Spot the Difference

[steepholm]

William Mayne, noted children's author, jailed for two and half years in 2004 for child sex offences that took place some thirty years earlier. On the sex offenders register for life. An unpublishable pariah.

Roman Polanski, noted film director, still unpunished some thirty years after admitting the rape of a thirteen-year-old girl. Feted, given lifetime achievement awards by the European film establishment (ETA to say nothing of the Oscar!), and continues to make movies that receive critical acclaim - including some that involve working closely with children, such as Oliver Twist (2005).

Shurely some mistake?

Comments

[sheenaghpugh]

I'm quite baffled at the protests from France (though not, quite, by the sympathy for Polanski, at least in that age-group that recalls the murder of his wife, not that that has owt to do with anything but it's hard to feel he hasn't suffered...) But the man is a bail-jumper; the Swiss had every right to arrest him.

As for Mayne, IIRC his publisher hung fire at first on whether to drop him, and if they thought he'd still sell I suspect they would keep him. Ie, I think he's unpublishable because he's unsellable, not directly because he's a paedophile. He can't go into school or do children's events for one thing, which must make him hard to market. I've no great sympathy for him, either, and again the time-lapse doesn't really signify, any more than it did with Eichmann. Certainly he should be on the register for life. It wouldn't stop me buying his books and giving them to children if I ever had, but I must confess he totally passed me by as a child and parent, the first I heard of his name was the court case.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the inside story on William Mayne's relations with his publisher, but he was far from being an obscure writer. He was a cult figure in the '60s, and although his career had been in the doldrums for a while it had recently revived with Candlefasts and Cradlefasts, the sequels to his classic Earthfasts. Needless to say, all three are now out of print, along with (as far as I can see) everything else he ever wrote. If it's a tragedy, however, it's one of his own making.