Director Roman Polanski arrives to receive his Tribute Award at the Zurich Film Festival
Director Roman Polanski arrives to receive his Tribute Award at the Zurich Film Festival September 27, 2011. Polanski is in Zurich to collect the award that was given to him in 2009, when he was arrested en route to the ceremony on charges related to a sex crime more than 30 years ago. Reuters

Roman Polanski has publicly apologized to the woman he raped when she was a 13-year-old model, and said she was a victim of his and of the press.

Everybody has made mistakes and I have made mistakes too, he said.

Polanski, 78, is the subject of Laurent Bouzereau's documentary Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir, which premiered on Tuesday in Switzerland, CNN reported.

Polanski is in Switzerland, where he has received the lifetime achievement award he was going to get in 2009.

But he was arrested first.

The woman, Samantha Geimer, now lives in Hawaii and has three children.

She defended Polanski on Larry King Live last year after Switzerland denied a request from the United States to extradite the filmmaker.

He served his time and he did everything he was asked to do, Geimer said.

Geimer did not like the media attention the case attracted.

If just the arrest brought such a ruckus into my life and into my backyard in a literal sense, I'm sure his coming back would just be a thousand times worse, she said.