Samantha Geimer, the girl who Roman Polanski raped when she was 13, tells her story

36 years after she was raped at age 13 by director Roman Polanski, Samantha Geimer is finally telling her side of the story. In a controversial move she decided to make the cover of her book The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski a photograph he took of her while they lounged at Jack Nicholson’s house.

Polanski told her he was taking the photographs to be in a big magazine, and fed her champagne and quaaludes (an addictive sleeping pill that was heavily abused in the 70s before the DEA shut down production of the drug.) While she was extremely underage and drugged up, they engaged in a sexual act in Nicholson’s hot tub, and then he took her home to show her family the photos he took. Geimer says that while she knows it was rape because of her age, she didn’t “experience” it as rape. She says she didn’t realize it was illegal, and that he could go to jail for it.

After he was charged with “unlawful sex with a minor” in the U.S., Polanksi fled to France, where he has lived ever since. In 2009 details of the story resurfaced when he was arrested in route to a film festival in Switzerland. At the time Geimer spoke out publicly, saying that she had “gotten over” whatever Polanksi had done to her and asked the press to stop writing anything about it. “I have survived, indeed prevailed, against whatever harm Mr. Polanski may have caused me as a child,” she said then.”I got over it a long time ago. True as they may be, the continued publication of those details causes harm to me, my beloved husband, my three children and my mother.”

It’s interesting now, then, that she’s decided to bring it all back out into the public eye by publishing a book about it. She said on The Today Show this morning that this is different because she’s the one telling the story, not reacting to whatever’s being said in the press.

She’s also in contact, via email, with Polanski, and is sticking by him in solidarity. “People are still coming after both of us. We’re both still being treated unfairly,” she told Britain’s The Times. “It makes sense to be on the same team. We’ve both been punished. We both want to move on. We both might be considered victims.”

The Girl releases tomorrow, September 17, 2013.