Samantha Geimer has long asked US authorities to stop pursuing filmmaker Roman Polanski for having sex with her in 1977, when she was 13. Now, she may make the request for the first time in court.
“I’m just here to try and get things resolved — not on Roman’s behalf, but on the behalf of a fair justice system,” Geimer said as she arrived late Friday morning in Los Angeles Superior Court. “I’m going to ask for the case to be resolved in a fair manner, because the justice system is more important than any one person’s crime.”
Asked what a fair manner would be, she said: “You’ll find that out when I’m done talking (in court).”
Polanski’s attorney, Harland Braun, has said Geimer is expected to ask a judge to end the long-running case.
If a judge were to drop the warrant for Polanski, 83, it would end a nearly four-decade effort by authorities to have the director extradited. He fled to France in 1978, after he pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor and shortly before he was to be sentenced in the case.
Geimer was five years younger than the age of consent when Polanski had sex with her during a photo shoot at actor Jack Nicholson’s house in California.
Geimer has said she was taken advantage of and forced to have sex. But for years, she has publicly urged officials to drop the case, saying in part that she dislikes the attention Polanski’s legal battle brings upon her and her family.
Geimer has made her plea through the media and court documents, but this would be her first time to do so before a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, Braun said.