by Robert Goolrick
The Daily Beast
As a fellow child rape victim, hearing Roman Polanski’s supporters cite his filmmaking to justify his freedom brings the injustice of that incident flooding back.
There is a sense of outrage that cannot be quelled, that never goes away. It appears that Roman Polanski, the film-directing admitted child rapist, has become something of a martyr to some of the smartest and most creative people in the world. People from Pedro Almodovar to Jack Lang, the former Minister of Culture in France, are attempting to portray Polanski as a man pursued by cruel and relentless demons, as though he were a victim of the Salem witch trials.
Their mitigating circumstance? He is a great Artist of the cinema. And it makes me want to vomit.
Define Artist. Not so easy to do. Now define pedophiliac child rapist. Pretty simple. If Polanski had been, say, a bus driver in Cleveland who had fed Quaaludes and Champagne to a thirteen-year-old girl and then raped and sodomized her, I doubt Jack Lang would be so quick to tell the rest of us about the privileges that come with driving a bus. Jack Lang doesn’t care about bus drivers. Jack Lang cares about Artists.
This story continues here. Warning: it is a graphic and disturbing article.
