links for 2009-09-30

State and federal prosecutors in the United States may have begun tracking the director's movements more carefully this year after Polanski tried in December to have his case dismissed from abroad. (Moving to have your criminal charges dropped while you're still on the run is a good way to infuriate prosecutors.) When the United States asked for him to be arrested, the Swiss authorities had little choice but to comply with the terms of our extradition treaty.

Even if the age of consent had been 14, the girl wasn't 14." Also, even if the girl had been old enough to consent, she testified that she did not consent. There's that. Though of course everyone makes a bigger deal of her age than her testimony that she did not consent, because if she'd been 18 and kept saying no while he kissed her, licked her, screwed her and sodomized her, this would almost certainly be a whole different story -- most likely one about her past sexual experiences and drug and alcohol use, about her desire to be famous, about what she was wearing, about how easy it would be for Roman Polanski to get consensual sex, so hey, why would he need to rape anyone? It would quite possibly be a story about a wealthy and famous director who pled not guilty to sexual assault, was acquitted on "she wanted it" grounds, and continued to live and work happily in the U.S. Which is to say that 30 years on, it would not be a story at all.