A slight furor has arisen in the blogosphere over the detention by Swiss authorities of director Roman Polanski. He was to be honored in Switzerland for his film work. This has led many to wonder if Polanski and the film community would have been treated the same had he been a priest being honored for some work. While this blog has never shied away from evaluating situations for their hypocritical content, I’m going to avoid that in this instance.
Before getting too far, I should be clear that I condemn Polanski’s actions. He admitted to getting a thirteen-year-old girl in his care (he was her photographer) drunk, drugging her, and having sex with her against her protests. Most of these factors in their own right are sufficient to establish felony rape. In a perfect world, these would have been pursued in their own right. For whatever reason – immediate speculation would be the difficulty of prosecuting rape cases – Polanski plead to misdemeanor sexual misconduct. As part of the plea deal, Polanski was to be sentenced to time served. He was released prior to sentencing to finish up his film. Rumor circulated that the sentencing of the plea deal wouldn’t be accepted by the judge, and Polanski fled the country.
Today the debate revolves around what to do with a 30-year fugitive of a misdemeanor conviction. I’m not even a novice in this area, but I’ve never heard of extradition being formally requested for a fugitive with a misdemeanor conviction, particularly after 3 decades. His victim, married with her own life now, has asked the matter not to be pursued at this point. One doesn’t have to be a Polanski sympathizer to see pursuit of this case as not in the interests of justice. If he would have plead guilty to felony sexual assault, my tune may be different, but that is not the case before us.
As for the priestly comparisons, I think we should all take a step back. I have not been sympathetic to the priestly abuse witch hunts over the past two decades. Having said that, there is such a degree of moral difference between knowingly moving a priest through several parishes and enabling him to accrue ever more victims and honoring a man that made a despicable choice three decades ago for his film making. The difference is a few orders of magnitude. The evidence is certainly not exculpatory that systematic abuse of minors was aided and condoned by high levels of some dioceses. While much of the ‘abuse’ was consensual and between late to mid teenage boys, there was also abuse that was clearly felonious. There is also strong evidence for the cover up of that abuse. While Hollywood certainly isn’t a place of virtue, they haven’t done this.
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