Alright, I'll say the following yet again (from various posts on various subjects):
#1: Ever heard of a writer called Spider Robinson? He wrote things like "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon", and "Callhan's Lady". As a victim of sexual assault as a child (which fortunatly I do not remember, but which actually happened) I sort of agree with him that the only real way to truely "punish" a rapist is for them to be raped themselves.
In the majority of cases everyone is going to have some kind of sexual/erotic contact they find repugnant. As brutal and "cruel and unusual" as it is, I feel that the only way of evening thigns out in most cases is a variation on "Eye For An Eye" let Bubba, or evilly created rape devices/machines mete justice where the regular system cannot.
#2: When I talk about rape, I talk about actually forcing yourself on someone else. Statuatory Rape and so on is definatly WRONG but not quite as evil as the above, thus I feel it deserves far lesser punishment, when it comes down to it it's not the same as an actual ATTACK. It's wrong for societal reasons, having to do with children unable to mentally and emotionally deal with things that they are physically capable of handling.
In the case of Mr. Polanski it seems like he's definatly in catagory #2. Over the years a lot of things have been said about his case. Right now a dominant version of the story says that he drugged her, and so on. On the other hand there has also been money involved in this in the past, and the forgiveness of the victim is generally coming after she realized she wasn't going to get any cash out of him.
When dealing with a case that happened when I was 2 years old, it's a tricky subject, but looking at things retroactively *I* am not entirely convinced that she wasn't a lolita trying to get her hooks into him. Oh sure she was drugged... and all would be forgiven for dumptrucks full of cash delivered to her doorstep.
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Roman deserves jail time in my opinion, probably to spend the rest of his life behind bars. The amount of time/punishment I would have originally suggested giving him (which would be dependant on details we're unlikely to ever truely sort out) being irrelevent compared to the fact that the guy fled to avoid persecution, and sat there for decades tweaking our noses from behind a non-extradition treaty while producing arthouse cinema.
Despite what others think, we'll never be able to prove the extent of his molestation, but we DO know what he did to avoid capture, and that right there is enough to throw the book at him. He sort of became a poster child for "rich/famous guys laughing at US Law", I can't help but wonder how many crimes he personally has encouraged among the arthouse elite due to his apparent success.
There are of course other issues involved here, like again *FRANCE* and the role it had been playing in this whole thing.
So basically I say toss him in jail with a 20-50 year sentence, and then do what is needed to sieze his finances despite the protests of other nations shielding him. Indeed I think he should be being used as more of an example as to why the US should be playing a lot more hardball with our alleged "allies" like France.... not that I really expect someone like Obama to do anything here where other Presidents have either failed, or effectively engaged in the ritual castration of American power.
I mean frankly, people wonder why France did things like "The Oil For Food" scandal, and then reacted to it the way they did with their domestic media, when we couldn't even get them to hand over a fugitive who was thumbing his nose at us (irregardless of what he did). Truthfully, Polanski doesn't matter much in the overall scheme of things, but if France ever wonders why we hate them, and start kicking the crud out of them one way or another (hopefully) it's one big thing we can point at and go "that's basically why we're making a nation sized pile of frog legs".