abuse of a 13-year- old girl, Samantha Geimer, in 1977.
The world of film, indeed, of art in general, regards this (Polanski's arrest, not his abuse of a 13-year-old girl) as a scandal. This was clearly evident when Hollywood actress Whoopi Goldberg last year defended him with the observation: 'I know it wasn't rape-rape.'
With this remarkable neologism, Goldberg gave a new gloss to the old line (usually uttered by men) of 'she said no, but she meant yes'.
Yesterday, it emerged that Nicolas Sarkozy - perhaps under the influence of his avant garde wife Carla Bruni - handdelivered a letter from the film director to Barack Obama, pleading that Polanski should be spared jail.
Geimer's testimony to the grand jury of the Los Angeles Supreme Court therefore bears repetition. She told the court how the then 44-year-old plied her with the drug Quaalude mixed with champagne at the home of actor Jack Nicholson and, ignoring her befuddled requests that she wanted to 'go home', began to molest her.
Polanski, much less befuddled, asked her if she was on the Pill; not satisfied with the clarity of her response, he sodomised her.
Geimer told the court that she had not resisted more strongly because she 'was afraid of him'; but not so scared that she obeyed his demand that she not tell her mother about 'our little secret'.
The rest is more common knowledge: Polanski, aided by some excellent lawyers, bargained a plea of guilty to the lowest possible charge, of 'sex with a minor', but then fled the U.S. on the eve of his sentencing and has been, as the Americans would put it, 'a fugitive from justice' ever since.
As I say, the 'enlightened' view - at least in this country and even more so in Polanski's adopted nation of France - is that this was a long time ago and that the great auteur has suffered enough, if only in not being able to go to Hollywood to pick up any of his awards.
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| Under fire: Pope Benedict XVI has apologised for the behaviour of some members of his church |
Pope Benedict XVI, by contrast - without such creative achievements as the films Rosemary's Baby or Chinatown to adorn his CV - does not enjoy similar indulgence
So, the atheist Richard Dawkins has called for the head of the world's one billion or so Catholics to be arrested for complicity in the covering up of child abuse when he arrives in Britain for a state visit in September.
Professor Dawkins wrote in The Washington Post last week that 'this former head of the Inquisition should be arrested the moment he dares set foot outside the tinpot fiefdom of the Vatican and he should be tried in an appropriate civil court'. For good measure, he declared the Catholic Church to be a 'child-raping institution'.
I had always imagined that it was people who raped children, rather than organisations, but perhaps Prof Dawkins is not so much interested in bringing men to book for their abuse of children, as he is the Catholic Church for the opinions it propagates.
In fact this was made clear - Dawkins is at all times wonderfully lucid - in his book The God Delusion, published in 2006.
He wrote then that 'we live in a time of hysteria about paedophilia, a mob psychology that calls to mind the Salem witchhunts of 1692'.
Dawkins went on: 'The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of such retrospective opprobrium ... I dislike the Catholic Church, but I dislike unfairness even more. I can't help wondering whether this institution has been unfairly demonised over this issue, especially in Ireland and America.'
It seems that the Pope himself - admittedly four years after Dawkins wrote those words - takes a much less tolerant view of what went on in Ireland.
Last month he issued a 'pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland' in which he said: '[I share] in the dismay and sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts [of abuse of children by priests] and the way the Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them. You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry.
'I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Many of you found that when you were courageous enough to speak of what had happened to you, no one would listen.'
Now, I may have missed something, but I don't recall Roman Polanski offering any sort of apology to the person he actually abused, although he did agree, in 1993, to pay Ms Geimer $500,000, presumably on the understanding that she would cease to be a hostile witness.
The point is, I suspect, that whereas the Pope does understand that great wickedness has been perpetrated systematically by individuals within the Catholic priesthood, Polanski genuinely regards his conduct as blameless. He sees himself, not the 13-year-old girl he sodomised, as the victim.
Polanski, it might be said in his defence, is not a hypocrite. He never pretended to be a maintainer of any moral order.
This is why the behaviour of priests who abused children in their care, and any subsequent cover-up by the bishops, revolts us.
They claimed to embody the spiritual authority of Christ, who declared: 'Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.' Yet, there is also a similarity between Polanski's behaviour and that of the sexually predatory priest. In both cases the abuser was in a position of power.
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| Defender: Whoopi Goldberg claims Polanski's crime 'wasn't rape-rape' |
That is much more obvious in the case of the clergy: especially in a country such as Ireland, where the constitution of the Republic gave them 'special' authority.
They had absolute power, which was not just (as the Victorian moralist Lord Acton observed) corrupting, but which also intimidated their victims into acquiescence.
Similarly, the world famous film director fully understood the power he had over a 13-year-old would-be starlet, whose pictures he had promised to take for a future edition of French Vogue.
It is almost the oldest story in Hollywood, but none the less disgusting for it.
The defence of 'she wanted it, really' would not impress the cultural world if the proposer were a man without artistic pedigree.
Just as it was outrageous for the Catholic Church to put the reputation of its priesthood ahead of the sufferings of children, so those who put their faith in artists should realise that they too have no special claim to be beyond good and evil.
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