By ,
Published June 09, 2017
Roman Polanski’s sexual assault victim asked a judge Friday in a Los Angeles court to end the long-running case against the director.
It is not clear if her plea would bring an end to the 40-year-old case that limits the director's freedom.
Samantha Geimer told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon that she wanted the case to end, either with an outright dismissal or by the judge sentencing Polanski without him being present. Polanski’s repeated requests for the same rulings have been denied.
“I’m standing here saying he’s served his sentence,” Geimer said after the hearing. “He owes me nothing. He owes the state of California nothing except to show up here eventually. I wish he could show up and feel he could be treated fairly, but I don’t know if that will ever happen.”
Geimer, who was 13-years-old at the time of the March 1977 sexual assault, has stated previously that she wanted the legal saga to end, but Friday was the first time she’s appeared in court on his behalf, attorney Harland Braun said.
Polanski fled to his native France in 1978 the day before the sentencing for the crime of having unlawful sex with a minor. Prosecutors dropped charges that he drugged, raped and sodomized Geimer.
The director fled after he feared that the judge was going to take back his promise of a plea agreement and send him away for more than the six weeks he served in prison during a psychiatric evaluation prior to sentencing.
Polanski’s lawyers have been fighting to end the case for years and lift an international arrest warrant that confined him to France, Switzerland and Poland, where he fled the Holocaust. The warrant barred him from accepting the Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film “The Pianist.”
Polanski, 83, contends he is the victim of judicial misconduct because the now-deceased judge who handled the case suggested in private remarks that he would not honor a plea bargain agreement. It called for no additional time behind bars for the director after he spent 42 days in a prison undergoing a diagnostic screening.
The hearing Friday is an effort by Braun to get the court to unseal testimony by the now-retired prosecutor in the case, who is believed to have testified in a closed session about backroom sentencing discussions.
Braun wants to use the transcript to argue that Polanski has served his time so the international warrant is dropped.
“We want to have the transcripts so we can show the people at Interpol that he has already done his time,” Braun said to The Guardian.
Geimer said she forgives the director for the assault that occurred at Academy Award-winning actor Jack Nicholson’s compound in Hollywood Hills.
The director supplied the minor with champagne and a portion of a sedative pill before raping her, grand jury transcripts stated. Nicholson was not at the residence at the time.
Geimer sued Polanski in 1993 for $500,000 that included over $100,000 in interest payments. She wrote a memoir in 2013 titled, “The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/roman-polanskis-sex-assault-victim-asks-court-to-drop-international-warrant-on-the-director