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Roman Polanski Fled After U.S. Judge Hinted He Would Renege on Rape Plea Deal: Unsealed Transcript

The filmmaker ran from the U.S. in 1978 after a judge who had agreed to a plea deal over having sex with a teenager told Polanski's lawyers he changed his mind.

Filmmaker Roman Polanski fled the U.S. on the eve of his 1978 sentencing for having sex with a teenager after it became clear the judge was prepared to renege on a plea bargain, according to unsealed transcripts of testimony by retired Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson seen by the Associated Press.

The transcript is the first time the murky details of Polanski’s shocking escape have been made clear, and are in line with the filmmaker’s own version of events, in which he says he became a fugitive because he was not getting a fair deal. “The judge had promised him on two occasions... something that he reneged on,” Gunson said in the transcript. “So it wasn’t surprising to me that, when he was told he was going to be sent off to state prison... that he could not or would not trust the judge.”

Polanski’s defense team, led by Harland Braun, is working to have the director sentenced in absentia to end the decades-long battle to bring him back to the U.S. Prosecutors instead want the 88-year-old to return to Los Angeles, where he believes he will be remanded into prison.

Polanski, an Oscar-winning filmmaker who survived the Holocaust and whose wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by followers of Charles Manson in their California home in 1969, was convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot at Jack Nicholson’s home. Polanski plied the young girl with Champagne and a sedative and then raped her. The girl’s mother later called the police to report the crime. The girl never testified in court, and Polanski agreed to plead guilty to having sex with a minor in exchange for the prosecution dropping drug, rape, and sodomy charges, according to the AP report of the transcript.

Last week a California appeals court ordered the transcript unsealed after the Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon finally dropped objections.

Polanski, 88, won legal battles in France, Switzerland, and Poland, which all refused to extradite him to the U.S. He won an Oscar in 2003 for The Pianist but was later expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences during the height of the #MeToo movement.

The victim, Samantha Geimer, has publicly called for the case to be dropped and supports Polanski’s wish to be sentenced in absentia. “I implore you to consider taking action to finally bring this matter to a close as an act of mercy to myself and my family,” she said in 2017, asking the court to lift the “40-year-sentence which has been imposed on the victim of a crime as well as the perpetrator.” Geimer later identified herself publicly and wrote a memoir that featured a photo of her taken by Polanski.

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Barbie Latza Nadeau

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