ROMAN POLANSKI’S sexual assault victim made an impassioned plea Friday to end the fugitive director’s four-decade legal saga, saying she felt more abused by the legal justice system than by the man who she said drugged, raped and sodomized her when she was 13. “The trauma of the ordeal that followed was so great that, you know, the brief encounter with him that evening that was unpleasant just faded and paled,” Samantha Geimer said outside a courtroom in Los Angeles Superior Court. “It just wasn’t as traumatic for me as everybody would like to believe it was.” Geimer asked Judge Scott Gordon to either dismiss the case outright or sentence the Oscar winner to the six weeks he served in prison during a court-ordered evaluation before he fled the country on the eve of sentencing in 1978. “I implore you to consider taking action to finally bring this matter to a close as an act of mercy to myself and my family,” Geimer said. She also called for an end to “a 40-year sentence which has been imposed on the victim of a crime as well as the perpetrator.” In downplaying the crime and saying she empathized with Polanski, Geimer took a position at odds with some sexual assault victims. Gordon, who praised Geimer for her courage and elegant words, said he would take the matter under consideration. He has consistently ruled against Polanski’s repeated requests for similar outcomes and has said the director must appear in court to resolve the case. Polanski contends he is the victim of judicial misconduct because the now-deceased judge who handled the case suggested in private remarks that he would renege on a plea agreement. It called for no more time behind bars for the director after he spent 42 days in a prison undergoing a diagnostic screening. Geimer, 54, had long supported Polanski’s efforts to end the case that limits his movements to three European countries, but it was the first time she spoke in favor of him in court. Polanski agreed to pay Geimer over US$600,000 to settle a lawsuit in 1993. (SD-Agencies) | 