Misplaced sympathy

by Editor · Published October 7, 2009 · Updated March 6, 2012

We should be disturbed by the public sympathy film director Roman Polanski has received from some quarters, including the French government and many in the artistic community, following his arrest in Switzerland with a view to extradition to the United States to face justice for the rape of a minor.

Mr Polanski admitted to having had sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl, and subsequently cut a deal with prosecutors before absconding from the US before he could be sentenced.

There can be no mitigation for statutory rape, even if Mr Polanski believed that �everybody� is sexually attracted to pubescent girls, as he told the writer Martin Amis in an interview in 1979, the year he absconded from the US.

Worse, it seems that the sexual relations were not consensual. The victim of Mr Polanski�s act alleged in a contemporary deposition that she had been drugged, raped and sodomised against her will by Mr Polanski. If her allegations are true, then Mr Polanski should not in any way benefit from leniency in the courts of justice or of public opinion.

When the French culture minister, Frederic Mitterand, remonstrated that �a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them�, he was not referring to Mr Polanski�s victim.

We should be scandalised by those of the film director�s supporters, such as actress Whoopi Goldberg who implausibly ventured that the case did not constitute �rape-rape�.

When people of influence trivialise the crimes of which Mr Polanski is accused, they give succour to rapists and profoundly affront the survivors of rape.

There can be no measure of sympathy for Mr Polanski, regardless of his admirable contribution to cinematic artistry, his age (he is now 76) or the passage of time � he evaded justice for three decades; if he is to be penalised, it will be overdue.

Catholics may well wonder whether those defending the film director now would have done so had he been Father Polanski, and whether his supporters would still enjoy any credibility if they were Bishop Woody Allen or Cardinal Martin Scorsese.

Those who seek to exonerate wicked acts are diminished by it.

At the same time the Polanski affair helps us understand better the loyal reactions by many of those who knew abusive priests. Just as Mr Polanski�s supporters cannot tally his wicked behaviour with the man they know, so did the friends of abusive priests fail to associate the men they knew as good pastors with the depravity of their actions (the role of bishops guilty of covering up abuse is more complex than that, of course).

The Polanski case reminds us of a truth that is not always being applied to clerical abusers: those who commit monstrous acts are not always monsters. Humanity is more complicated than that. Mr Polanski is a gifted artist with attractive and unattractive traits who has known deep sorrow and doubtless great joy in his life. It is because people know him as a human being that he attracts empathy, misplaced though this may be in this case.

This cannot, however, minimise the gravity of sexual abuse. Any coercive sexual act, especially when committed against minors by persons with authority, is indefensible, whether it is rape or inappropriate fondling.

Our thoughts and concern should therefore be with Mr Polanski�s victim. The publicity and memory of her ordeal must have a damaging effect on her and her family. And this is the key: Mr Polanski did not only abuse this person physically. Sexual abuse leaves lasting emotional scars; the abuse can last a lifetime.

There can be little sympathy � and no moral relativism � for one who inflicts such scars upon others.