What Roman Polanski really feared back in 1978

It's piquant to think of Roman Polanski, a Polish Jew whose mother died in a concentration camp, being dragged back in chains to the US at the age of 76 to face the music, passing in the airport terminal some even older German being hauled out of the US to stand trial in Europe for the crimes buried in his past as a concentration camp guard.

Putting the distant past on trial is, in terms of ratings, a chancy business. These days the 85-year-old bit players in the Final Solution don't arouse the passions they used to. So far as old Nazis are concerned, geezer renditions now prompt a certain embarrassment at the trouble and expense involved. Why not leave the ancient camp guard to rot in his nursing home in Cleveland, goose-stepping into oblivion, arm in arm with Herr Alzheimer?

Not so Polanski. The passions his case arouse here are vivid because sexual tolerance has shrivelled so fiercely since 1977 when Polanski fatefully crossed paths with the 13-year old Samantha Geimer.

Is it possible that today lawyers for a 44-year-old film director would be able to negotiate 45 days in jail on charges of rape of a 13-year-old girl, admitting to vaginal, anal and oral penetrations after feeding the young woman champagne and Quaaludes?

Child molesters are often raped and don’t get out of state prison alive

Polanski signed a court document admitting to these activities at Jack Nicholson's house on Mulholland Drive. Defence and prosecution lawyers agreed he could avoid trial, and Ms Geimer be spared courtroom interrogation, if he pled guilty to one charge of unlawful sex with a minor. It's surmised that hefty pay-offs were also made to Ms Geimer's family.

The answer is that money can still talk persuasively but such a deal would be next to impossible today, particularly if the charges slithered into public view. A public defender on the West Coast I consulted on the matter paled at the thought of even trying to negotiate such a settlement.

Back in 1978 Polanski's fear was not so much that Superior Court Judge Lawrence Rittenband (now dead) would throw out the plea agreement and force him to stand trial, but that he might tack on another 45 days on top of the 45 he had already served in the prison hospital where he'd been held for psychiatric observation.

For the second six weeks he might be put in the general prison population, where 'short eyes' ­ as child molesters are called ­ get very rough treatment from other inmates, are often raped and in many cases don't get out of state prison alive.

Websites here featuring internet commentary on the Polanski case tilt 99 per cent ferociously against the Polish film director. Many citizens openly express the hope that he will be brought back for prolonged incarceration, with punishment as described in the preceding paragraph.

Savage denunciations of 'left-wing Hollywood' ­ now rallying in support of Polanski - indicate that this is all part of the ongoing demonisation of the Sixties and all that ebullient decade spawned. Caught in the line of fire is Samantha's mother, retrospectively savaged for letting her daughter go alone into a modeling session with the director of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown.

Samantha herself, now married with three children, says she has no particular interest in seeing Polanski put away, and is now in a different space. But she does add that she would like the moral concerns aroused by the case to be focused on similar exploitation of young girls now.

Denunciations of Hollywood show this is part of the demonisation of the 1960sA case that often comes up is that of Neal Goldschmidt, the youngest mayor in the history of Portland, Oregon. In his single term as mayor in the 1970s, when he was in his mid-30s, he initiated an affair with his 14-year-old babysitter that lasted three years, with many years of hush money pay-offs thereafter.

Goldschmidt never faced charges because details of the relationship only came to light in 2003, when the statute of limitations had come into play. But disclosure did finish off Goldshmidt's career in public life.

Not so lucky have been several female school teachers in the past few years, given savage sentences for initiating sexual relations with students, one of them a 16-year-old fortunate enough ­ - so many an American man ventured to admit ­ - to have been waylaid by a spectacularly attractive pedagogue in her middle thirties.

The new prudery is in full swing in the courtroom and the daytime TV shows, even as teenagers swap pictures of their breasts and genitals on their cellphones. If only Polanski and Samantha had had iPhones back in 1977 perhaps he would not be sitting in a Swiss jail right now.

But no. Polanski wouldn't have settled for mere imagery. After all, he did have John Huston say in Chinatown: "Most people never have to face the fact they are capable of anything."