Something wildly unexpected happened the other day: Film director Roman Polanski was taken into custody in Switzerland for his rape of a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson's house in 1977. The grand jury transcript is stomach-turning. His victim, Samantha Gailey, said the director plied her with champagne and drugs and asked her to remove her clothes for pictures in a hot tub. Polanski then had sex with her despite her resistance and requests to be taken home. He pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of sex with a minor, but fearing a prison term, he fled the country.

Now something utterly expected is happening: Morally bankrupt libertines in Hollywood and other artistic banana republics are rushing to Polanski's defense.

Welcome to the world of Roman Polanski, Child Rapist/Victim.

An even bigger lout is Miramax studio boss Harvey Weinstein, who organized a petition of filmmakers to demand freedom for Polanski: "Whatever you think about the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time." (He served 42 days before he skipped out on sentencing.)

Polanski is not only excused because he is an "artist," he is a "humanist" and even a "scapegoat." Weinstein supported a documentary last year arguing that the real injustice came not from the rape, but from the oppression of Polanski by his prosecutors/persecutors in Los Angeles.

Weinstein compounded the foolishness by circulating a petition of famous directors who've joined the protest. Amazingly, the list includes Woody Allen, another famous dirty old man in Hollywood, who scandalously carried on a sexual relationship with an adopted stepdaughter 34 years his junior, and then married her.

Then there's Whoopi Goldberg, whose defense of Polanski on ABC's "The View" was that "it wasn't rape-rape," since he pleaded guilty to sex with a minor. Earth to Whoopi: It was statutory rape. It was non-consensual. Goldberg claimed everybody needed to wait for facts, even though the facts of the rape are crystal clear, as is the justice this man tried to evade. None of that matters to her.

Amoral Goldberg also trotted out the "Europe favors pedophilia" defense: "We're a different kind of society. We see things differently. The world sees 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds -- in the rest of Europe, they are seen, often times (as adults) ... I do know that not everybody agrees with the way we see things."

She has a point there. In France, the culture minister is outraged: "Scary America ... has just shown its face."

For his part, Polanski was always mystified that anyone cared about his hideous, felonious behavior. He thought everyone wanted to do what he did, as he proclaimed in an interview with novelist Martin Amis in 1979: "If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But ... f---ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f--- young girls. Juries want to f--- young girls. Everyone wants to f--- young girls!"

But as more than one Catholic leader has observed, what if his name were Father Roman Polanski? Oh, then they'd all be singing a different tune, wouldn't they? Hypocrites. Brent Bozell reporting.

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