Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Roman Polanski is an enormously talented film director who has suffered tragedy time and again. He is also an admitted child molester who fled the U.S. rather than face punishment.

In the wake of his arrest in Switzerland last weekend at the request of California prosecutors, supporters seem to believe his art should absolve him of responsibility for his crime and for fleeing from the law.

We like to say in America that no man is above the law, not even a president. But when it comes to Polanski, his supporters say it’s an outrage that the California prosecutors don’t forgive and try to forget, as his victim has.

After all, this is a great artist.

“A man of such talent, recognized throughout the world, recognized especially in the country that arrests him -- all this is not very pleasant,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

The fact that authorities picked him up when he landed in Zurich to accept an industry award aggravates the ire.

“It seems inadmissible,” reads one petition signed by scores of filmmakers and actors, almost all of them men, “that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.”

Polanski’s supporters point out it has been 32 years since the crime, during which he has given the world some of the most haunting and emotionally provocative films made.

Fearing Judge

As for running from the law, a 2008 documentary reported he did so because he had reason to fear a showboating sentencing judge would reject the prosecution’s recommendation for probation.

And while we’re getting this part of the argument out of the way, let me add that spending government resources, especially California’s sparse ones, pursuing a 32-year-old case which the victim wants dismissed, hardly seems wise.

But the rest of the facts are these. Polanski, then 44, took a 13-year-old girl to Jack Nicholson’s house for a photo shoot when the actor was absent. There, Polanski gave her Champagne, a Quaalude, took a dip in a hot tub with her and had sex with her.

More specifically, he raped her twice and performed oral sex, against her protests, however meek, “because I was afraid of him,” she told a grand jury.

You can’t read her testimony without realizing how young she was and how malleable to suggestion from this accomplished man 31 years older than she. He should have done time, and lots of it, for taking advantage of her like he did.

Guilty Plea

But the girl, Samantha Gailey (now Samantha Geimer), wanted to avoid a trial, so Polanski admitted guilt to illegal intercourse and the prosecutor dropped the other five charges. He spent 42 days in jail, which would have been his entire punishment under an agreement his lawyer worked out with the district attorney.

But Judge Laurence Rittenband was overheard the day before sentencing bragging at his country club that he would send Polanski away for the rest of his life, according to the documentary. So the director left his Mercedes at Los Angeles International Airport and fled to his native France, where he holds dual citizenship and where he has lived the past three decades.

So let’s say the now-dead judge let his love of publicity overtake his sense of justice. Rittenband’s interviews with reporters while the case was pending and his remarks at the country club would surely have been grounds for removing him from the case.

In fact, Rittenband was eventually kicked off the still- open case.

Public Interest

The scarier thing for Polanski would have been that even a wise judge would have been well within his legal authority to reject the plea deal, which is, after all, an agreement between opposing sides.

Just because adversaries agree doesn’t mean the deal is in the public’s interest. That is why we have judges. And that is why U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff threw out a $33 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bank of America Corp., for example.

And from a criminal justice perspective, you have to pause at the leniency of a 42-day sentence for sex with a 13-year-old girl, made more vulnerable by drugs and alcohol.

Samantha Geimer has told reporters she long ago got over the trauma and wishes the prosecution would drop the case.

Representing the People

Prosecutors should consider victims’ wishes but not be dictated by them. The district attorney represents the people of the state, not any one victim.

Besides, Polanski was arrested and held for extradition specifically because he fled the reach of the law, not because of the underlying crime. And that is a slap in the face to the whole system.

Yes, the system is flawed. And you can’t blame Polanski for wanting to just leave. The ghoulish coverage of the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, and the media orgy that followed his sex crime no doubt was intolerable. Besides, he had already lived as a fugitive under more difficult circumstances, fleeing a Polish ghetto as a child after his mother’s death in Auschwitz.

The shame is that it has taken this long to sort everything out. The blame for that lies with Polanski for refusing to answer for evading the law.

Celebrate the man’s talent, honor his contributions to filmmaking. However gifted he is, Polanski’s art can’t serve as a reason to ignore his terrible crime or his refusal to answer for it.

(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 29, 2009 21:00 EDT