Roman Polanski and the Politics of Remembering

Polanski should not only be punished for the rape but for his escape from justice. He was able to sodomize a 13 year old girl because he was in a position of power. He escaped justice after his guilty plea because of his wealth and connections. The question is: Are the rich and well connected above the law? Give him time served for the rape. Put him in prison for fleeing justice.

The article is not primarily focused on Polanski and what should be done about him per se; but about the question of violence and trauma as a potentially (but not inevitably) spiralling cause of more violence and trauma. No one here is disputing that he did a terrible thing, and that he should be subject to the rigors of the law; and that if justice will be served, should go to prison. But what I was hoping to encourage is a conversation about how we might deal better with questions of trauma without justifying the harm done when a traumatised person hurts another person; and how to respond to the sexualisation of our culture while avoiding the negative consequences of psychological repression, among other things.

That was the heart of Christianity. Thank you NMRod. The point of law is to transcend the law and change the heart. Gareth's article was a very humane and balanced introduction to the topic. I found myself most moved by the young woman's willingness to forgive and see Polanski move on.

This issue is very difficult and is being played out on large and small scales all over the world. It is hard to sympathize over the crimes of remorseless killers like OJ Simpson , George Bush, Dick Cheney, Pinochet, the Mgovernment of Myanmar etc. There must be a court process, an accounting. We have a powerful new model in the the kind of truth and reconciliation hearings in South Africa, or Rwanda, but there is a drawback if it allows the continuation of apartheid in Israel or government violence in Tukmenistan or Honduras. I have no answers. But it is too simple to say Polanski's experience of violation and trauma does not"justify" his behavior. That is really not the point. The point is that violence and abuse inevitably and documentably produces a trauma that is very likely to manifest in similar behavior. Iraq soldiers have significantly higher rates of murder, drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, etc. We have to find ways to break this cycle. Revenge is not the answer. Should a million Americans die as payback for the killing in Iraq? What did Vietnam do to America? Where will the healing angels come from if not our own hearts, our own prayers, the place where we hear and agree with the one who says Father forgive them, They know not what they do? Let truth kiss mercy; let mercy kiss truth.

Polanski should not only be punished for the rape but for his escape from justice. He was able to sodomize a 13 year old girl because he was in a position of power. He escaped justice after his guilty plea because of his wealth and connections. The question is: Are the rich and well connected above the law? Give him time served for the rape. Put him in prison for fleeing justice.

You touch on an issue that screams for public attention, albeit not necessarily in the Polanski case: the self-righteousness that has come to define us today. We are quick to judge, demonize and condemn "the other guy," and it's pretty evident by now that we do it to avoid having attention drawn to our own ugliness. One would be hard-pressed to remember the list of just who the Good American is supposed to hate, and this is made all the more difficult by the fact that the degree of contempt often doesn't fit the "crime."

And we do go to some wild extremes to "justify" our embrace of things that directly contradict our faith, etc. Consider, for example, our hate for our own poor. Before AFDC was ended, we insisted that these people were living in near-luxury on excessively high benefits -- in spite of the fact that these benefits remained well below the poverty line (with the exception of a brief period in the 1970s). That's crazy, but that's what we did to "justify" embracing policies that contradict what Christ taught us. And we can still go into church each week to sing about peace while enthusiastically supporting war. We still call ourselves "peacemakers," even though we have remained in an almost constant state of war since WWll! Well, you get the idea. We are so self-righteous that, although we deliberately reject the central teachings of every religion, we devote a lot of time to crowing about how superior we are, what wonderful. fair, just, compassionate and decent people we are.

I'd encourage further examination of our cultural self-righteousness, but I have no doubt that the very idea of acknowledging this aspect of our country, culture, society would inspire terrible outbursts of self-righteousness.

You touch on an issue that screams for public attention, albeit not necessarily in the Polanski case: the self-righteousness that has come to define us today. We are quick to judge, demonize and condemn "the other guy," and it's pretty evident by now that we do it to avoid having attention drawn to our own ugliness. One would be hard-pressed to remember the list of just who the Good American is supposed to hate, and this is made all the more difficult by the fact that the degree of contempt often doesn't fit the "crime."

And we do go to some wild extremes to "justify" our embrace of things that directly contradict our faith, etc. Consider, for example, our hate for our own poor. Before AFDC was ended, we insisted that these people were living in near-luxury on excessively high benefits -- in spite of the fact that these benefits remained well below the poverty line (with the exception of a brief period in the 1970s). That's crazy, but that's what we did to "justify" embracing policies that contradict what Christ taught us. And we can still go into church each week to sing about peace while enthusiastically supporting war. We still call ourselves "peacemakers," even though we have remained in an almost constant state of war since WWll! Well, you get the idea. We are so self-righteous that, although we deliberately reject the central teachings of every religion, we devote a lot of time to crowing about how superior we are, what wonderful. fair, just, compassionate and decent people we are.

I'd encourage further examination of our cultural self-righteousness, but I have no doubt that the very idea of acknowledging this aspect of our country, culture, society would inspire terrible outbursts of self-righteousness.

Strange response. Obviously the meaning of words change with common usage. To apply your standard of word meaning would make communication virtually impossible. People know the word "sodomy" to mean anal sex, which you obviously know. Polanski sodomized this girl after he discovered she was not on the "pill". But hey, if a vocab. lesson is the most important thing you take from this lesson then . . .

I wonder how many girls he raped before this one and how many he raped since.

"Thank you for the article discussing an issue that is hardly ever covered by Christian publications and that is sexual abuse and rape. We can talk about sex and gay marriage but we don't want to discuss the violation of sexual abuse which does occur in the church. "

Thanks! I once read the blather of a so-called "evangelical Christian" minister who ranted loudly about any sort of gay relationships, even by loving consenting adults in long-term bondings. However, at the same time, this person was defending the "marriage" of a 12 year-old girl with a 40-year old man. In this person's mind, child rape is perfectly OK as long as the rapist has "married" the victim.

And I don't see a whole lot about child rape/child sexual abuse on religious-right sites. I'm on the email list of the American Family Association. I get their emails every day. And just about everyday, they go on about homosexuality and gay marriage. Never once have I ever seen these people condemn child rape. Not a word about Roman Polanski and the crime that he committed.

Jesus said (Matthew 23):

Matthew 23

27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. 28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

The woman who was that 13 year old girl whom Roman Polanski raped has forgiven him and she doesn't want him to be brought back to the USA for a trial.

Strange response. Obviously the meaning of words change with common usage. To apply your standard of word meaning would make communication virtually impossible. People know the word "sodomy" to mean anal sex, which you obviously know. Polanski sodomized this girl after he discovered she was not on the "pill". But hey, if a vocab. lesson is the most important thing you take from this lesson then . . .

I wonder how many girls he raped before this one and how many he raped since.

Comments here caused me to think about the offer of one of Chuck Colson's prayer partners to take his place in prison. I could not recall who it was--so read an excerpt from book on Google Books by Jonathan Aitken (Charles W Colson: A Life Redeemed). The person was Al Quie who was a US Rep from MN (former Governor). It was very interesting to read of his conversion as he struggled to come to grips with the charges against him; how he examined his own life; the place of his prayer partners (that included Harold Hughes--liberal democrat, ex-truck-drivin'-drunk from Iowa who had hated Colson). He believed he was innocent of all charges. But through the journey he believed he was guilty of things he was not charged with. So they basically concocted a charge he could plead guilty to. But it really tackles this whole thing, not from the angle of the stance society ought take towards offenders--but how it looked and worked from his side as he was just struggling to understand and come to terms with the Gospel.

One touching incident was while he was imprisoned in Alabama he tried to take advice to not become involved with other inmate's legal issues. He finally broke and agreed to review an older inmate's letter to parole board. The inmate worked on it for days--and when he returned it to Colson it was just a half page of scribbles. The man was illiterate. He had never been able to even submit a letter to parole board.

What touches me, is simply Colson's willingness to allow incidents like this to alter his course; and for the Lord to redeem and heal.

From what I've read from what she has said, she doesn't want the entire nightmare that she endured brought up again by a public trial. This is common with victims/survivors of sexual trauma. Many times, it is the victim/survivor who gets put on trial by high-powered defense attorneys hired by wealthy defendants. That doesn't make Polanski's crime any less heinous.

As for forgiveness: in order for true forgiveness to happen, there must be repentence by the one who commited the wrong. Without repentence, there can be can be a "letting go" by the one who was wronged -- but no true forgiveness.

Has Polanski owned up to his crime? Has he repented? I haven't seen it so far.

You touch on an issue that screams for public attention, albeit not necessarily in the Polanski case: the self-righteousness that has come to define us today. We are quick to judge, demonize and condemn "the other guy," and it's pretty evident by now that we do it to avoid having attention drawn to our own ugliness. One would be hard-pressed to remember the list of just who the Good American is supposed to hate, and this is made all the more difficult by the fact that the degree of contempt often doesn't fit the "crime."

And we do go to some wild extremes to "justify" our embrace of things that directly contradict our faith, etc. Consider, for example, our hate for our own poor. Before AFDC was ended, we insisted that these people were living in near-luxury on excessively high benefits -- in spite of the fact that these benefits remained well below the poverty line (with the exception of a brief period in the 1970s). That's crazy, but that's what we did to "justify" embracing policies that contradict what Christ taught us. And we can still go into church each week to sing about peace while enthusiastically supporting war. We still call ourselves "peacemakers," even though we have remained in an almost constant state of war since WWll! Well, you get the idea. We are so self-righteous that, although we deliberately reject the central teachings of every religion, we devote a lot of time to crowing about how superior we are, what wonderful. fair, just, compassionate and decent people we are.

I'd encourage further examination of our cultural self-righteousness, but I have no doubt that the very idea of acknowledging this aspect of our country, culture, society would inspire terrible outbursts of self-righteousness.

You're correct in saying that Polanski already pleaded guilty to a lesser charge than the one originally put to him - apologies if my article implied otherwise. But I can't emphasise enough that my original article was not specifically about Polanski, but about the context in which abuse occurs and how to challenge the ways in which our culture does not tend to promote healing.

Gareth,

Perhaps I am wrong on the details, but Roman Polanski plead guilty to the charges of rape. He is being extradited to serve time for his guilty plea and face additional charges for his flight - not to face charges as to whether or not he raped the 13 year old girl. He's already plead guilty to that.

I understand your point is larger than that, and our conclusions are going to be far different. However, whenever making a point, I think it is critical to be aware of correct facts. It tends to reduce the suspicions that that your end goals are what you claim they are.

The fact is that this man committed rape against a chile. It doesn't matter if he's some sort of "sensitive artist" or "award-winning" director or whatever. He is a rapist, pure and simple and needts to receive the justice that any rapist deserves.

One of Jesus' important messages concerning chidlren and the treatment of them:

Matthew chapter 18: "5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. 6 But 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."

In case it wasn't clear in my original post: I think Roman Polanski's extradition case should be heard according to the full rigor of the law. I just want to see a conversation about the difference between retribution and restoration, and between vengeance and appropriate punishment.

I also think that our culture needs to have a more mature conversation about trauma, perhaps mostly because engaging with the trauma that might have contributed to a terrible act (like that which Polanski has admitted to) might actually reduce the potential for such acts to occur in the future. And I certainly don't think that a person's artistic achievements should be used as a means of mitigating the suffering they may have caused.

As a teen living on the streets of Los Angeles, concurrent with the Manson to Chinatown era, I was the victim of rape three separate times.

None of the rapists were ever charged or punished.

Were I able to make the choice to pursue them via our dysfunctional legal system, I would not do so.

In the intervening years and practical experience of my life, to do so would without any doubt be contrary to what I believe real justice entails - and I have seen plenty of what happens when it does and does not.

Our justice system isn't either corrective or restorative - it has come to be characterized mostly, like other areas of our national life, by a belief in revenge, domination and violence.

In some places, even the death penalty is seen as appropriate by some for such offenses. However, my life was not taken, so even under a non-Christian "eye-for-an-eye" legalistic morality, such would be inappropriate as would be the living death equivalent of long or lifetime imprisonment.

Our legal system does not restore sinners, only offer endless condemnation, even should people be released from their sentences, or even if they have repented and reformed. Our nation, sad to say, is among the most unforgiving of nations, with 25% of the world's prison population, but only 4% of its population - and this does not even attempt follow God's model of reconciliation and restoration.

I would counsel everyone to think what the Amish response to the violence of the murder of their schoolchildren in Pennsylvania in the Fall of 2006 entailed and how its practical qualities of response to evil suffered at the hands of our fellow human beings model what Jesus commanded us, responding with doing good to those who do evil rather than responding in kind and compounding the problem that afflicts us all so severely in this country - and is not working.

I note that my position is mirrored by Roman Polanski's rape victim as well.

What should happen if Polanski is brought back to our city of lost angels? Roman, in the courtroom, should admit his culpability and ask forgiveness, explain his own torment, his long-ago victim should accept and offer him her forgiveness, they should embrace and the prosecutor, instead of hungering for celebrity and career advancement possibilities, should withdraw all charges as not in the public interest.

Interestingly, this is just what happened in a meeting between KGB tormentors and unjustly imprisoned dissident victims in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union - reconciliation and mutual tears.

Miracles can happen - they must happen, or we have no hope.

I can actaully muster up a bit -- just a bit -- of sympathy for Polanski. As a holocaust survivor and a man who had lost his wife in one of the most notorious murders of recent memory, the scars must have been deep and still raw.

But his crime was abominable and from what I've been able to gather it reeked of premeditation. This was not a decent man overcome by anguish and losing his moral bearings for a few minutes or even hours. This was a monstrous wrong on its own.

I think the key here is the distinction between mitigation and justification. Polanski's tortured past mitigates things, but does not justify his actions. If he had been given a relatively short sentence it would have been entirely understandable, but he should have been punished.

He's had his years of freedom. I doubt he's much of a threat to others or that he'll be much of an escape threat, so he won't require maximum security treatment, but he should definitely go to prison for what he did.

LV

The fact is that this man committed rape against a chile. It doesn't matter if he's some sort of "sensitive artist" or "award-winning" director or whatever. He is a rapist, pure and simple and needts to receive the justice that any rapist deserves.

One of Jesus' important messages concerning chidlren and the treatment of them:

Matthew chapter 18: "5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. 6 But 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."

The fact that he was a victim of the Holocaust and Charles Manson does not mitigate the horrible crime he committed. I have no sympathy for this man.

In case it wasn't clear in my original post: I think Roman Polanski's extradition case should be heard according to the full rigor of the law. I just want to see a conversation about the difference between retribution and restoration, and between vengeance and appropriate punishment.

I also think that our culture needs to have a more mature conversation about trauma, perhaps mostly because engaging with the trauma that might have contributed to a terrible act (like that which Polanski has admitted to) might actually reduce the potential for such acts to occur in the future. And I certainly don't think that a person's artistic achievements should be used as a means of mitigating the suffering they may have caused.

As a teen living on the streets of Los Angeles, concurrent with the Manson to Chinatown era, I was the victim of rape three separate times.

None of the rapists were ever charged or punished.

Were I able to make the choice to pursue them via our dysfunctional legal system, I would not do so.

In the intervening years and practical experience of my life, to do so would without any doubt be contrary to what I believe real justice entails - and I have seen plenty of what happens when it does and does not.

Our justice system isn't either corrective or restorative - it has come to be characterized mostly, like other areas of our national life, by a belief in revenge, domination and violence.

In some places, even the death penalty is seen as appropriate by some for such offenses. However, my life was not taken, so even under a non-Christian "eye-for-an-eye" legalistic morality, such would be inappropriate as would be the living death equivalent of long or lifetime imprisonment.

Our legal system does not restore sinners, only offer endless condemnation, even should people be released from their sentences, or even if they have repented and reformed. Our nation, sad to say, is among the most unforgiving of nations, with 25% of the world's prison population, but only 4% of its population - and this does not even attempt follow God's model of reconciliation and restoration.

I would counsel everyone to think what the Amish response to the violence of the murder of their schoolchildren in Pennsylvania in the Fall of 2006 entailed and how its practical qualities of response to evil suffered at the hands of our fellow human beings model what Jesus commanded us, responding with doing good to those who do evil rather than responding in kind and compounding the problem that afflicts us all so severely in this country - and is not working.

I note that my position is mirrored by Roman Polanski's rape victim as well.

What should happen if Polanski is brought back to our city of lost angels? Roman, in the courtroom, should admit his culpability and ask forgiveness, explain his own torment, his long-ago victim should accept and offer him her forgiveness, they should embrace and the prosecutor, instead of hungering for celebrity and career advancement possibilities, should withdraw all charges as not in the public interest.

Interestingly, this is just what happened in a meeting between KGB tormentors and unjustly imprisoned dissident victims in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union - reconciliation and mutual tears.

Miracles can happen - they must happen, or we have no hope.

I can actaully muster up a bit -- just a bit -- of sympathy for Polanski. As a holocaust survivor and a man who had lost his wife in one of the most notorious murders of recent memory, the scars must have been deep and still raw.

But his crime was abominable and from what I've been able to gather it reeked of premeditation. This was not a decent man overcome by anguish and losing his moral bearings for a few minutes or even hours. This was a monstrous wrong on its own.

I think the key here is the distinction between mitigation and justification. Polanski's tortured past mitigates things, but does not justify his actions. If he had been given a relatively short sentence it would have been entirely understandable, but he should have been punished.

He's had his years of freedom. I doubt he's much of a threat to others or that he'll be much of an escape threat, so he won't require maximum security treatment, but he should definitely go to prison for what he did.

LV