Saturday, October 24, 2009

Update: LA Times website replaces photo of youthful Roman Polanski in promotion of article about his rape of 13-year-old girl when he was 43




Although Polanski was 43 when he was arrested for the anal rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977, the paper's website used a detail of a photo of the fresh-faced 32-year-old Polanski with Jill St. John at the New York premiere of Bunny Lake is Missing in 1965.

The site added insult to the girl's injury when it juxtaposed the young Polanski with a photo of the smiling victim.


Why the paper chose to promote a front-page Sunday feature about a 43-year-old's rape of a 13-year-old with a shot that makes the admitted perpetrator seem like "a kid" was also a mystery to the article's writer, who emailed us to say:

"Not sure exactly. Good point though. The one they had up earlier was when he was 43, as will be the one in the paper."

Sometime after our exchange, the Times website switched to a photo taken in October 1979, after Polanski had fled sentencing for the sex assault:


In a photo gallery added to the online feature, it's revealed that the repalcement headshot is a detail of Polanski with 18-year-old Nastassja Kinski, star of his film Tess (in his autobiography, Polanski admitted engaging in intercourse with Kinski when she was 15):


The Sunday print preview edition of the Times features a large version of this photo from the 1977 legal proceedings:


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