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Polanski Begins House Arrest

Swiss authorities send him to his chalet.

If one has to endure house arrest, a Swiss chalet is probably a good place to do it. Director and self-professed child rapist Roman Polanski began his house arrest in Switzerland on Friday after posting a $4.5 million bail. A police convoy took him to his waiting wife and children at his Alpine chalet in the luxury resort of Gstaad. Polanski will wear an electronic monitoring bracelet that will alert the police if he leaves the house or removes it. The Chinatown director convinced Swiss authorities, who scooped him up in Zurich two months ago as he tried to attend a film festival where he was to receive a lifetime achievement award, to end his two months in Swiss jail while they decide whether or not to extradite him to the U.S. in a 32-year-old sex case. The 76-year-old director pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, but fled to France, which does not extradite its citizens, on Feb. 1, 1978, the day he was to be sentenced.