Let me tell you a few things about the rape of a child. It happened to me. I was raped by my drunken father at the age of four, before the drunken eyes of my mother, so I know what I’m talking about.

It hurts like holy hell. The next time you see a grown man walking down the street with his four-year-old son or daughter, just observe the sheer difference in the size between the two people.

And, more importantly, it is the absolute, final, and total end of childhood, of any sense of innocence and wonder. Perhaps the girl in California had already lost hers. Perhaps her mother manipulated the situation. I, frankly, don’t give a good goddamn…

From where I sit—and I have sat exactly in this same spot for sixty years—the rape of a child is absolutely the equivalent of first-degree murder. Roman Polanski is a murderer, the murderer of a child.