In September of 2009 Whoopi Goldberg who was the new moderator of the View at that point, made the infamous statement that Roman Polanski was not guilty of rape: " Whoopi Goldberg suggested that whatever he was guilty of it wasn't "rape-rape".As a guest on The View chat show on US television, she said: "I know it wasn't rape-rape. It was something else but I don't believe it was rape-rape. He went to jail and and when they let him out he was like, 'You know what, this guy's going to give me a hundred years in jail. I'm not staying.' So that's why he left."' This outraged many people because Polanski was charged with plying a 13 year old girl with drugs and alcohol and then sodomizing her. And infact he was charged with rape: "In March 1977, film director Roman Polanski was arrested and charged in Los Angeles with five offenses against Samantha Geimer, a 13-year-old girl, rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts...." Goldberg's statement that it was not "rape-rape" was both inaccurate, (it was rape-rape as she put it); but it also seemed to soft-pedal or excuse Polanski's crime to a certain degree.
