Samantha Geimer, who said she was 13 when movie director Roman Polanski raped her, hopes that film director Quentin Tarantino has changed his mind since giving a 2003 talk radio interview on the subject.
A 15-year-old conversation on “The Howard Stern Show” with famed movie director Tarantino reappeared online Monday, after actress Uma Thurman accused the filmmaker earlier this week of inappropriate conduct on the set of his 2003 movie, “Kill Bill.”
According to a Slate transcript of the 2003 radio broadcast, Stern and Tarantino discussed fellow auteur Roman Polanski’s 1977 rape case at length. Tarantino stated that he believed the then-teen accuser, Samantha Geimer, had wanted to have sex with Polanski.
https://t.co/S2GkSgfAPy Beyond just being gross, Tarantino is wrong. The girl did not want it or “date” Polanski. She accused him of forcible rape and he pled down to statutory.
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) February 7, 2018
“He didn’t rape a 13-year-old,” Tarantino said. “It was statutory rape, that’s not quite the same thing…it just doesn’t apply to everything that people use it for, all right?”
Stern told Tarantino that a grown man should know it’s wrong to engage in sexual activity with a minor. “Look,” Tarantino replied. “She was down with it and she’s talked about it.”
Geimer, now 54, wrote a 2013 book about her experience titled, “The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski.” In it, she discusses the night of March 10, 1977, when Polanski allegedly drugged her with alcohol and a Quaalude at Jack Nicholson’s Hollywood Hills home, before raping and sodomizing her.
In response to the resurfaced Tarantino interview, Geimer told the New York Daily News Tuesday, “I’m not upset, but I would probably feel better if he realizes now that he was wrong, after 15 years, after hearing the facts.”
“It’s not a big deal to me what people think,” Geimer explained to the paper. “It doesn’t make a difference in my life. I know what happened. I do not need other people weighing in on what it’s like getting raped at 13.”
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Polanski, who directed such celebrated films as “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown,” served 42 days in a Los Angeles jail for the assault in 1977 before fleeing to Europe prior to his sentencing.
Polanski currently lives as a Polish citizen, and that country’s courts rejected an extradition request from the United States. The fugitive director has not returned to the United States in over 40 years.
Polanski reportedly hopes to visit the grave of his late wife Sharon Tate in California. Tate was murdered by Charles Manson followers in 1969.
[Feature Photo: Samantha Geimer via AP/Pool, File]
