It looks like Roman Polanski had better get used to hairy armpits, dogpoo and comical nonchalance, because he’ll be staying in France for a while.

Why? Because Roman Polanski has lost his bid to get his 1978 child sex charges dropped, so the fugitive status currently keeping him from returning to America remains firmly in force.

So Roman Polanski has two choices – he can either continue living in Europe where he’s respected as one of the world’s greatest-ever directors, or he can surrender to American authorities and face jail. It’ll probably be the latter. Seriously, have you ever been to Europe?

The funny thing about admitting to police that you had sex with an illegally young girl is that it tends to come back and bite you on the arse. Just look at poor old Roman Polanski – it’s been three decades since he allegedly anally raped a 13-year-old girl and then definitely pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor and, just because he freaked out before sentencing and ran away to France, he’s apparently a fugitive now.

However, it looked quite a lot like Roman Polanski was going to get his charges dismissed, after a documentary was released claiming all kinds of unethical conduct on the part of the court during his original trial. The trouble there was that the court was only going to consider dropping Polanski’s charges if he went to America in person, and Polanski was worried that it was all just a big trap to arrest him at the airport.

And – long story short – because of that protracted stand-off, Roman Polanski definitely can’t have his charges dropped ever. But, hey, at least he’s welcome to surrender to the American justice system and be given an almost-guaranteed stint in prison whenever he likes, so that’s something. The LA Times reports:

Judge Peter Espinoza told a packed courtroom that he found the core argument in Polanski’s request for a dismissal of charges to be credible. “There was substantial… misconduct that occurred during the pendency of this case,” Espinoza said. But, Polanski’s fugitive status left him no choice but to deny the request. Espinoza suspended his ruling for 30 days to allow Polanski to discuss surrendering.

Stupid fugitive status. If only Roman Polanski had been smart enough not to leave America before sentencing, and had merely sat through the entire duration of his inevitable lengthy jail sentence before being released into the public as a largely unemployed convicted paedophile, then there’s a chance that his charges might have possibly been dropped 30 years afterwards. Hindsight can be such a bitch, can’t it?

But although this news must be a profound disappointment to Roman Polanski, there’s no point getting down about it. After all, if he’s staying in Europe then at least he’ll know that the furious mob of people that follows him everywhere takes a couple of hours off in the afternoon for a nap. He wouldn’t get that in America.

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The problem is, once you’ve said you’ve had sex with a child, people just don’t think of you as trustworthy.

Just look at Roman Polanski. It’s been three decades since he admitted having sex with a 13-year-old girl and fled America, and now America is still keeping him at arm’s length.

An LA court has decided that Roman Polanski can only try to get his statutory rape charge dismissed if he appears there in person, which is obviously a trap. Really, we don’t know why Roman Polanski won’t stay in France – that sort of behaviour is mandatory there, alegedly. OK, we’re joking.

We might be the only ones who think this, but the Roman Polanski saga is kind of fascinating, don’t you think? It’s like a sort of Mexican stand-off, only with creepy midgets with funny accents instead of Mexicans and upsetting alleged paedophilia instead of guns.

On one hand, there’s Roman Polanski – the exiled movie director, who’s been living in France after fleeing America to escape a statutory rape sentence 30 years ago and now wants his charges dropped.

Then, on the other hand, there’s the American justice system, which probably isn’t ever going to drop Roman Polanksi’s charges, but wants him to come to America to ask anyway – probably because it wants to arrest him the second he steps off the plane.

And then there’s Samantha Geimer, the 13-year-old girl in question, who just wants everyone to shut up because it makes her think about Roman Polanski’s penis. It’s a muddle and no mistake.

But it looks like the courts might be winning this one – an appellate court panel has determined that if Roman Polanski really wants to get his charges dropped, he absolutely has no choice but to make his case to the court in person. The LA Times reports:

A three-judge panel in the 2nd District of the Court of Appeals rejected an attempt by lawyers for Polanski to have all 600 judges in the L.A. County Superior Court disqualified from hearing the dismissal request. The Academy Award-winner’s attorneys had argued that statements by a court spokesman showed bias against Polanski. The appellate judges offered no explanation in the one-page order.

And we’re back to square one again. Roman Polanski wants his to plead his innocence and get his charges dropped, but he won’t to go America in case he ends up getting arrested in an airport. Nobody can be happy with this – Polanski still has his charges and America can’t arrest him.

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