'I met Roman Polanski in 1977, when I was 13 years old," wrote Samantha Geimer, in a 2003 editorial for the Los Angeles Times. "He told my mother that he wanted to shoot pictures of me for a French magazine.

"That's what he said, but instead, after shooting pictures of me at Jack Nicholson's house on Mulholland Drive, he did something quite different. He gave me champagne and a piece of a Quaalude (a hypnotic drug, also used as a sedative and a muscle relaxant). And then he took advantage of me."

Geimer -- now a 45-year-old mother of three who lives in Hawaii and works as a bookkeeper -- wrote these words a few weeks before the 75th Annual Academy Awards, at which Polanski was nominated for an Oscar in absentia for The Pianist, about a Jewish musician living in the Warsaw ghetto of the Second World War.

Much to America's surprise, the French-born director prevailed, and the golden statue was collected on Polanski's behalf by a beaming Harrison Ford, who described the win as "delicious".

But not everyone in Hollywood felt the same way -- especially those who had young daughters of their own at the time of Polanski's 1977 arrest. In spite of Geimer's forgiveness of Polanski (in the same editorial, she wrote that she had "no hard feelings towards him" and that "I believe Polanski and his film should be honoured according to the quality of the work"), many never forgot the shocking details of the original charges against the director of Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, which included "committing a lewd act upon a person less than 14, rape of a minor, rape by use of a drug, oral copulation, and sodomy".

As Geimer herself wrote: "I said no, repeatedly, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. I was alone and I didn't know what to do. It was scary and, looking back, very creepy." Nevertheless, the charges against Polanski were later reduced under a plea-bargain agreement to a mere "unlawful sexual intercourse with an underage girl".

But then the judge reneged on the deal and Polanski, fearing up to half a century in a California prison, fled to France.

After more than three decades in exile, Polanski was arrested unexpectedly on a visit to Switzerland and is now being detained pending extradition to Los Angeles.

It seems that while France might choose to not send its own citizens to America to face justice, the Swiss have no such qualms. Polanski can only hope that the French Foreign Minister's pleas to Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, can prevent him from the fate he thought that he'd escaped decades ago.

Hollywood is in shock, naturally. To the modern generation of film-makers, Polanski is a cinematic icon, not a fugitive from a sex case.

But the uncomfortable question remains: shouldn't everyone be treated the same by the justice system, no matter how brilliant? And yet there is, of course, another, equally difficult question: is this really what the majority of Americans want -- for a 76-year-old man, who has been the victim of far worse crimes than the one he allegedly perpetrated 30 years ago, to spend some of the final years of his life in prison while his lawyers fight a lengthy and potentially ruinous appeal?

To many, the answer to both questions is "yes". When Polanski won his Oscar, for example, a woman named Shy Keenan, of the Phoenix Survivors, which lobbies for children's protection rights, said: "To those who have turned a blind eye: who are you to forgive? Would you if it was your child?"

Steve Cooley, the District Attorney of Los Angeles, clearly agrees with that sentiment.

The conservative former LAPD officer tried on two previous occasions to nab Polanski when he left France.

This time he was successful, reportedly plotting the capture and extradition last week, when his staff learnt that the director would be travelling to Switzerland to receive a special tribute at the Zurich Film Festival.

As in the original case against Polanski, the director's supporters claim that he is now the victim of ambitious prosecutors seeking publicity.

"I can only think this is the result of some district attorney in Los Angeles wanting to make a name for themselves," says Ronald Harwood, the screenwriter who won an Oscar for his work on The Pianist. "It's vindictive and mean. And it's just another dreadful thing to go through after so many terrible things he has had to endure."

Even Polanski's detractors would have to agree that the director has experienced more than his fair share of tragedy. As a child he was forced by the Nazis to live in the Kracow Ghetto before his mother was taken away in a cattle cart to Auschwitz. She never came back.

Polanski has claimed that, as a boy, he spent much of his time dodging bullets from the German guards, who used Jewish children as target practice.

In some ways, Polanski's story is that of America itself, given that he ultimately fled the persecution of the Nazis and found wealth and success in the Free World. But his American Dream was soon followed by an American Horror.

On a summer night in 1969, his then heavily pregnant wife Sharon Tate became the victim of a home invasion by Charles Manson's psychopathic "Family", who stabbed her and her unborn baby to death before using her blood to write the word "PIG" on her front door.

Polanski was accused later by Vanity Fair magazine of trying to seduce a Swedish model days after Tate was murdered. He sued for libel in 2002 -- giving evidence to a London courtroom from Paris via a video screen -- and won £50,000 in damages. Given all the above, it's hardly surprising that France's Culture Minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, said that he "profoundly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already known so many during his life".

But do the tragedies suffered by Polanski, along with his brilliance as a film director, make him exempt from US justice -- even if the judge's behaviour in his case was bizarre? Shouldn't the director have stayed and appealed? And if Polanski returns to Los Angeles and is finally cleared -- even if it involves time in prison -- wouldn't that ultimately provide some kind of resolution to both the director and his victim?

After all these years, it would finally allow the credits to roll.

The trouble is, say legal experts, Polanski might have made it impossible for prosecutors to show him much leniency.

"Now it has become an international incident and the district attorney may be under pressure not to negotiate a sweetheart deal," says Laurie Levenson, a Loyola University law professor. Alas, the American public also doesn't seem to be on his side.

"You rape someone -- you go to jail," wrote one person on the website of Psychology Today magazine.

"If you rape someone, and then flee the country, you get even more jail time. Time to pay. It's that simple."

- Chris Ayres

Irish Independent