It was a tad embarrassing for the 76-year-old director who had flown into Switzerland to get a lifetime achievement award from the Zurich Film Festival.

Apparently it was the fact that the Festival organisers announced his planned attendance on its website that alerted the LA District Attorney's office to the long awaited opportunity.

The media tone seems to reflect certain sympathy for the talented director.

It's certainly not in the same openly hostile vein as the reporting of another well-known paedophile Gary Glitter regularly attracts.

Maybe it's because the artistic value of lyrics such as "do you want to be in my gang, my gang, my gang" just doesn't square it with the cinematic luvvies as much as Polanski's films do, such as Chinatown.

As Polanski is a French citizen, its culture minister Frederick Mitterrand said he "strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them".

That is a reference to the fact that as a Jewish child in Poland he lost his parents to the Nazis and that his first wife, the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, was butchered by the Charles Manson cult Tragedy does seem to dog the man. Zurich Film Festival's jury president, actress Debra Winger, says she hopes he is released as soon as possible and you are almost made to feel that somehow this arrest is simply not fair.

The girl in question apparently wants the charge to be dropped, the matter forgotten, as it causes "great harm" to her and her family. So what's the fuss over a 32-year-old charge? Let's not forget that Polanski has admitted the charge of unlawful sex. He did so only under the impression that he would get a plea bargain deal.

I can recall past media articles about his relationship with actress Natasha Kinski also raising a few eyebrows at the time he was directing her in Tess. He reportedly started a sexual relationship with her when she was just 15 - which was after this incident.

Could it be that because of Polanski's undisputed talent for making remarkable movies and that he has known great personal tragedy, we are all meant to turn a blind eye to his sexual tendencies?

I can remember the public outrage concerning a local man that I worked for as a PR consultant when he was caught in an FBI internet sting as he attempted to meet what he thought to be a 14-year-old girl for sex in a Chicago hotel room.

I had very conflicted feelings about this at the time. My personal experience of the 'good' man that I thought he was jarred with the utter revulsion I would have felt if I had introduced any of my daughters to him.

So I don't care if Polanski makes the greatest movies of all time. Let's not make any excuses for him and what he has done. Art, or any positive contribution to society does not wipe away the sins of child abuse. What he did was wrong and he needs to pay the penalty for it.