A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski
In this searing memoir, Samantha Geimer, "the girl" at the center of the infamous Roman Polanski sexual assault case, breaks a virtual thirty-five year silence to tell her story and reflect on the events of that day and their lifelong repercussions.
March 1977, Southern California. Roman Polanski drives a rented Mercedes along Mulholland Drive to Jack Nicholson's house. Sitting next to him is an aspiring model named Samantha Geimer. She is thirteen years old.
The undisputed facts of what happened in the following hours appear in the court record: Roman spent hours taking pictures of Samantha-on a kitchen counter, topless in a Jacuzzi, sitting naked next to the photographer. Wine and Quaaludes were consumed, balance and innocence were lost, and a young girl's life was altered forever-eternally cast as a background player in her own story.
For months on end, the Polanski case dominated the media in the US and abroad. But even with the extensive coverage, much about that day-and the girl at the center of it all-remains a mystery. Samantha, as much as Polanski, has been a fugitive since the events occurred, and her few public testimonies have been largely in reaction to Polanski's films, arrests, and releases. Virtually the entire narrative of Samantha's life, including details of the rape itself, has been left untold.
Taking us far beyond the headlines, The Girl reveals a thirteen-year-old who was simultaneously wise beyond her years and yet terribly vulnerable. By telling her story in full for the first time, Samantha reclaims her identity and tells how her life was irrevocably altered through one of the most notorious and complex cases of all time.
