Victim requests Polanski case be dismissed

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- The woman Roman Polanski admitted having sex with when she was 13 in 1977 in Los Angeles is asking the criminal case against him be dropped.

"I have dealt with the difficulties of being a victim, have surmounted and surpassed them with one exception," CNN quoted Samantha Geimer as saying in court papers she filed Monday, requesting the case be dismissed. "Every time this case is brought to the attention of the court, great focus is made of me, my family, my mother and others. That attention is not pleasant to experience and is not worth maintaining over some irrelevant legal nicety, the continuation of the case."

She said that by not dropping the case, the district attorney's office is "once again (giving) great publicity to the lurid details of those events, for all to read again. True as they may be, the continued publication of those details cause harm to me."

Polanski pleaded guilty in 1978 to unlawful sexual intercourse with the girl, but fled the United States before he could be sentenced. He has never returned to the country and a warrant is still in effect for his arrest.

Lawyers for the French-born film director, who is now 75, recently asked a Los Angeles court to dismiss the case based on purported new evidence featured in the HBO documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." Polanski's lawyers say the film shows "repeated, unlawful and unethical misconduct" by the Los Angeles district attorney's office and the late judge who initially oversaw Polanski's case.

CNN said the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office offered no immediate

response to Geimer's request.