It's been a roller coaster of a week for renowned film director Roman Polanski, who arrived in Switzerland to accept a lifetime achievement award only to be apprehended by the Zurich police -- they'd ambushed him on behalf of American authorities and arrested him on a 31-year old warrant for having sexual intercourse with a 13-year old in 1977. Back in France, where Polanski had been living in exile for three decades, officials are up in arms over the arrest, deeming it unjust and unnecessary.

Polanski's arrest does, indeed, come out of left field: The young girl involved in his 1977 statutory rape case, who is now 45, has publicly forgiven the film legend and expressed that she does not want him sent to jail. The original trial was shrouded in cries of foul play on the part of judge in charge of the case. Moreover, Polanski has long lived with the day-to-day repercussions of his actions, as his reputation has been permanently tarnished and he's been unable to return to the States -- not even to accept his Oscar in 2002. And in the words of the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum, "Polanski is 76. To put him on trial or keep him in jail does not serve society in general or his victim in particular. Nor does it prove the doggedness and earnestness of the American legal system."

Still, a sex crime committed against a minor remains one of the most shameful and unforgivable offenses in the world, regardless of how many years have passed following a conviction. "There are areas which are almost sacred, like pedophilia and terrorism, where there is no room for the presumption of innocence," former French investigative judge Delou Bouvier once explained. So why have the French chosen to embrace Polanski so wholeheartedly?

It could have something to with the fact that Polanski is a French citizen and beloved film icon -- or the French could be using Polanski as an outlet for the backlash that resulted from one of the most disastrously handled sex offense cases in history.

A 2004 criminal trial in Northern France of a group of alleged pedophiles was found to be based upon primarily false accusations -- but not until after many innocents had been jailed and one had committed suicide. The trial went down, in the words of Jacques Chirac, as a "judicial disaster" and left French citizens filled with mistrust of the judicial proceedings surrounding sex offense cases. Today, Roman Polanski's greatest support system might rest in the exploitation of such mistrust.