Polanski Child Sex Victim Speaks Out

Jan. 30, 2003 -- It was 25 years ago this week that director Roman Polanski became a fugitive from justice. His crime, drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, shocked the American public.

Polanski had pleaded guilty in the case but, faced with the prospect of serious jail time, he fled just before sentencing to Paris, where he has remained an exile from Hollywood and the United States.

Now, 25 years later, his victim, Samantha Geimer, says she hopes the director will return to America so the whole ordeal can be put to rest.

"You know after the publicity came out and stuff, I knew it was just as bad for him as it was for me," Geimer told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "I'm sure if he could I'm sure he'd go back and wouldn't do it again."

With the recent success of Polanksi's movie The Pianist, the director is back in the news and so is Geimer. Now 38 and the mother of three, Geimer says it has become clear to her that her ordeal won't end until his does.

"I would love to see him resolve it," Geimer said. "And I think we've always had the position of, you know, the sooner the better. For the whole last 20 years, if we could just put this to rest that would be great."

Big Hopes for Hollywood

In 1977, Polanski asked Geimer's mother if he could photograph the 13-year-old girl for a magazine, and her mother allowed a private photo shoot.

Geimer says she thought the photos would help her acting career.

"It was just to get more jobs, you know," she said. "I had done some commercials. I didn't really want to be a model, but I though it'd be helpful, still."

It didn't take long after their initial meeting for Geimer to feel uncomfortable around the much older director, she said.

"Actually it went fine, but then he asked me to change, and change in front of him, and stuff," she said. "It didn't, you know, feel right and I didn't want to go back thus to the second shoot. I didn't at that time have the self-confidence to tell my mother and everyone, 'No I'm not going to go.'"