Four-plus decades later, Roman Polanski’s 13-yr-old victim defends her rapist: ‘It wasn’t a big deal’

Here’s a Hollywood plot twist we didn’t see coming — but probably should have.

In 1977, director Roman Polanski was a big deal.

He had scored box office gold with Rosemary’s Baby in 1968, and he dominated the world’s headlines the following year, after his beautiful, pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was butchered by members of Charlie Manson’s “family.”

So when, less than a decade later, he was charged with the rape of 13-year-old Samantha Gailey (now Geimer) at the home of actor Jack Nicholson in 1977, the nation was mortified.

(Video: YouTube)

Polanski, accused of plying the young girl with both alcohol and pills and having his way with her, pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and fled to France in 1978 to avoid serving jail time.

In the years that followed, six women have accused the French-Polish director of sexual abuse, but in a new interview with Polanski’s wife, Emmanuelle Siegner, for France’s Le Point, a now 60-year-old Samantha Geimer dismissed the incident as no big deal.

“I was fine, I’m still fine,” Geimer said, according to the Daily Mail. “The fact that we’ve made this thing up weighs on me terribly. To have to constantly repeat that it wasn’t a big deal, it’s a terrible burden.”

“Sex was recreational” in the 1970s, Geimer said. “Sometimes transactional.”

“‘I remember the time when I was starting to work – I became a model at 14 years old,” she explained. “All the girls, the models, slept with the photographers and I was no exception. But sex was something normal, a natural aspect of life. There wasn’t all this drama, all this darkness surrounding sex.”

To be fair, Geimer has in recent years repeatedly downplayed her encounter with Polanski.

But given what many see as a disturbing — even “evil” — push to sexualize and groom young children through activist teachers, progressive legislation, and inappropriate advertising by such big designer names as Balenciaga, Geimer’s nonchalant acceptance of her rape is particularly chilling.

“It’s all part of the ‘paedophilia/child rape is acceptable’ narrative,” wrote one user on Twitter.

“This is part of the ‘normalizing’ [of] sexual abuse,” stated another.

“Dangerous words,” said a third. “It was a problem. Saying it’s not is normalizing this criminal behavior. It may never have been a problem for her (weird) but it sure might be for other minors raped by adults. Of course it’s a problem. It’s a HUGE problem.”


The timing of the interview with Geimer is also highly suspect to those who pay attention to what the United Nations is doing.

Just last month, UNAIDS, a partnership of eleven UN agencies, released a report in honor of International Women’s Day in which the organization called for the decriminalization of all sexual activity, even sex with minors.

“With respect to the enforcement of criminal law, any prescribed minimum age of consent to sex must be applied in a non-discriminatory manner. Enforcement may not be linked to the sex/gender of participants or age of consent to marriage,” the report states. “Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law.”

“In this context,” it states, “the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees.”

Melissa Fine

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