Samantha Geimer, the woman who as a child was infamously drugged and raped by famed filmmaker Roman Polanski in 1977, is finally telling her side of the story and says she's sick of being referred to as a "sex abuse victim."
Geimer, now 50, has stayed silent for more than three decades about the scandal that rocked Hollywood but now she's speaking out in a new memoir, "The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski," which was released Tuesday.
"I'm personally tired of everybody telling
lies about me and about what happened," she told the Los Angeles Times. "So now I'm saying my truth.... It's interesting to be able to do it on my own terms. My whole life has been reacting to what's happening to me. This is a different thing for me, to just be trying to tell the story."
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Geimer was just 13 when Polanski took her to Jack Nicholson's Hollywood Hills home so he could photograph her for French Vogue magazine in March 1977. According to court testimony, Polanski gave her champagne and a Quaalude before having sex with her. He was 43 at the time.
A grand jury charged Polanski with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd, and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. Polanski eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
But he fled the country before his sentencing and has remained in Europe ever since, despite attempts to have him extradited.
In her new book, Geimer details her feelings about Polanski and says she forgives him. She even used one of the photographs he took of her on the memoir's cover.
"How do I feel about him? I hope he is well," Geimer told "Today's" Savannah Guthrie this week. "I was 13, that makes it rape. But I didn’t experience it that way. In my mind, I didn't know that was illegal. I didn’t understand he could go to jail for it. I was young."
Through the years Polanski has maintained the open support of many in Hollywood and in the media. Known for his critically acclaimed films "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown," Polanski won a Best Director Oscar in 2003 for "The Pianist."
Polanski's second wife Sharon Tate was murdered by the Charles Manson gang in 1969.
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