The woman who Roman Polanski raped when she was just 13 years old has slammed director Quentin Tarantino, after he said it wasn’t rape and she was ‘down to party’.
Samantha Geimer is speaking out after a 15-year-old interview resurfaced in which Tarantino defended his fellow director against the rape accusations, despite the fact Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor before fleeing to France in 1978.
The now 54-year-old said: ‘It’s not a big deal to me what people think. It doesn’t make a difference in my life. I know what happened. I do not need other people weighing in on what it’s like getting raped at 13.
Victim: Samantha Geimer, left aged 13, is speaking out after a 15-year-old interview resurfaced in which Tarantino defended Roman Polanski, right, against the rape accusations
Geimer said: ‘I’m not upset, but I would probably feel better if he realizes now that he was wrong, after 15 years, after hearing the facts. Nobody has to be pissed off on my behalf’
Claims: The 15-year-old interview started going viral earlier this week after Uma Thurman spoke to the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein and Quentin Tarantino
‘I’m not upset, but I would probably feel better if he realizes now that he was wrong, after 15 years, after hearing the facts. Nobody has to be pissed off on my behalf. I’m okay.’
She added to the New York Daily News: ‘He was wrong and I bet he knows it. I hope he doesn’t make an ass out of himself and keep talking that way.’
Audio from a Howard Stern interview with the director in 2003 – in which he spends more than eight minutes defending Polanski – started going viral earlier this week after an interview with Uma Thurman was published in the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein.
In it, she also revealed that Tarantino forced her to perform a deadly car stunt on the set of Kill Bill which has left her permanently injured. It then emerged that Tarantino strangled Uma and Diane Kruger for separate movie scenes.
Geimer said she has since made peace with what happened, especially after writing her 2013 book, ‘The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski’ in which she details how he plied her with alcohol and a Quaalude before raping and sodomizing her at Jack Nicholson’s compound in the Hollywood Hills.
A 15-year-old interview in which Quentin Tarantino (left) passionately defends Roman Polanski (right) has resurfaced
She told the Daily News in another 2015 interview that she believes the time Polanski has already served is enough after he spent six weeks in prison during a court-ordered evaluation before fleeing the country.
She said at the time: ‘I have forgiven him and moved on. He pleaded guilty, served his time, and I’m not quite sure what anyone expects beyond that. That’s satisfactory to me. It should be to everyone.’
Despite pleading guilty, Tarantino insisted on the Howard Stern show that Polanski was not a rapist and claimed the girl ‘was down to party with Roman’ – even when co-host Robin Quivers reminded him that she had been drugged and plied with alcohol.
‘He didn’t rape a 13-year-old. It was statutory rape, that’s not quite the same thing,’ Tarantino said.
‘He had sex with a minor. That’s not rape. To me, when you use the word rape, you’re talking about violent, throwing them down… it’s like one of the most violent crimes in the world.
‘You can’t throw the word ‘rape’ around, it’s like throwing the word ‘racist’ around. It doesn’t apply to everything people use it for. He was guilty of having sex with a minor.’
The 2003 interview resurfaced after Uma Thurman spoke about her car crash on the set of Kill Bill, directed by Tarantino (pictured with Thurman in 2003)
Shockingly, Tarantino continued: ‘She wanted to have it. Dated the guy… and by the way, we’re talking about America’s morals, we’re not talking about the morals in Europe and everything.’
When Stern questioned why a ‘grown man’ didn’t understand that sex with a minor was wrong, Tarantino again jumped to Polanski’s defence.
‘Look, she was down with it and she’s talked about it. I’m right, she’s talked about it. Now she’s an adult, she’s got a whole other story.’
After a transcript of the victim’s testimony is read out, Tarantino doubled down.
‘Of course she’s gonna say this because she knows she was in trouble with her mom,’ he said.
‘His version sounds more likely, sounds really really more likely.’
When asked why Polanski couldn’t just get a woman his own age, Tarantino replied: ‘He likes girls!’
And when pushed about why he is offering such an impassioned defense of Polanski, Tarantino claimed: ‘I’ve met him once but he’s not a friend or anything.’
In an interview with the New York Times last week, Thurman (with Tarantino, second from right) also alleged she was sexually assaulted by disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein (right)
But he admits, that if it had been his daughter in the situation, ‘there would have been a bullet in Polanski’s head.’
He added: ‘I’d beat the hell out of him, but the situation was not that she was against this, she was down to party with Roman.
‘I don’t believe its rape for these 13-year-old party girls.’
He then questioned the interviewers: ‘When did you guys turn into Bill O’Reilly?’
O’Reilly was fired from Fox News last year over allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and racial discrimination from former female colleagues.
Tarantino’s interview with Howard Stern resurfaced a day after the New York Times piece in which Thurman spoke about the crash on the set of Kill Bill.
She has since posted footage of it on Instagram, writing that she doesn’t believe Tarantino had withheld it maliciously and they are now on good terms.
Tarantino has said that he had not considered the driving shot on the Mexico set to be a stunt at the time, before Thurman lost control of the Karmann Ghia and crashed into a palm tree.
‘I am guilty, for putting her in that car, but not the way that people are saying I am guilty of it,’ he told Deadline.
‘It’s the biggest regret of my life, getting her to do that stunt. ‘
The story of the crash accompanied allegations made by Thurman (pictured together in 2016) that she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein at the Savoy Hotel in London