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08 December 2011 / James Wilson
Issue: 7493 / Categories: Blogs
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The fugitive

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James Wilson recalls the notorious case of Polanski v Conde Naste Publications

Not many film directors have an oeuvre as critically acclaimed as that of Roman Polanski, winner of Academy Awards for Chinatown and The Pianist. Even fewer could possibly have had as tragic and tumultuous a personal life. Polanski was a child survivor of the Holocaust, the most notorious act of genocide of the 20th century. His wife Sharon Tate was killed by the Manson family in California at the end of the 1960s, in one of the most notorious murders of the 20th century.

On top of all that, Polanski is also a criminal himself, having pleaded guilty in 1977 to a charge of statutory rape in California after having sex with a 13-year-old girl. He fled to France prior to sentencing and remains a fugitive from justice to the present day.

Seduction scandal

In 2002 he had occasion to return to the legal system when an article appeared in Vanity Fair magazine, containing an anecdote about Polanski trying to seduce a young

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