Day Two: LA Times website now displays several photos of an accurately middle-aged Roman Polanski for feature on his rape of a 13-year-old girl

It took a day, but as a result of our insistence, editors at the Los Angeles Times have presented an accurate visual presentation of Roman Polanski in its website promotion of a feature story that recounts the sordid, explicit details of his 13-year-old rape victim's grand jury testimony.

Tabloid Baby was the first to direct readers to the girl's graphic grand jury testimony, on the day Polanski was arrested in Switzerland, 32 years after he fled the United States to escape sentencing. Close to a month later, the LA Times ran the story on its website and as a front page come-on in its Weekend print edition, and featured a photo of a baby-faced Polanski, a dozen years younger than he was when he admittedly anally raped the child. The photo selection and juxtaposition did make it appear as if the age difference between predator and victim was not so great (it was 30 years), and subtly lessen the impact of Polanski's crime. The paper replaced the misleading photo late yesterday, after our staff reached out to the reporter.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

This morning, the website has gone overboard, with several photos of an adult Polanski-- and without the additional photo of the smiling young victim.

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

More than ten hours after we pointed put that the Los Angeles Times was using a photo of a youthful Roman Polanski to promote its sexually-explicit recounting of his 13-year-old victim's grand jury testimony of her anal rape by the then 43-year-old celebrity director in 1977, the paper's website has replaced the 1965 picture with one showing Polanski in 1979.

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:

Why did the LA Times choose a photo of a young, boyish Roman Polanski for its late and lurid feature on his child rape case?

Los Angeles Times photo

The day Roman Polanski was picked up in Switzerland on a fugitive warrant issued in 1978 after his guilty plea in a child rape case, we led our readers immediately to transcripts of the 13-year-old victim's testimony about her ordeal with the 43-year-old celebrity director that included drugging her with Champagne and Quaaludes, oral copulation and anal sodomization.


So it's interesting that this morning, close to a month after Polanski's September 27th arrest and weeks after the expected Hollywood brouhaha of support has died down in wake of the stark details of the young girl's words, that the Los Angeles Times chooses to run a lurid recreation of the testimony under the guise of it being somehow "lost in the spectacle."


What's more interesting is the Times website editors' apparent decision to lesson the blow to Polanski and his high-profile Hollywood supporters by using a photo of the criminal apparently taken when he was in his baby-faced early twenties, before he let his hair grow out int he style of the day-- a stylistic move the took at least a decade before he, at age 43, admittedly preyed upon a 13-year-old child.

It appears to be a subtle and subliminal flourish. In the Los Angeles Times photo chosen to represent today's extended story, Polanski looks like a boy. When he ran away, he was a man.

Roman Polanski 1977-1978

Girl describes rape by Roman Polanski

Yes, sometimes justice does seem to move in strange ways. Two days after the death of the woman who forty years ago slaughtered his wife and her unborn child, Roman Polanski is arrested in Switzerland on a 31-year-old arrest warrant for raping a thirteen-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson's house. Sure, Polanski's a great artist and he survived the Holocaust and a recent documentary showered him with great sympathy and the victim has given him her forgiveness, but before you start feeling too sorry for the perverted sonofabitch, take a stroll over to the Smoking Gun website and read the grand jury testimony from the victim.


He's lived pretty nicely since he fled to Paris all those years ago.