Talk:Roman Polanski sexual abuse case

Just One More Thing . . . Comment
The asst. DA Gunson and Polanski's lawyer, Doug Dalton, reached an original plea agreement whereby he would be examined by a licensed and mutually acceptable psychiatrist who would also review the facts in the case against Polanski. If the psychiatrist found Polanski unlikely to be a repeat child molester, he would receive a suspended sentence for unlawful intercourse with a minor and probation for a couple of years, which was a pretty standard sentence in California at that time for that time. All was agreed and the psychiatrist stated that Polanski was unlikely to be a recidivist. Then the judge started playing the "just one more thing game" and stated he wanted a more thorough evaluation done at California Institution for Men, aka "Chino", aka "California's nut jail." The trial judge was awaiting the report, when his bailiff showed Polanski in a Munich Beer Hall flanked by two blonde Brunhilde's at the annual 1977 Oktoberfest while Polanski was doing location scouting for his next movie "Hurricane", The judge was about to add another condition to the plea agreement and Polanski fled the country. According to "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired", that's the way it went down.User:JCHeverly 16:49, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * @JCHeverly polanski write better do i know better to any one culture the i describe muslim,yhudi and criticism in to develetter muslim better to know them muslim is side christine difine better after all you know better who is better😕 Bashir asif siddiqui (talk) 04:16, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Citation needed for expectations for probation
This sentence needs to be more clear on who exactly was expecting probation for Mr. Polanski. Was it Mr Polanski? His attorney? The public opinion? Whatever it was, it needs to be clarified and cited. Nodekeeper (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:46, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I have found the article talking about the report recommending probation, and have rephrased the sentence and added the needed citation myself. The original phrasing sounded like it was deliberately ambiguous. Nodekeeper (talk) 03:52, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

California's age of sexual consent
California's age for sex to be legal outside marriage is 18, but I think it's only a misdemeanor if the victim is 14 or older. So the sentence about a person under 18 being unable to consent should be changed, I think, because it makes it look like its statutory rape if the victim is under 18, I believe its only stat rape if the victim is under 14. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.130.171.239 (talk) 16:51, 3 October 2014 (UTC) (d) Any person 21 years of age or older who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is under 16 years of age is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 for two, three, or four years. (a) Except as provided in subdivision (i), any person who willfully and lewdly commits any lewd or lascivious act, including any of the acts constituting other crimes provided for in Part 1, upon or with the body, or any part or member thereof, of a child who is under the age of 14 years, with the intent of arousing, appealing to, or gratifying the lust, passions, or sexual desires of that person or the child, is guilty of a felony and shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for three, six, or eight years. Based on my reading here, it seems like under 18 IS against the law, but is a lesser crime, not as serious as rape. Under 14 is automatically rape. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.130.171.239 (talk) 18:25, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Was she not 13 years old ?— ⦿⨦⨀Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 07:35, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Gaily to Geimer change
Rather than saying "now Geimer" can we just state the year she changed her name, or if we don't know exactly when, then when this information was revealed?

Reason being, if she changed her name again for some reason, "now" would become inaccurate, whereas stating the year she changed it would remain accurate. It is more informative either way to know when this happened.

Another thing, I took a look at a page referenced in his 1984 biography and the name "Sandra" is used. Is that some kind of nickname that Samantha had? Or one Roman chose to protect her name in the book? 174.92.135.167 (talk) 17:44, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Roman Polanski sexual abuse case. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090817112158/http://www.thesmokinggun.com:80/archive/polanskia18.html to http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/polanskia18.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090713081109/http://www.thesmokinggun.com:80/archive/polanskib10.html to http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/polanskib10.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 09:47, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Roman Polanski sexual abuse case. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090713080657/http://www.thesmokinggun.com:80/archive/polanskib12.html to http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/polanskib12.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090713090556/http://www.thesmokinggun.com:80/archive/polanskib14.html to http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/polanskib14.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 00:33, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 3 one external links on Roman Polanski sexual abuse case. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20140131052757/http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iRnW_PP9RtYpGgoc5KZiwY84hjrQD9BFCI480 to http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iRnW_PP9RtYpGgoc5KZiwY84hjrQD9BFCI480
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20121108204036/http://www.dailymotion.com/videoxaq091 to http://www.dailymotion.com/videoxaq091
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20121026125004/http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090930/en_afp/entertainmentfilmswitzerlanduspolanskicrimefrance to http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090930/en_afp/entertainmentfilmswitzerlanduspolanskicrimefrance

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 03:54, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Age of Samantha Geimer
She was born March 31st, 1963 according to http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3005004/?ref_=nv_sr_1 It means she was 14 when Polanski abused her. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.11.50.106 (talk) 12:59, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * All sources and court documents say she was 13.  D r e a m Focus  14:42, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * @78.11.50.106 Actually, she was 13yrs,
 * 11 mths and 10 days old. She was not 14 Kdk68 (talk) 05:00, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Allegations by Mallory Millett and others
Until there are better English-language sources than the Daily Mail reporting on Millett's allegations, these claims should be excluded per WP:BLP, WP:DAILYMAIL, and WP:TABLOID. However, I did find a French-language source reporting on the allegations, L'Obs. Arbor to SJ (talk) 05:35, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Bias in this article?
Hello all, I'm a bit new to this process and this article, so please bear with me :) I came across the article lateish last night and was irritated by what I think is its unbalanced position. I added an (untemplated) "Bias warning" comment which was quickly reverted, no problem with that, and that editor has pointed me here. My basic point is that this article reads to me as an odd mix of potted history, lurid detail, cherry picked facts/arguments, and in the extradition section quite openly promotes a pro-extradition view rather than assessing two opposed views. I have no desire to whitewash Polanski, but I think a more scholarly/balanced piece is deserved.

An example of lurid - the repeated listing (once in the intro, then in a bullet list at the top of the article) of the charges i.e. "rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor" at the head of the article. (Note this may been updated after my conversation with ).

More worrying to me, the first two refs [1] [2] I would expect to be foundations for the asserted facts of the case (i.e. that lurid list above), but neither contain the relevant details, and both relate primarily to the extradition not to the original case. Ref [3] is a dead link from where I am sitting to Google news (Kabul has fallen, evidently), and [4] is a link to an article about the Marina Zenovich documentary questioning the whole basis of the legal process of the first trial. Ref [5] is a Slate link from 2009 that states in its first paragaph that "Polanski drugged and raped a 13-year old girl". Without a single reliable reference in the first 5 checked, this article seems completely to lack foundation. As a matter of fact, we know that something happened, but whatever it was isn't evidenced in this article.

IMO this is a significant article which (1) should document a historic legal case and aftermath e.g. the attempted extradition, of interest to film historians, womens' rights activists, law students, etc, and (2) touches on many issues, many of which are highly topical today - from broad issues of how rape is handled in law, whether victims get justice, how women fare under the law (well? badly? do they get justice?), what are crimes like perversion and sodomy doing on the statute book, and are they still on it, or was this just a 1977 thing, or a California thing, or an American thing, to the specifics of the case, was it fair to those involved, did it deliver justice to the victim, was it procedurally correct, etc - to issues raised by the attempted extradition 30 years after the fact and over the protests of the victim, about how justice serves or does not serve victims, American legal overreach whether extraditions or renditions, European legal independence, and a host of others.

I don't argue that it's the place of this article to go into each of the above, but it should acknowledge these issues, shouldn't it? But instead we have opinion poll numbers of how many "French people" or "Poles" think Polanski should be extraditied, and a kind of cheerleading for the extradition process!

In summary, for me the piece is full of dubious argumentation and misses the chance to factually report a case which is still significant for lots of reasons.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Best, Ben. 


 * Hi again Ben . I only took a quick look at the sources in the lede and indeed they are a bit messy. I removed the one about Whoopy Goldberg and I think I was able to fix the dead link that pointed to google news. (Seems like all sources in this article could use a little checking, just to be safe).
 * There may be a reason for that. Since the lede is just a summary of the article, citations aren’t mandatory in them (because citations  must  be present in the body, so it would be a kind of redundancy). Regardless, most ledes have citations anyway (sometimes they aren’t as carefully checked as the sources in the body).
 * I’d also like to point out that we should preferably use secondary sources (as recommended by this policy). As such, sources number [3] and [4] that you mentioned (The Independent and Slate) are considered good sources (as you can see in this list of good and bad sources). We cannot use "more concrete" evidence as sources (things like court files, law documents, etc) because those are primary sources, and we would probably be engaging in original research, which is forbidden.
 * I’m not in favor of removing content (neither the poll or list of charges; however you can tweak the tone to something more neutral). When a side of the history is missing\being under-represented, I think it should be added\expanded. (I’m pretty sure there are news articles reporting on people who support Polanski somewhere).
 * Anyway, those are just my preliminary opinions based on a quick review. I’ll take a deeper look at it later and keep you updated. Best regards, -   (talk)  09:38, 29 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi  thx for that. Sounds like I need to update myself on policy, so I will do that. I'm taking your comments as an OK to contribute to tune this article up a bit, so I will give thought to (1) where the tone might be improved (2) where/how the piece might expand to address the controversies/issues better and what the references are for that (I think the key ones appear in the citations anyway) (3) if there are additional secondary sources that can add relevant value, (4) and status/quality of the existing references. I'll come back here anyway with a heads up. Best, Ben. Wordmatter  08:08, 30 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I do not see a lot of bias, except that the section with "Reactions" to his arrest in Zurich (in particular in France and Poland) is excessively long, as typical for "Reactions" sections on many pages. My very best wishes (talk) 20:15, 8 November 2022 (UTC)