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“[The Girl] might be the most important and valuable book of the century so far…an emotional rollercoaster…smart and articulate….Geimer puts complicated thoughts out there, alongside her anger, not because she’s too damaged to think clearly but because she can’t bear the world’s oversimplification….Her voice is strong.” (The Guardian)
“This book is a total surprise. After decades of hearing about ‘the Roman Polanski rape case’ via third-hand reporting and ossified assumptions, here is the startlingly fresh, personal account from the young woman who lived through it, only to be set upon by the American legal system. Witty, snarky -- but also precise and thoughtfully observant not only about herself but also the mores and culture of a very different time -- Samantha Geimer is a reflective guide as she humanely tells of a complex violation that hurt but didn't defeat her." (Sheila Weller, author of the New York Times bestseller Girls Like Us)
"[Geimer] is able to channel the bewilderment she felt while in Mr. Polanski’s company, and the terror that came later." (The New York Times)
“Her explosive account... is at once a tabloidy page-turner, and a thoughtful memoir.” (Time Magazine)
“An astonishingly well-written, engaging book that is admirably subtle in its depiction of events… Her prose is lucid and compelling. The memoir, which winds its way through the painful vilification of her mother by the press, and a spectacular failure of the legal system, is masterfully clear-eyed.” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review)
"A feisty, almost jaunty you’re not the boss of me account of a really awful thing and its long aftermath... The lively, pugnacious narrative voice manages to sound simultaneously like a provocative kid and a wised-up adult." (The New York Times Book Review)
"Disarmingly honest and intensely personal, The Girl is a fascinating memoir: the absence of self-pity and frankness with which it is told is as shocking as the story itself." (Portia de Rossi, author of the New York Times bestseller Unbearable Lightness)
"Sex, youth, and power have always fueled Hollywood and, as this bookproves, never with more combustible results than in the story of Roman and Samantha. The Girl is a pleasure to read." (Joe Eszterhas, New York Times bestselling author of American Rhapsody and Hollywood Animal)
About the Author
Samantha Geimer is married and has three sons. She divides her time between Hawaii and Nevada.
September 27, 2009, Estes Park, Colorado. A chill in the air, snow on the mountaintops, leaves cinnamon and gold—so different from the glorious monotony of our Hawaii weather. My husband and I were in the middle of a long-anticipated vacation on the mainland—celebrating family birthdays, catching trout, watching elk rut. We were feeling particularly festive. At 6:00 AM Dave left our hotel to fish. I collapsed gratefully back into bed. At 8:15 AM the phone rang.
It was my friend Dawn. She was always looking out for me. “I have to tell you something, and you have to wake up and be ready,” she said. I was instantly awake. I knew something bad had happened to her. I steeled myself.
“Roman Polanski got arrested.”
Oh God. This wasn’t her bad news. This was my bad news.
“Sam? Did you hear what I said?”
When I’m upset, I curse. I can’t help it. I become a fourteen-year-old boy. “Shit shit shit shit, what the fuck.”
“They arrested him in Switzerland,” Dawn said. “I just heard it on the news.”
Sickness, panic. Need my family. Need my mother. Need a Xanax.
CNN had the story:
Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on a decades-old arrest warrant stemming from a sex charge in California, Swiss police said Sunday.
Polanski, 76, was taken into custody trying to enter Switzerland on Saturday, Zurich police said. A spokesman for the Swiss Justice Ministry said Polanski was arrested upon arrival at the airport.
He has lived in France for decades to avoid being arrested if he enters the United States and declined to appear in person to collect his Academy Award for Best Director for “The Pianist” in 2003.
The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, acknowledging he had sex with a 13-year-old girl. But he fled the United States before he could be sentenced, and U.S. authorities have had a warrant for his arrest since 1978.
Here’s a problem: This story doesn’t mention the insanity that preceded his flight—the egomaniacal judge, the unconscionable uncertainty of the sentencing, the case being played out not in the courtroom, but in the media.
And here’s another problem: Roman Polanski’s arrest was, in a sense, my arrest. Because I am that thirteen-year-old girl.
Oh for God’s sakes, it’s all such ancient history, you might say. After all, it’s 2013: he’s eighty, I’m fifty. He is one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the world. I have a great husband, great kids, a great life. What do his problems, at this point, have to do with me?
Well, nothing. And everything.
To say that the Roman Polanski rape case was a circus is only the mildest exaggeration. For the media, there was nothing to equal its heady combination of sex, celebrity, and depravity until the O. J. Simpson trial in 1995. Just about everyone who lived through or read about this sordid chapter in Hollywood history had an opinion about the renowned director and the girl he was accused of drugging, raping, and sodomizing—me.
Opinions on the Polanski case go something like this: He was a vile pedophile whose power allowed him to escape the long arm of the law. Or: He was a troubled man whose own horrific background did not allow him to gauge the difference between a child and a young woman. And the girl? She was an innocent victim. Or, no: She was a cunning Lolita. Or, perhaps most commonly: She was a reluctant but ultimately willing player in the crazy ambitions of her stage mother, who wanted her little girl to be a star.
Who was the predator? Who was the prey? We were all suspect: Was Roman a rapist? Had my mother set up the famous director to blackmail him, using her daughter as bait? The arguments went on and on and on. Maybe the only person who lived through that time who has not weighed in on the crime and its aftermath in any significant way is . . . me. Which is why I thought it might be a good idea to tell my story.
But these thoughts only occurred to me a few months after Polanski’s arrest. That day, I was in a very different frame of mind. I was thinking: Goodbye, peace. Hello, Media Nightmare. Because I knew that whenever Polanski was in the news, I would be, too.
Ask yourself this: Would you like the craziest thing that ever happened to you as a teenager broadcast and then dissected over and over on television, in the blogosphere?
Right. I didn’t think so.
I called home and told my sons to unplug the phone—there were already thirty messages that had landed in the first few hours, and within the next couple of days my lawyer, Lawrence Silver, would be inundated. As much as I dreaded any time Roman Polanski was in the news, I never imagined that the appetite for this story would lead reporters to show up on Kauai. On my doorstep. My sons became prisoners in their own home. Photographers had staked out space in front of my property, sitting in their cars, waiting and drinking stale coffee. What did Rape Girl look like now? Was she fat, thin, pretty, wrinkly? Imagine how much my sons, who were then seventeen, twenty-one, and twenty-seven, enjoyed thinking about why their mom was getting this attention. Nobody likes to think about their mother getting kissed, never mind something like this.
As soon as I heard, I called Dave: “Sorry, fishing trip is over. We have problems. Come back now.” I called Mom, who’d been staying with my aunt up the road. “What did he do now?” she asked. It didn’t occur to her that his arrest, thirty-two years later, could have anything to do with me.
We made our way to Denver, staying overnight in a hotel near the airport. Roman’s arrest was in all the newspapers and running on the ticker on the news channels. My face was on all the televisions in the lobby bar. “Everyone’s staring,” Dave whispered. Were they? I don’t know. Maybe it was his imagination. I kept my head down. But the woman at the front desk noticed my photo in the Denver paper and upgraded us to a more secure floor. I was so grateful to that hotel, because that would be the last time I’d have any peace for the next few weeks.
In the Hawaiian airport a smattering of photographers were waiting for us. How did they even know what flight I was on? I guess all airline companies have moles. It was uncomfortable, but it was quickly over. Still, Dave and I had no choice: I couldn’t go home and face the paparazzi. We slept that night at my office. A couple of days later, an article ran that said I was “clearly upset and looking tired and drawn.” More like exhausted and furious.
By the time I dared to go home, most of the stalkerazzi had grumpily given up camping outside my door. I had to hand it to my sons; they helped. They monitored the cars parked in front of the house, and shouted at anyone who came by to gawk; my son Alex even went out and continually photographed one of the photographers until he left. They had to discourage their friends from confronting the photographers; my sons were having to be peacekeepers as well.
Over the next few days, we would receive more than two hundred calls, almost all from the press, and that doesn’t include the ones that came to Larry’s office. At the same time, my husband’s cousins—the Geimer relations in California—were dealing with people knocking on their door. Geimer was an uncommon name, and reporters figured these people might have some idea where I was and what I was up to. Probably, in the minds of these media folks, I was having horrible flashbacks from decades ago. I was—but it was horrible flashbacks of them.
Why would all this be happening now? True, the United States could have sought Polanski’s arrest and extradition worldwide at any time since 1978. But at that moment, we knew nothing. I never even realized Polanski could leave France; I had no idea he had a chalet in Switzerland and traveled, semi-covertly, in and out of several countries. At the moment all I could think was, Why would he do something so stupid? And why should I have to live through it all—again?
I called my lawyer, Larry Silver, who said, “I don’t know what this is about, either. Do nothing. I’ll find out.”
Something, or someone, had stirred up old wounds. Maybe Steven Cooley, the Republican district attorney of Los Angeles—who, not coincidentally, was running for state attorney general—felt he had to show everyone who was the big macher and push for resolution in this famously unresolved case.
I suddenly recalled how uncomfortable I’d felt for many years in California, and in Los Angeles in particular. Celebrity didn’t just count for a lot; to a certain segment of the population, it was everything. And wherever a celebrity was involved, all emotions loomed large. Adulation, yes. But retribution, too. I had this sense that the entire legal system was saying to Polanski, You think you’re better than us? Well, just wait.
The purpose of the legal system is to punish criminals, of course, and there were many ideas about what this meant for Polanski—had he been punished enough for what he did? Did he still deserve to be held accountable? Or had the punishment been bungled so stupendously that anything further was cruel and unusual? And then there was the other purpose of the judicial system: to protect victims and protect society from criminals. So what was the sense of arresting Polanski now? Did society need to be protected from him? Did I?
Over the years, I have had bad dreams about the legal morass, the publicity, the questioning in the courtroom. But I don’t think I ever dreamed about Roman or that night at Jack Nicholson’s house. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t terrible. It was. But its terribleness didn’t haunt me. Other aspects of that time did. When Roman was arrested in Switzerland, it wasn’t exactly déjà vu, but it reminded me of the sense of powerlessness I had experienced as a thirteen-year-old girl. With the passing years, it had come to seem less and less likely that Roman would ever return to the States. He would live and die a celebrated director in France, where he was beloved, and I would hold on to the anonymity I cherished. And if he were to return, I assumed it would be because he’d resolved his legal problems and come back voluntarily. How could he be arrested again, thirty-two years later?
In a blink everything had returned nearly to the way it was decades before. Roman was sitting in a jail cell, and I was being hounded by the press. It was just like all those many years ago when we first met Judge Rittenband, the man who oversaw the case: we were bound again by a legal system that valued the headlines it could generate more than the effect its actions had on individuals. His rights as a defendant, my rights as a victim, were being stomped into the ground.
As the case moved again through the courts and old atrocities were revisited, my lawyer, Larry Silver, again beseeched the court to finally make the whole thing go away.
“The victim is once again the victim,” he wrote. “Everyone claims that they are acting to vindicate justice, but Samantha sees no justice. Everyone insists that she owes them a story, but her story continues to be sad.
“She endures this life because a corrupt judge caused, understandably, Polanski to flee. No matter what his crime, Polanski was entitled to be treated fairly; he was not. The day Polanski fled was a sad day for American justice. Samantha should not be made to pay the price. She has been paying for a failed judicial and prosecutorial system.”
“This statement makes one more demand, one more request, one more plea: Leave her alone.”
· · ·
Now listen: I am not naïve. If you write a book, you’re not asking to be left alone. You’re inviting people into your life. I know that. Welcome.
But I do have a reason. So much has been written about the Polanski case, but none of it has been written by me, the person at the center of it. So many years have gone by; it’s time. I’ve had so many years to rage, to laugh, to marvel at what people say and why they say it. In a sense I want to take back ownership of my own story from those who’ve commented on it, without rebuke, for so long. Because my story is not just pure awfulness. It’s crazy and sad, but yes, sometimes funny, too. It may have been messy at times, but it’s my mess and I’m taking it back.
There is even, as we parents say, a teachable moment. We have what I think of as a Victim Industry in this country, an industry populated by Nancy Grace and Dr. Phil and Gloria Allred and all those who make money by manufacturing outrage. I’ve been part of it. If you spent years reading about yourself in the papers with the moniker “Sex Victim Girl,” you’d have a lot to say about this issue, too. But for now I’ll leave it at this: It is wrong to ask people to feel like victims, because once they do, they feel like victims in every area of their lives.
I made a decision: I wasn’t going to be a victim of anyone or for anyone. Not Roman, not the state of California, not the media. I wasn’t going to be defined by what is said about me or expected from me. I was going to tell my story, my truth, through nobody else’s perspective but my own.
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I am giving this 5 stars not just because of how well it is written, but because of the insights Samantha Geimer gives into both the Hollywood culture then and now and its effect on everything that happens there, but also the way our society has changed in its views of what happened to her 40 years ago. To say she does not play the victim is to grossly understate matters. She explains what happened and, without excusing Polanski, accepts the mistakes she made before and after the rape. And, although she clearly presents it as rape, she does not hold it responsible for ruining her life - and indeed she now has a good life. She went through some troubled times and, though the rape may have contributed to them, she acknowledges a lot of them had to do with other things unrelated to it (including simply being a teenager in those times) and most of them had to do with the way she got entrapped by our system of "justice." She makes it abundantly clear that the judicial misconduct that has made this whole thing drag on for this long is what made her and her family victims. They would all have much rather the whole thing went away at least 39-40 years ago. She proves that it is in all our best interests to avoid the justice system to the absolute extent possible because ultimately it rarely provides justice. and it didn't even come close in her case. Having attained a master's degree in psychology shortly before this happened, I can assure you that there are many things now considered pathological that were not in those days, particularly those related to sexual behavior. We seem to think we have gone the opposite direction, i. e., have become more liberal and liberated over the decades, but that is not the case. I have to believe this has a significant bearing on why Samantha has not allowed herself to be drug down into victim-hood. She is a strong person who has tried, no thanks to the media, to put this whole thing behind her almost from the moment it happened. As I say, she does not excuse Polanski, but she also does not permit him to ruin her.
In this searing and surprising memoir, Samantha Geimer, “the girl” at the center of the infamous Roman Polanski sexual assault case, breaks a virtual thirty-five-year silence to tell her story and reflect on the events of that day and their lifelong repercussions.
My Thoughts: Our first person narrator is Samantha, the victim of the 1977 episode with Roman Polanski, and the ongoing victim of the court system.
From her perspective, we learn what it was like to be questioned repeatedly prior to the actual filing of charges, and then again by various attorneys and a psychiatrist. Recalling how different attitudes were in the 1970s, especially for celebrities, it would take some maneuvering to protect the identity of the girl…but in the end, the ego of the judge in charge would ultimately change her life negatively going forward. When an agreement had been reached that could have ended the matter once and for all, the judge reneged on the deal, which led to Polanski fleeing to France.
Now many years later, despite efforts to dismiss the case, supported by the victim, the matter remains unresolved. Extradition from Switzerland was denied after the 2009 arrest, and one might think life could go on. But it hasn’t.
In concluding
The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski
The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski, Samantha wrote, in terms of Polanski: “As different as our lives have been, we do share a common sense of battle fatigue when it comes to the court system and the media. We’ve both been punished. We both want to move on.”
She has also stated that the events of that night in 1977 were not as damaging to her as the subsequent years of what the system has done to her. But despite it all, she has gained her own strength from taking matters into her own hands and writing about her experiences. An inspiring story that earned 5 stars.
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2017
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I thought this was a very good account of what happened back then. Up until now no one has heard the other side of the story and there was a lot of speculation that the girl's mother may have pushed her into this or that the girl was just very precocious. I think also there was a great deal of sympathy generated around Mr. Polanski for what he had gone through with the murder of his wife and child which had to have been a horrifying experience, but that does not excuse him. Sounds like the victim was just a typical naïve teenager who found herself in a very adult situation and really had no life experience in how to handle it. What makes this so wrong is that Mr. Polanski knew she was only 13 and took full advantage of his position and her youth. Had the girl lied and said she was much older (like over 18) and Mr. Polanski truly believed she was an adult then maybe the outcome would have been different. It's great that the girl moved on with her life and was able to forgive him though.
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2014
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I wanted to read this book because I had seen the first of the documentaries, Roman Polanski, Wanted and Desired, and had wondered if the horrible events that marked Polanski's life had damaged him to the point where any notion of morality had no meaning. While of course Samantha Geimer can't answer that question, it was interesting to read the facts of how the rape played out. It was also interesting and even reassuring to learn that Geimer's mother had not pimped her out as the press had always reported, and that she was a pretty normal American 13-year-old kid, not quite a child, but certainly not old enough for sex. Her retelling of the even gives insight into how children are sexually exploited, and even says a lot about how some men persist in getting what they want at the moment, with no sense of responsibility and no concern for the consequences of their behavior. Not least of all, this book sheds a bright light on the tabloid industry, where no invasion of privacy is too much and any person's disaster or tragedy is fair game. Very interesting book involving many facets of American society.
5.0 out of 5 starsSuperbly written, a masterful analysis of her case
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2017
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Roman Polanski's victim, raped by him when she was 13. Many people will have prejudices. They will think that she enticed him or led him on, or that her mother encouraged the sexual relationship to make money out of it. They will think that poor Roman Polanski has suffered enough and that his genius demands that he should be spared any more suffering, and that if there are demands to extradite him and put him on trial it must surely be due to his victim's implacable demand for vengeance. And they will think that she is still essentially a 13 year old nobody who should keep silent and stop attracting attention to herself.
All of the above prejudices are totally wide of the mark. The 13 year old girl has now become a highly intelligent woman who has spoken about her ordeal with great insight, humour and analytical skill. Now that we've had the scandals of Weinstein and Kevin Spacey and all the rest of them, Samantha Geimer's voice really does deserve to be listened to. Her basic proposition is one that offends many feminists, and it is that rape isn't the worst possible thing that can happen to you, and that the ordeal of the court system is rather more hurtful and damaging than the rape itself. The justice system that continues to pursue Polanski is wholly outside her control. As she says: "my family and I simply wanted him to admit what he'd done and then vanish from our lives. I figured by this time he was already pretty damn sorry he'd done it. Whatever it cost for me to go back to being a normal young teenager, that was enough justice for me.". This book is co-authored by her lawyer and it therefore includes some analysis of the relevant applications and motions and case law all of which is fascinating to any lawyers reading it, as well as to the general public who probably would benefit from reading about how the law works in these cases. As a child, she was not protected from the demands of the press or allowed the dignity of having a normal life. In fact, there was no law to prevent the victims of sexual assaults being named by the Press, though child perpetrators did have that right to anonymity. Whether by reason of the vicious rumours about her character or the sanctimonious demands from those who think it is still her responsibility to demand that Polanski be properly punished, she illustrates why women might still be reluctant to report such crimes. But what we do see in this excellent book is that the person whom we perhaps assumed to be a dumb 13 year old is a real person with thoughts and feelings and as it turns out, great intelligence. The judges and the law-makers should pay attention to her. She can tell them how the law might be improved.
3.0 out of 5 starsInteresting point of view, bravely written
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 9, 2013
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An interview with Geimer in The Guardian and a review in The Observer by Victoria Coren made me buy this book. What Geimer has to say about the nature of 'victimhood' and the media's need for victims who feed the public's desire for stories of misery that make their own lives seem better is, to me, important. Geimer repeatedly makes the point that she is a survivor, not a victim, of Polanski's crime. It is tragic that Western society is incapable of celebrating that, and prefers to cast doubt on the character of rape survivors by implying that they must be sluts because they haven't allowed the crime to cripple them. Geimer is eloquent about this. Understandably, she comes across as angry at times, and occasionally the narrative flow suffers because of the repetition of complaints. The third section of the book felt like it was going round in circles at times, and threw up some contradictory attitudes. But I haven't been raped, so can't possibly know what it's like to reconstruct your life and deal with the aftermath of violation like that. I can understand Geimer's wish to be free of the story and not be framed as a victim every time Polanski is in the news, but I agree more strongly with the argument by Jaclyn Friedman quoted in the book that "Rape is a crime against the social fabric that binds all of us together... when the perpetrator goes unpunished, it makes all of us less safe."
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Director, The Dodgy Judge, the Girl and her Mother
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2015
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This book has turned out to be an unexpected delight in that it is refreshing and honest and thought-provoking. I’m the same age from the same town and my step-father worked on this case so I grew up with it in the air. I was always so curious to know the full story. This is the full story. It's a real eye-opener regarding the dodgy judge and the media scrum.
