''I met Roman Polanski in 1977 when I was 13-years-old. I was in ninth grade that year when he told my mother that he wanted to shoot pictures of me for a French magazine.

That's what he said, but instead, after shooting the pictures of me at Jack Nicholson's house on Mulholland Drive, he did something quite different. He gave me champagne and a piece of a Quaalude. And then he took advantage of me. It was not consensual sex by any means. I said 'no' repeatedly but he wouldn't take no for an answer. I was alone and I didn't know what to do. It was scary and, looking back, very creepy.'' - Samantha Geimer, February 23, 2003.

It's not often that the honourable members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are faced with a moral dilemma.

This year, however, they are. The question is: should a 25-year-old scandal disqualify Roman Polanski from consideration in this month's Oscars? In other words, should a movie director be judged on the artistic merit of what he makes for the screen or on what he does - how he acts - as a human being?

It's a tricky one and, as such, the chances are that the Academy will play safe and go for the path of least resistance. Polanski, nominated in the best director category for his critically acclaimed and very personal Holocaust drama, The Pianist, will probably be passed over in favour of a less controversial choice.

A shame, in one sense, since the unsparing, harrowing film has been almost universally welcomed as an astonishing return to form for the Paris-born auteur whose last movie, The Ninth Gate, was a huge disappointment.

The Pianist has already won the best picture award at Cannes, been nominated for a Golden Globe, won a Bafta best picture gong, and, at a ceremony in LA tonight, is a strong contender for best picture in the Directors Guild of America awards.

Whatever happens, one thing is certain. Roman Polanski will not be present at the Oscars on March 23. If he returned to America from his self-imposed exile in France, he would almost certainly be arrested by the district attorney's office in LA before he made it to the ceremony. So far as the authorities are concerned, Polanski remains a convicted felon and a fugitive from justice. It was in 1977, at the age of 43, that the director of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown fell spectacularly from grace.

He persuaded a female friend, a part-time actress, to allow him to take photos of her 13-year-old daughter. Polanski drove the child to his friend Jack Nicholson's home (when the actor was away).

After the photoshoot, he plied her with drink and drugs, and had sex with her. The mother went to the police. The director was arrested. He didn't deny having sex with the girl, but claimed it had been consensual. Polanski was indicted by a grand jury on six counts, including rape. A plea bargain was successful and the charges were reduced to a single count of having sex with a minor, punishable by six months to 50 years in prison.

Polanski panicked and fled the country, setting up home in Paris (France does not have an extradition arrangement with the US). In the 1980s, Polanski's victim filed a civil suit against him and a financial settlement was negotiated. The director has continued to make movies (such as Frantic, Pirates, Bitter Moon, and Death and the Maiden), but none has hinted at the genius he once had.

Now, however, The Pianist has served to redress the balance. It could be argued that Polanski's life has been shaped by the maxim that great art often has its roots in great suffering.

Though born in France, he was brought up in his parents' native Poland. His infant years were spent in the war-time Jewish ghetto in Krakow. After watching his mother being taken by the SS (she died in Auschwitz), the boy fled into the ghetto. His slight build made him ideal for smuggling food and medicine.

Then, when his father was taken by the Nazis, Roman's survival instinct kicked in and he fled. Under the assumed non-Jewish name of Romek Wolf, a Catholic family hid him in the Polish countryside (a crime punishable by death) until his return to Krakow, re-united with his father, at the end of the war. In the 1950s Polanski studied painting, sculpture, and graphics at the Krakow Art School.

He also became a film actor. But in 1961 the oppression of Polish communist rule forced him, once again, to flee. Within a few years he had honed his film-making skills and directed two of his most powerful movies, Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-Sac (1966). Feted as one of the most promising European film-makers, Polanski moved to Hollywood, bursting on to the scene with the seminal occult thriller, Rosemary's Baby (1968), and then cementing his reputation in 1974 with Chinatown, for which he was nominated for an Oscar.

However, between these two films, tragedy intervened. In February, 1968, the director and his wife, actress Sharon Tate, moved to a new home in Cielo Drive, LA. Later that year both were in Europe on separate projects. Then, when Tate discovered that she was pregnant, and they decided they wanted the baby to be born in America. Tate returned home aboard the QE2 while Polanski decided to stay on for a few weeks and return by air. On August 9, with Polanski still in Europe, the bodies of Sharon Tate and four friends were found in the house at Cielo Drive.

The actress, two weeks away from giving birth, was found hanging from a rafter. She had suffered 16 stab wounds. The police investigated the theory that the murders had something to do with the hedonistic lifestyle of Polanski and Tate. It soon became clear, though, that the film-maker was blameless.

The victims had been slain by the deranged hippie, Charles Manson, and his ''family''. Distraught, Polanski threw himself into work, going on to make his bloody adaptation of Macbeth. These days, the man who, in his memoirs, wrote: ''I am widely regarded as an evil, profligate dwarf,'' appears to have settled down as he approaches his 70th birthday. He has been married for 20 years to the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner.

They have two children. In personal terms, The Pianist is the most important film that Polanski has made. Though it may not be autobiographical (it's based on the experiences of one man, a young Jewish pianist and composer, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto), it marks the director's first artistic attempt to deal with events which have a direct resonance for the film-maker.

It has taken him 60 years to open the doors of his own memory; Spielberg offered him the chance to direct Schindler's List but he turned it down because he felt that filming in the remains of Krakow would be too painful for him. Polanski may then have matured yet there is one demon he seems determined not to face. For reasons of self-preservation, he has no notion to return to America.

Shortly before he embarked upon The Pianist, he said in an interview that he could never go back. ''The media have taken over the judicial system of the United States . . . I think it would be hell, not from the system itself, but from the media. I don't want people hanging outside my door and antenna dishes in front of my window.''

Still, there is one person who, in an act of remarkable forgiveness, would almost welcome him back: his rape victim. Writing in the LA Times this week, Samantha Geimer, now 38 and living in Hawaii with her husband and three sons, said: ''Now that he's been nominated for an Academy Award, it's all being re-opened. Should he be given the award? Should he be rewarded for his behaviour? Should he be allowed back into the United States?

''I don't have any hard feelings toward him, or sympathy, either. He is a stranger to me. But I believe Mr Polanski and his film should be honoured according to the quality of work . . . I don't think it would be fair to take past events into consideration.'' On any return to America, she added: ''I would like to see that happen. I have to imagine he would rather not be a fugitive and be able to travel freely.'' Will the Academy be quite so forgiving?

Quoted in the LA Times, Rick Jewell, associate dean of USC's school of cinema, sums it up. ''A lot of voters are concerned about the kind of message that is sent to the world about the feature film industry. There's so much attention focused on the thing (Polanski) is accused of. It would be really surprising for me if people could set that aside.'' Hollywood, it seems, is not yet ready to rehabilitate its fallen son.