I agree with you: We don’t have a stake in this really, don’t have any idea of the specific relationships between the players. Detachment is a reasonable position to be in.

And sure: It’s reasonably straightforward that according to the law, Polanski should go back to the U.S. and that it is practical in this sense. (But note how ready the public can be to reject other country’s legal systems: Like the treatment of Australian drug runners in Asia. Also, Switzerland is not legally obliged to handover Polanski so even the notion that sending Polanski to the U.S. is a legal imperative is up for question: Who’s law? Who’s jurisdiction?)

My issue is that people have turned this into a moral issue at all. It’s really people’s moral certainty I am concerned about; their outrage. Where the law is certain, I feel that commentators could benefit from moral uncertainty.

I basically can’t see the point of taking a moral stance on the case at all, or of injecting one’s personal, emotional feelings about the matter into discussions of it (these amount to basically the same thing). I look on the media frenzy surrounding the case with something approaching bemusement.

It seems to me that, given the lives of the two principle individuals since the crime, and the stated feelings of the victim, the issue of the rape itself is largely irrelevant, which is to say that the crime itself is no longer the problem. And so discussions of the morality of rape, victimhood, suffering, and rehabilitation, are moot.

The problem is that Polanski fled.

It just seems practical that, given the demands of society and the law, it should not be permissible for the perpetrator of a crime to flee from justice, most especially when the facts of the crime are not in question. I hold no opinion on what punishment Polanski should receive for his crimes, whether now or back in the 70s, just that it was wrong for him to jump bail, and it is that wrong that presently needs addressing.

As Jessie has suggested, the ability of a state to apprehend and punish criminals is essential to operations of society. While acknowledging the extremely important points Brad makes about a humanistic approach, and the inflexibility of the law, I think it is right, or perhaps merely acceptable, that the practical should outweigh the ideal in such matters.

Thus, while I don’t find myself with a personal stake in the case, or with much of a clear emotional reaction either way, it seems evident to me that the arrest and pending extradition of Polanski is eminently justifiable, and I’m not sure why anyone would bother to claim otherwise.

Also Brad, that last paragraph on genre and the law is pretty great (even if I do still think you have Inglourious Basterds all wrong).

Geimer was particularly upset when prosecutors filed a fresh version of the entire 1977 grand jury transcript, replete with all the lurid details. “True as they may be, the continued publication of those details cause harm to me,” she wrote in January. “I have become a victim of the actions of the district attorney.”

She said she was happy when he left the country because his departure eased the intense public scrutiny.

“Looking back, there can be no question that he did something awful. It was a terrible thing to do to a young girl,” she wrote in her Los Angeles Times piece. “And honestly, the publicity surrounding it was so traumatic that what he did to me seemed to pale in comparison.”

She continued,”People don’t understand that the judge went back on his word. They don’t know how unfairly we were all treated by the press. Talk about feeling violated! The media made that year a living hell and I’ve been trying to put it behind me ever since.”

In terms of the victim- the very fact that the victim has stated that she has moved on and doesn’t see the need to imprison Polanski says to me that this is purely a legal process that is being followed to it’s conclusion. Her problem with the process has been that the huge media focus on the case means she has constantly been subjected at various points through her life to reliving the event, had to endure slanderous insinuations about herself and her mother (that she was a precocious slut, and that her mother was basically pimping her out- an allegation that was again repeated in defence of Polanski recently) and has had to live in the public spotlight, when she would prefer not to. This would seem to me to be a problem with the media and with society, rather than the law itself. As Maggie pointed out, the fact that Polanski fled in the first place has also made this a drawn out process for her. The fact that she has avowedly moved on and forgiven is only testament to her resilience, and not a moral reflection on Polanski.

And yes, my argument extends to our moral judgement of all crime. I have no problem with that.

And you still haven’t acknowledged the specific victim in this case and her needs. I think people who call for Polanski’s imprisonment should at least grapple with how much her needs are in issue but they seem to be whitewashed.

Polanski is not an exception to a rule. He is a specific situation like every other circumstance is a specific situation that should be treated as such.

I am quite naïve to the law and the dynamics therein. I certainly hadn’t thought of my attitude to vengeance for rape as a ‘buying off’ of rape and it is something to consider for sure. But now, I am also trying to think through the relationship the ‘general public’ (whatever that means) has with the law, especially when they respond to a case like this with such morally charged fervour.

No doubt, the courts and media at the time of this case beat up the publicity for all it’s worth because of Polanski’s high public profile. It became all about Middle America versus the elite of Hollywood. Earlier on, you were saying that the media and public at large had a role in the continued rape of the victim, despite her wishes that everyone would just shut up about it. But I think it’s a bit idealistic and unrealistic to expect everyone in the public sphere to just to stop talking about it in order to respect the victim’s wishes; rape happened to her, but rape is much bigger than her. It happens to millions of boys, girls, men and women everywhere, and that is why this case touches a raw nerve.

What I am trying to get at is how exactly is the public sphere related to the law and is it really implicated in the awfulness and destruction of trials that catch public attention? Does my opinion that Polanski is ultimately responsible for his actions and that he should repent in some dramatic way really make a difference to the way the law functions?

I don’t think it does, actually. It might if I found myself entwined in a real-life case of this nature, but as a spectator with a (somewhat perverse and morally charged) right to comment, it really doesn’t relate to the law directly at all. On a really base level, Polanski inspires anger in me. My opinion and my feeling is mixed up with hypothetical questions about whether Polanski has repented; I am thinking of him as a man who has raped and who does not appear to be sorry for it in the ‘crime and punishment’ theatre of it all. Having been part of this debate, I now want to know how his part in this public theatre has played out in his creative work. It’s something I might look into myself, trying to keep an open mind with all these factors in play.

I mean, I’m not saying that your argument is inherently wrong, or that the current system is right- I’m just saying: it’s all a bit bloody arbitrary. To make an exception for Polanski (for Polanski!) would make no real sense to me. I don’t see this as a searing example of injustice to rape victims.

The rape victim in this place is not hypothetical. She is a real person. You are prioritising legal needs over human needs.

Once again I need to make clear that this article is not just about Polanski: It’s about how we let our morals be defined by legal/religious institutions.

Just because it is an old case, just because the victim doesn’t particularly want it, just because the legal system fucked him the first time- the fact remains, he evaded punishment. The only punishment currently available is imperfect- but so is our response to murder, to theft, to most things. Most of the legal system is pretty imperfect, being as it is, predicated on the idea of jail being a good place to rehabilitate.

However, the only tool currently available to us to communicate to future and past vitims of rape that their rights, freedom and safety are valued by society is to put their rapists in jail. This is what it culturally means to put someone in jail for rape: it means we give a shit in the first place that they were raped. I think when you let a man like Polanski “get away” with it – what you are saying as a society is that we won’t protect women and children.

So I don’t believe jail rehabilitates, I don’t believe it deters in most cases, but if this is the only good reason to put someone in jail, ever, for anything – I think it’s still a pretty fucking compelling one.

Until the legal system changes to reflect a greater moral complexity this is the only avenue open to us. Arguments like yours surely could contribute to change, but I believe all this energy and passion in aid of a shitty little misogynist like Polanski is energy misspent, Brad. You should go and volunteer in a women’s shelter if you want to get a real feminist perspective on rape and the law.

I’ve thought a bit about the “repentance” aspect too. Repentance is important for a number of reasons: (1) Repentance may be a sign that Polanski is no longer a threat to society. But we no longer need that sign. (Of note is that Polanski undertook psychological testing in prison and was released after 42 days.) (2) The victim may need repentance to attain the closure she needs for rehabilitation. Again, in this situation, the victim has forgiven Polanski. She has made remarks about how the justice system treated them both unfairly.
Failing those reasons, jailing Polanski for lack of repentance is to jail someone for having bad thoughts and I don’t see how this is “justice”.

I’m not interested in discussing Polanski’s films post-1977 because I feel like doing so is going down the path of accepting that Polanski’s art could somehow exonerate his actions. (I don’t think that anything could exonerate Polanski. That’s why I don’t feel like demanding a specific punishment. All I can demand is that people be allowed to be happy.)

Why does Polanski need to be “properly punished for the sake of the wider society”? I am still interested in hearing your thoughts on balancing these wider society needs against respecting the agency of the victim.