The Polanski Case: Why Using the Word 'Rape' Matters

Roman Polanski may be racking up some high-profile support in America, as my Politics Daily colleagues Mary, Bonnie and Domenica have noted, but abroad he's losing his friends in government fast.

Both the French and Polish governments have announced they are dropping their support of Polanski, just days after foreign ministers from both countries appealed to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for clemency, right before she was set to chair a United Nations' meeting on sexual violence against women.

Even more important than the announcement that they wouldn't officially support Polanski, though, may be words they used to do it. Both finally did what so many people are still unwilling to do with the Polanski case: they called it a rape.

In 1977, Polanski, the director of "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby," pled guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl at the home of actor Jack Nicholson. After serving 42 days in jail, Polanski skipped the country, became a French citizen, later made "The Pianist," won a second Academy Award and stayed out of jurisdictions with U.S. extradition reciprocity.

The girl, now the mother of two, says she has moved forward with her life. But shortly after the crime, she testified that Polanski, then 44, gave her sedatives and alcohol, told her to pose topless and repeatedly raped her over several hours.

"The rape of a minor," a spokesman for the French government said this week, is "a serious affair." And Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the BBC it was a "case of rape and of punishment for having sex with a child." Meanwhile, Polanski's supporters have been coming up with a host of ways to dance around the word "rape": "There is rape, and there is rape," Debra Tate, Polanski's sister-in-law, somewhat confusingly told the "Today Show" before going on to describe it as a "consensual matter." A "so-called crime" was the description from producer Harvey Weinstein. Or, most bizarrely of all, the nonrape-rape: "Something else," Whoopi Goldberg called it. "But not rape-rape."

The refusal to call what Polanski did rape, and to call Polanski a rapist and punish him as such, chips away at the word's definition -- and that has an effect on future rapes and on their prosecution. Among the arguments that his supporters have used is that he is unlikely to be a repeat offender. Setting aside for a moment the entirely incredible idea that someone should get a pass on rape because it was just the one time, there's something else to consider: The excuses for rape, and the redefinitions that Polanski's apologists have put forth, are going to linger even after the case has been wrapped up. The Polanski case is going to be resolved, one would hope, with a prison sentence.

But I worry that the real legacy of the Polanski case is going to be a continued reluctance to call rape what it is: rape.