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Polanski victim ’very relieved’ he wasn’t extradited to U.S.

09 October 2010 02:28 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Samantha Geimer, who was 13 when director Roman Polanski had unlawful sex with her in 1977, said she is "very relieved" that the filmmaker was not extradited from Switzerland, APA reports quoting CNN.
Polanski was arrested in Switzerland last year on a U.S. fugitive warrant.
"I think they did the right thing," Geimer said in an exclusive interview with "Larry King Live," her first since the Oscar-winning filmmaker was arrested in September 2009. "I am happy they didn’t extradite him. I don’t want to see him go to trial."
Geimer said that she doesn’t want to deal with the media circus that would surround Polanski’s return to the U.S.
"If just the arrest brought such a ruckus into my life and into my backyard in a literal sense ... I’m sure his coming back would just be a thousand times worse."
Geimer publicly forgave Polanski in 1997.
On Thursday night, she blamed Polanski’s decision to flee the country before he was sentenced on the judge in the case, who she said had been dishonest with Polanski.
Prosecutors had dropped rape and other charges in exchange for his guilty plea. But Polanski fled the country after learning the judge might not grant the short prison term Polanski expected in exchange for his plea.
"He served his time and he did everything he was asked to do," Geimer said Thursday. "We had a corrupt judge who was being dishonest. (Polanski) had no reason to trust the system was going to work for him, and I’ve been so much more damaged by the court system and by the media than by him."
Asked if she protested during the sexual episode with Polanski, Geimer said, "a little, not a lot."
"I was scared, I had been drinking, I was alone," she said. "I didn’t know how to handle it."
On Thursday, Geimer urged the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office to drop its case.
"If people want to protect children, then right now there are children being trafficked online, in classified ads -- they should do something about things happening now," she said. "Going after Roman Polanski doesn’t protect anybody. It just distracts maybe from more important things."
In July, Switzerland announced it would deny a U.S. request to extradite Polanski to face sentencing and set him free.
The Swiss rejected the U.S. request because the United States did not supply all the legal records Switzerland requested and because Polanski had a reasonable right to think he would not be arrested if he visited the country, Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said at the time.
"We are deeply disappointed," said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in July. "We thought our extradition request was supported by the facts. We’re going to review our options."
Polanski was 43 at the time he had unlawful sex with Geimer. He is now 76.
He has been a fugitive since 1978 and lived in France before his arrest.