The alleged victim in a 1977 sexual assault case against director Roman Polanski has filed court papers seeking dismissal of the charges against him.
The woman’s declaration seeking dismissal was filed Monday in Los Angeles, California, in connection with Polanski’s efforts to have the 31-year-old case dismissed. Polanski, 75, has lived in exile in France since fleeing the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse. Polanski admitted to having sex with a 13-year-old girl, and an arrest warrant against him remains in effect. In her declaration, Samantha Geimer said, “I am no longer a 13-year-old child. I have dealt with the difficulties of being a victim, have surmounted and surpassed them with one exception. “Every time this case is brought to the attention of the Court, great focus is made of me, my family, my mother and others. That attention is not pleasant to experience and is not worth maintaining over some irrelevant legal nicety, the continuation of the case.” Geimer, who has spoken publicly about the case before, including a 2003 appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” added, “I have survived, indeed prevailed, against whatever harm Mr. Polanski may have caused me as a child.” She chided the district attorney’s office for not dismissing the case earlier and for “yet once again (giving) great publicity to the lurid details of those events, for all to read again. True as they may be, the continued publication of those details cause harm to me … I have become a victim of the actions of the District Attorney.”
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The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office had no immediate response to Geimer’s declaration. Lawyers for the Oscar-winning film director filed a motion for dismissal of the sex offense case against him in December, citing what the defense called “extraordinary new evidence” of “repeated, unlawful and unethical misconduct” by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office and the judge in Polanski’s case. The December motion also argued that Polanski should not be required to return to the United States to appear in court for the dismissal motion to be considered. In her declaration, Geimer said if Polanski cannot appear in court, she will do so to seek dismissal. “My position is absolutely clear,” she said. Polanski’s motion for dismissal is scheduled for a hearing on January 21. Polanski, a native of Poland, won the Academy Award in 2003 for his Holocaust drama, “The Pianist.” Among his other films from earlier in his career are “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown.” His first wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Charles Manson family in 1969.
