Famed director Quentin Tarantino defended accused rapist Roman Polanski in a resurfaced 2003 interview with Howard Stern.
Stern asked Tarantino why he didn’t consider Polanski to be a rapist, despite Polanski fleeing the country while awaiting sentencing for statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl.
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Tarantino argued that the term “rape” was not appropriate for Polanski’s situation, and he would better characterize it as “sex with a minor.”
‘To me, when you use the word rape, you’re talking about violent, throwing them down, it’s one of the most violent crimes in the world,” he said. “Throwing the word rape around is like throwing the word racist around. It doesn’t apply to everything people use it for.”
Stern’s co-host Robin Quivers jumped in to tell Tarantino that the 13-year-old didn’t want to sleep with Polanski.
“No, that was not the case at all. She wanted to have it and dated the guy and — ” Tarantino responded.
“She was 13!” Quivers exclaimed.
“Look, she was down with this,” Tarantino asserted.
Tarantino is currently under fire for allegedly putting actress Uma Thurman in unsafe working conditions on the set of Kill Bill. Thurman was involved in a car crash during filming, which she says left permanent damage to her body.