Christine M. Flowers: Polanski's Perversions

EVERY NOW and then, life provides us with an interesting sort of symmetry.

Last week, Susan Atkins, one of the female disciples of Charles Manson, died in prison - four decades after vivisecting a nine-months pregnant Sharon Tate. A few days later, Tate's husband at the time, Roman Polanski, was intercepted in Switzerland and held on a U.S. warrant more than three decades after becoming a fugitive.

The ironies abound. Atkins committed one of the most notorious and heinous crimes of the last century, equal to if not surpassing the O.J. Simpson carnival in its scope and impact on pop culture. Polanski, who lost his wife and unborn child to Atkins' bestiality, didn't kill anyone. But he did commit another sort depravity - drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl back in 1977.

The charges were later reduced to unlawful sexual intercourse as part of a plea bargain in which Polan-ski agreed to plead guilty with the understanding that the measly 42 days he'd already spent behind bars was all the time he'd have to serve. Still, rape by any other name is still rape, even by the lower moral standards of Babylon, Calif. (And of Whoopi Goldberg, who said Polan-ski hadn't comitted "rape rape" - you know, the really bad kind.)

But the rich, celebrated and successful director believed the judge wouldn't agree to the deal, so he fled for more sympathetic European climes.

The woman who murdered Polanski's beautiful wife and their much-desired unborn child paid the price for her inhuman acts. She spent the rest of her life behind bars and, thankfully, was repeatedly denied parole. Despicable as she was and deeply deserving of a needle in her vein, Atkins at least paid a substantial price for her sins. In her case, the system worked.

BUT POLANSKI, with European arrogance, spit on that same system that did justice by his wife and child, sneering from his gilded perch among the international glitterati. Unhappy with the prospect of serving a justifiably long prison sentence, the well-connected pedophile thumbed his nose at his victim and the state of California, some of whose residents later awarded him with an Oscar for his movie "The Pianist."

Although I have no sympathy for Manson's handmaiden, whose acts placed her beyond the forgiveness of any earthly judge, she at least forfeited both her freedom and any but the most basic comforts for the last 40 years of her life.

Polanski, on the other hand, not only stole undeserved years of liberty but enjoyed privilege and solidarity of some Very Important People during his 30 years on the lam.

Hollywood and the European elite have rallied to his side, just as they did in 1977. When his cat-and-mouse game with U.S. authorities ended at an airport in Zurich last week, France's "culture minister" was quoted as saying he "strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them."

Frederic Mitterand was referring not only to Sharon Tate's murder, but also to Polanski's flight from the Nazis and his mother's death at Auschwitz.

And my response to that is: So what?

It's rather ironic that a high-ranking pol from the country that gave us the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man would try to justify flouting the rule of law simply because, sniff, his buddy had a sad life.

It's like the kids in "West Side Story" telling Officer Krupke, "We're depraved because we're deprived."

Meanwhile, a backlash has begun, and the French officials have seen the "ecriture" on the wall and decided to back off from publicly supporting Polanski.

But Hollywood is still signing petitions to demonstrate its outrage at the arrest of their favorite sex offender. I suppose it's not surprising that Woody "I'll bed and wed my girlfriend's underage daughter" Allen is a Polanski defender. But Martin Scorsese? His sensible Italian mama would be appalled. And Mike Nichols? You hope Diane Sawyer has read her hubby the riot act.

You wonder how Hollywood and the rest of Polanski's international cast of apologists would've reacted if Roman had worn a roman collar. (Or if he'd cut his girlfriend in little pieces and shoved her into a closet in West Philly, and then gone on a tour of Europe? Never mind, we know the answer to that one.)

Enough with the hypocrisy.

Polanski is a criminal. It doesn't matter that he had a sad life or that his movies impress the critics. It's his actions that should be judged this time around.

And they are chilling.

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer.

E-mail cflowers1961@yahoo.com.