BishopAccountability.org
	Justice Denied Ottawa Citizen July 15, 2010 http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Justice+denied/3279609/story.html The international wave of forgiveness that washes over Roman Polanski, film director and sexual predator, raises an intriguing question: What if Polanski had been a Roman Catholic priest? Not so many years ago, pedophile priests, too, were spared from imprisonment, and even from going to trial, because a powerful, well-connected group of elites watched over them -- not the cultural elite, who have been advocating for Polanski, but the church elite, who once wielded substantial social influence. Priestly abusers would undergo a period of mock-repentance and rehabilitation, but in the end they often went on to other parishes and other victims. Thankfully, that has now changed. Consider this week's news that an 80-year-old Ottawa priest, Rev. William Joseph Allen, has been charged with several accounts of indecent assault on two teenaged boys. The suspected crimes go back 40 years but Allen will still have to answer for them. Significantly, church officials themselves approached police and it was church officials who publicly announced the charges. After years of criticism, the church today, or at least some important members of it, finally recognize that sexual assault isn't a forgive-and-forget matter. That, indeed, seems to be the social consensus. Except when it applies to entertainment celebrities like Polanski. On the same day that the charges against Allen were announced in Ottawa, a Swiss court turned down a request from the United States to extradite Polanski, who is wanted on a 1978 warrant issued after the movie director fled the country to escape a jail sentence for having sex with a minor. Polanski is now free to live and travel anywhere in Switzerland, or in France or Poland, where he holds dual citizenship. His home is France, where he has enjoyed a life of undeserved freedom for 30 years. This is a man who invited a 13-year-old girl to a friend's house with no one else present, persuaded her to drink several glasses of champagne, followed by the tranquilizer Quaalude, and forced her to have sex with him. He had promised to take publicity pictures of her and help her get started in the film business. As a case study in the abuse of power to exploit a child, it is very close to the modus operandi of pedophile priests. Yet the artistic and intellectual establishment in France, and the darlings of Hollywood, have rallied around Polanski, something they would never do for a priest. Polanski's defenders are often associated with a constituency that detests conservative institutions like the Roman Catholic Church, yet they are invoking some of the same arguments that the church once did -- that Polanski's sins were committed a long time ago, or that Polanski is a good and talented man whose life's work should earn him special status. Victims of sexual abuse deserve justice, no matter how rich, famous or well-connected the offender is. The Polanski case confirms the eternal truth that justice, sadly, is not blind. Even custody wasn't so bad; the Swiss let Polanski stay in his $4.5-million chalet, as house arrest. Chinatown was a great film. Artists are unique and deserve to be celebrated. But Polanski, the aging high priest of film noir, does not deserve special dispensation any more than the usual types of aging priests whose victims catch up with them sooner or later.
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