When Is Rape Not Rape?

TT Note: Rape is rape is rape. All day long it is wrong. All day long this case was with a man manipulating a child for his pleasure. Excuse me, but rape is rape, and it's against the law.

/PRNewswire/ -- The defenders of film director Roman Polanski - charged with raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977 and then fleeing the country - are starting down a slippery slope by trying to redefine what rape is.

"It wasn't rape-rape," comedian and talk-show host Whoopi Goldberg said on The View on Sept. 29. The next day, Debra Tate, sister of Polanski's murdered wife, Sharon, said on the Today show that "There's rape, and then there's rape," arguing that it was consensual sex even though the victim was 13.

"There are really two perspectives here," says Shannon Gilreath, Wake Forest University Law Professor for Interdisciplinary Study and a nationally recognized scholar on issues of equality, sexual minorities, and constitutional interpretation. "One is the perspective of people who look for any reason imaginable to excuse the victimization of women and girls that is rampant: it happened long ago, she was mature for her age--she wanted it. On the other side of this are those of us who are saying that every victim matters, even those victimized by people rich enough to evade jurisdiction for many years." But Gilreath says under the law, statutory rape is a clear offense, and at 13 years old, the girl was underage.

Many in the entertainment industry have flocked to Polanski's defense, questioning whether the act was strictly rape or not and pointing to the amount of time that has passed since the case, possible judicial misconduct, and the fact that the girl, now in her forties, would prefer that the case simply go away.

But where is the outrage in the media and entertainment industry for the victim, asks Gilreath.

"Maybe the missing piece of this discussion is that what is being turned into a major media event, full of talking-head outrage because it involves Roman Polanski, is real life as it is experienced by millions of women every day. And, like it or not, it could happen to every woman. Until we face up to the pervasiveness of a culture of violence that sexualizes dominance, that turns male dominance over women into sex, then we won't be able to face it down. And women and girls will continue to be raped and worse unnoticed. Where is the outrage, where is the media blitz about that?"

Polanski, now 76, fled the country in 1978 right before his sentencing after he admitted to having sex with the girl. As part of a 1977 plea deal, he pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor while prosecutors promised to drop rape, sodomy and other charges after sentencing. A judge was to determine his sentence. He was arrested in Switzerland Sept. 26, and the extradition is being handled there.

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