OAN Geraldyn Berry
UPDATED 2:46 PM – Monday, May 1, 2023
Film Director Roman Polanski’s wife posted a photo on Friday of her husband with the 13-year-old girl he had sexually assaulted in 1977, when he was 43-years-old.
Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski’s wife, posted the meet up photo on Instagram with the caption, “Thank you Samantha.” This had been the first time the pair had reportedy reconvened since the 1977 rape. The image showed Polanski, 89, with Samantha Geimer, now 60.
At the time of the incident, Samantha Jane Gailey was the original name of the victim.
Geimer had reportedly spoken to the wife of Polanski, for an interview with the April 13th issue of French magazine Le Point.
Geimer claimed in the interview that she had long since forgiven Polanski, who was shunned and kicked out of Hollywood when he was accused of drugging and raping both her and several other women.
“Let’s be very clear, what happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me,” Geimer told Seigner.
In 1977, at the home of actor Jack Nicholson, 13-year-old Geimer was drugged and sexually assaulted by Hollywood producer and director Roman Polanski. Polanski gave Geimer some Quaaludes to take and then sodomized her, after she had arrived to the house to be photographed by him.
Geimer recently shared that she has made the decision to put the past behind her, standing up for Polanski, whom she previously sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress for the assault.
Polaski fled to France in 1978 after a warrant for his arrest was issued when he pleaded guilty to statutory rape for unlawful sex with a minor. Charges of drug-assisted rape, perversion, sodomy, a lewd conduct on a child under 14, and providing a controlled substance to a juvenile were all dismissed when he accepted a plea deal.
The disgraced Oscar winner has subsequently shied away from nations that may extradite him to the U.S., and an arrest warrant is technically still out for him.
Geimer claimed differing attitudes towards sex in the 1970s is a big part of her forgiveness, saying that “sex was recreational, sometimes transactional.”
“Everyone should know by now that Roman has served his sentence. Which was… long, if you want my opinion,” she said. “From my side, nobody wanted him to go to jail, but he did and it was enough. He paid his debt to society. There, end of the story.’”
She also said that Polansky had emailed her in 2009, after a documentary about his trial was broadcast.
“I want you to know how sorry I am for having so affected your life,” he wrote, according to her.
Geimer urged that Polanski has the accusations against him dropped and that he should be permitted to come back to the United States, even if he is still wanted by the police.
“People pretend to act in the name of justice, or because they support me, but it’s the antithesis of what I want and of all I say that I want,” she said. “Anyone who thinks that he deserves to be in prison is wrong. It isn’t the case today and it wasn’t the case yesterday.”
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