The events of a single afternoon when she was 13 years old have haunted Samantha Geimer her entire life. A famous movie director allegedly gave her champagne and had sex with her.
She is 45 now, and wishes the whole matter would just go away. The arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland over the weekend makes that highly unlikely. Geimer is back in the news in connection with the infamous 1977 California sex case, whether she likes it or not.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/29/polanski.victim.profile/index.html

Of course, if the worst allegations were true, that Polanski drugged the girl without her knowledge, and raped her while she told him to stop, everyone agrees this is a serious crime. But, where is the proof? It is strange that with sexual crimes against minors, the alleged perpetrator is “guilty until proven innocent”. Many times a minor gets caught by the parents, and instead of admitting she did it willingly, she decides to cry rape. So in normal cases, the legal rule is “innocent until proven guilty”. That is the rule that should be valid for all legal cases, even if a few guilty people were to be set free unjustly.

Quaeludes were a recreational drug, not a date rape drug, so if the girl were conscious of the fact and not underage, there would not be a maior problem. Note also that there is no proof for all the allegations that he gave her quaeludes
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methaqualone

So Polanski did a plea bargain, admitted to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Yes the girl was fairly young, but millions of men would go to jail if this would be enforced regularly. I think it is worse to get a minor pregnant, when she is not ready for a child physiologically, psychologically, and financially.  As shown in other posts here, it seems that the hysteria about underage sex is not supported by scientific facts. Worse, scientific research about underage sexuality is actively suppressed and shunned. The link before shows how prestigious scientific research (not a fringe publication but the American Psychological Association) showed that most underage sexuality causes no problems. This research was rejected by unanimous vote in the US senate. Where else would the US senate repress research? Well, Clinton repudiated the Bell Curve, racial differences are another no-no.

Also notice that in the 70ies, times were different. Holland legally published porn movies with 16 year old actors. The blue lagoon with nude scenes of very young actresses has not even been out yet. In most parts of the world, all these things became criminalized later 

And finally, most crimes would have prescribed after 35 years.

So is there a problem: yes. But I don’t see it as a huge problem that is being made out of it. And, often forgotten, there is a problem when adult women (or men) take recreational drugs and drink alcohol, and maybe they end up doing things they would not have done otherwise.  Independent of being underage or not. Aclohol-related loss of self control is a huge problem.

Enough playing devils’ advocate today. This is not the complete discussion of the issue, just some points that are often omitted.