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Roman Polanski

"Don't tell your mom." You've gotta know you just committed a crime when that's what you say to your sex partner in the afterglow.

In 1977, Roman Polanski, took thirteen-year-old Samantha Geimer over to Jack Nicholson's house in Bel Air while the actor was away. Polanski, director of the films Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, had arranged to snap photos of the girl in her swimsuit, for the French edition of Vogue.

Eventually, the pair took a dip in the hot tub, and Roman gave the girl champagne and quaaludes. Afterwards, there was fucking. But then Samantha did tell her mom. Polanski was arrested shortly thereafter and charged with six criminal counts:

  1. rape of a minor
  2. rape by use of a drug
  3. committing a lewd act upon a person less than 14 years of age
  4. oral copulation
  5. Sodomy
  6. furnishing drugs to a minor

Ultimately, Polanski took a plea bargain and acquiesced to one count of unlawful sex with a minor. But then he fled to France before the sentencing hearing. He has never been back to the United States since.

But then, it's not like he has lots of fond memories of the U.S. After all, it was in America that his pregnant wife, 26-year-old film actress Sharon Tate, was brutally murdered along with four guests by the Manson Family. They stabbed Tate repeatedly in the belly and then slit her open to see the eight-month-old fetus.

Polanski gave Anton LaVey a cameo in Rosemary's Baby.

Twenty-six years later at the 75th annual Academy Awards, Polanski won Best Director for his film The Pianist. He has yet to return to the states to claim his complimentary statuette.

Timeline

10 Mar 1977 Roman Polanski gives a thirteen-year old girl Quaaludes and has sex with her during a photo shoot at Jack Nicholson's home. He later flees the country to avoid statutory rape charges.


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