DOCUMENT: Celebrity, Crime

Roman Polanski, Fugitive Director

Sympathetic new film can't conceal creepiness of fugitive director

Roman Polanski

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Roman Polanski, Fugitive Director

JUNE 10--With last night's HBO premiere of a sympathetic new documentary about Roman Polanski's underage sex escapades, we're reprising the harrowing 1977 grand jury testimony of the 13-year-old California girl with whom the director had sex after plying her with Champagne and a Quaalude at the Los Angeles home of Jack Nicholson.

Polanski, now 74, fled the U.S. for Europe before he could be sentenced for the sex crime and remains a fugitive from justice.

In graphic testimony, Samantha Gailey described the illicit encounter with Polanski, which began with her posing naked in a Jacuzzi for him as he purportedly snapped photos for French Vogue. From there, Polanski approached her in a bedroom of Nicholson's Mulholland Drive home and, despite her demands that he "keep away," sought to kiss Gailey.

The teenager, an aspiring model, testified that Polanski, 43 at the time, later performed a sex act on her and "started to have intercourse with me." She also testified that Polanski "put his penis in my butt" after asking her, "Would you want me to go in through your back?"

Gailey, now known as Samantha Geimer, is interviewed in "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," which was first screened earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. (30 pages)