Jump to content

Type keyword(s) to search

Predator and Prey: Assault, harassment, and other aggressions in the entertainment industry


Message added by OtterMommy

The guidelines for this thread are in the first post.  Please familiarize yourself with them and check frequently as any changes or additions will be posted there (as well as in an in-thread post).

  • Reply
  • Start Topic

Recommended Posts

I just posted this in the KUWTK thread, but it came up here, so I'm going to post it here too

Kim Kardashian "Caught Off Guard" By Kanye West's Decision to Invite Marilyn Manson to Donda Event

Quote

According to the source, Kim did not know that Marilyn or any of the other individuals would be there prior to arriving, explaining, "She would never have participated in something if she knew Manson was a part of it."

Kim's concerns weren't met with much understanding from Kanye, the insider tells E! News. "He wants her to realize why he included them and appreciate the art form," the same source explains. "Kanye wanted a reaction. He wants people talking about his album and that was the approach he was taking." 

He did it all for publicity, & he doesn't care if it's good or bad, just as long as it's about him.

  • Love 5

At this point I would not be surprised if Kanye had pulled in Shia Labeouf to do spoken wor interstitial between each track. 

Geez.  He is obviously trying to make a point and create some sort of weird buzz.  But populating your album with known abusers and homophobes is not the way to go.  And why would you have these assholes on an album carrying your deceased and by all account incredibly beloved mother's name?  This is not how to honor your mother.

  • Love 19

It is bullshit, yet it's working. I wouldn't have known anything about a Kanye album except for this. And now I'm intrigued enough to give it a listen just to see how bad it is. I'm holding myself back though. I will not let a publicity stunt draw me in!

  • Love 4
23 hours ago, Pink ranger said:

 

 

No. Correct terminology use matter. Objectivity standards matter. Grooming has a precise meaning in law and someone can’t just make accusations of it based on behaviour that doesn't meet the criteria for that crime. That’s not justice.

No because grooming is more than just a legal term. In this instance no one is being accused of a crime and what she is being accused is within the definition of grooming. Grooming behavior in and of itself is not illegal and has no objective standard. 

Edited by Guest

The minister who married Aaliyah and R. Kelly testified yesterday.   It was 1994 in Chicago.   Do the math.   There was no way this was a legal ceremony.   Nor can R. Kelly get out of saying "no I didn't really marry her." Or call her just a groupie out for attention like he is claiming with all his other victims.

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/jury-hears-from-minister-who-officiated-r-kelly-and-aaliyahs-wedding/37457809?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot

  • Useful 6
On 9/2/2021 at 9:37 AM, merylinkid said:

The minister who married Aaliyah and R. Kelly testified yesterday.   It was 1994 in Chicago.   Do the math.   There was no way this was a legal ceremony.   Nor can R. Kelly get out of saying "no I didn't really marry her." Or call her just a groupie out for attention like he is claiming with all his other victims.

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/jury-hears-from-minister-who-officiated-r-kelly-and-aaliyahs-wedding/37457809?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot

I can’t help but wonder what else we would have found out if Aaliyah were here to speak for herself. Can’t imagine what this must be like for her family.

  • Useful 1
  • Love 2

I think a lot of shit about R. Kelly would have come out sooner if Aaliyah was still alive.  Her career was in an upswing when she died (she had filmed her parts in The Matrix Reloaded and was set to appear in the third sequel) and if she survived I'm sure more people would have been asking about that relationship.

  • Love 15
3 hours ago, Lugal said:

I think a lot of shit about R. Kelly would have come out sooner if Aaliyah was still alive.  Her career was in an upswing when she died (she had filmed her parts in The Matrix Reloaded and was set to appear in the third sequel) and if she survived I'm sure more people would have been asking about that relationship.

Possibly. Aaliyah had clout, unlike Kelly’s many other victims. But then again look how long it took all the A-lister actresses to come out about Harvey Weinstein. 

  • Love 19

I'm honestly not sure her being alive would have made much of a difference on the timing. My understanding is even in private she would not discuss what had happened because she found it so traumatizing. I suspect there was a lot going on that's still probably not been revealed. She very well may have eventually decided to go public, but I don't think that's a given. I was also under the impression part of the annulment was an agreement for them not to discuss the matter, but now I can't find anything on that. But it made me wonder if she had signed an NDA. 

Edited to add: I read Jim DeRogatis's book Soulless about the R. Kelly case a couple of years ago. It's not like people didn't know for years about how he was. DeRogatis had been writing about accusations against Kelly since he was first tipped off in 2000, which was before Aaliyah died. Sadly, I just don't think society collectively cared until recent years when the Me Too Movement became prominent, so that's why the story only recently generated widespread attention. It certainly wasn't because some people weren't trying to sound the alarm on behalf of his victims all along. 

Edited by Zella
  • Useful 1
  • Love 11

The stuff about R. Kelly has been out there for years (late-night monologues and SNL sketches would obliquely mention it), but I remember at the time there was some raised eyebrows about the marriage.  If her star blew up after the Matrix sequels, I think just the public records would have prompted questions like: "Wait, she was born in 1979 and she married him in...1994?  WTF?"  People didn't care then before Me Too, but underage stuff would still get attention. Tabloid journalists would have dug into it, but whether or not that would have prompted a larger discussion in the culture is anyone's guess, but I think it's at least possible.

  • Love 10

Interview with Andrea Constand, Cosby's main accuser, on publishing her book The Moment: Standing Up to Bill Cosby, Speaking Up for Women and her response to his release. She has also started a foundation and app to help survivors.

Quote

I started that foundation just several months before I started writing the book. I wanted the book to serve as a way to support the foundation, so the proceeds are going to get distributed to different charities, as well as HHT, and hopefully we’ll get some people writing grants to us. The SAFEAPP is just there to support survivors through their healing process. There’s a trauma-informed library, which I think serves its purpose. It just lets people know what being trauma informed is. There’s a program there that people can take to understand how it impacts the mind, the body, and the spirit. We also offer emotional support links so people can get support right through the app. And we also have free legal assistance. So if somebody is looking to get legal assistance, they sign up for the safe app, they go to the legal form, and they have access to the top trial lawyers in North America. If you need a great lawyer to support you, it’s free. You fill out the form and within 24 to 48 hours, you will have access to a lawyer who can review your case. This is important, because so many survivors aren’t going to the police anymore. There’s so many barriers along the way. And these are all barriers that I faced. The reason I thought about the SAFEAPP was because I wish there was something like that when I was really struggling.

 

  • Love 14
32 minutes ago, Vermicious Knid said:

Interview with Andrea Constand, Cosby's main accuser, on publishing her book The Moment: Standing Up to Bill Cosby, Speaking Up for Women and her response to his release. She has also started a foundation and app to help survivors.

 

I'm not at all surprised she's again devoting herself to helping other survivors.  Her victim impact statement in the trial at which Cosby was convicted was quite powerful, including the way she described the obligation she felt to the other survivors of his abuse:

Quote

 

I used the demands of my new courses to opt out of family gatherings and events, and to avoid going out with friends. As far as anyone could tell, I was preoccupied with my studies. But the terrible truth about what had happened to me — at the hands of a man my family and friends admired and respected — was swirling around inside me.

Then the nightmares started. I dreamed that another woman was being assaulted right in front of me and it was all my fault. In the dream, I was consumed with guilt, and pretty soon that agonizing feeling spilled over into my waking hours too. I became more and more anxious that what had happened to me was going to happen to someone else. I grew terrified that it might already be too late, that the sexual assaults were continuing because I didn't speak out.

...

When the case closed with a settlement, sealed testimony and a non-disclosure agreement, I thought that finally — finally — I could get on with my life, that this awful chapter in my life was over at last. These exact same feelings followed me throughout both criminal trials. The attacks on my character continued, spilling over outside the courtroom steps, attempting to discredit me and cast me in false light. These character assassinations have caused me to suffer insurmountable stress and anxiety, which I still experience today.

I still didn't know that my sexual assault was just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, more than 60 other women have self-identified as sexual assault victims of Bill Cosby. We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over.

I have often asked myself why the burden of being the sole witness in two criminal trials had to fall to me. The pressure was enormous. I knew that how my testimony was perceived, that how I was perceived, would have an impact on every member of the jury and on the future mental and emotional well-being of every sexual assault victim who came before me. But I had to testify. It was the right thing to do, and I wanted to do the right thing, even if it was the most difficult thing I've ever done.

When the first trial ended in a mistrial, I didn't hesitate to step up again.

 

 

  • Love 12

Geez, none of them are getting serious time.   Even being able to call them FELONS for the rest of their lives isn't enough to make up for the INCREDIBLY LIGHT sentences.   Guess running a sex cult that BRANDED WOMEN is NBD right?

Edited by merylinkid
  • Love 6
30 minutes ago, merylinkid said:

Geez, none of them are getting serious time.   Even being able to call them FELONS for the rest of their lives isn't enough to make up for the INCREDIBLY LIGHT sentences.   Guess running a sex cult that BRANDED WOMEN is NBD right?

It’s very frustrating but I’d rather see the others get less time if that was what was necessary for Raniere to get 120 years. It’s definitely an uncomfortable reality about the justice system. 

On 9/5/2021 at 6:27 PM, Zella said:

I'm honestly not sure her being alive would have made much of a difference on the timing. My understanding is even in private she would not discuss what had happened because she found it so traumatizing. I suspect there was a lot going on that's still probably not been revealed. She very well may have eventually decided to go public, but I don't think that's a given. I was also under the impression part of the annulment was an agreement for them not to discuss the matter, but now I can't find anything on that. But it made me wonder if she had signed an NDA. 

Edited to add: I read Jim DeRogatis's book Soulless about the R. Kelly case a couple of years ago. It's not like people didn't know for years about how he was. DeRogatis had been writing about accusations against Kelly since he was first tipped off in 2000, which was before Aaliyah died. Sadly, I just don't think society collectively cared until recent years when the Me Too Movement became prominent, so that's why the story only recently generated widespread attention. It certainly wasn't because some people weren't trying to sound the alarm on behalf of his victims all along. 

Agreed. When Aaliyah first launched her career, it was widely rumored that she was married to Kelly and was pregnant. Looking back now at some of the footage of them doing interviews together where he, a grown ass man, repeatedly states that a 14 year old child is his “best friend” is disgusting. Not to mention the songs he wrote for her. Some of which were too mature for a 14 year old to be singing. People within and outside of the industry knew. But it was a different time and nobody cared. After all, this type of predatory behavior had be going on for decades ie Elvis/Priscilla, Jerry LeeLewis/Myra Brown , Bill Wyman/numerous girls, Don/Melanie etc., and thus had been normalized. 

Edited by Enero
  • Love 1
Quote

"Happy Happy Joy Joy" also shows how John K. created other characters, such as George Liquor, after his demanding father. [...] He was proving himself to his tough-love father who never thought he'd succeed. 

Not the point of this thread but if I had a nickel for every man who processed his daddy issues through his work...

  • LOL 5
  • Love 8
1 hour ago, Ailianna said:

They say he cancelled it because he might say something they could use against him in court. Naturally, my first thought is that if he's got nothing to hide, what could he say to incriminate himself?

And he wasn't aware of that before he decided to tour?  It sounds to me like he's trying to cover for poor ticket sales, lack of willing venues and/or fears of protesters outside every performance and the fact that any publicity he would've done for the tour was always going to focus on his crimes and not his comedy.

Edited by Rootbeer
  • Love 21
On 9/5/2021 at 2:22 PM, Lugal said:

I think a lot of shit about R. Kelly would have come out sooner if Aaliyah was still alive.  Her career was in an upswing when she died (she had filmed her parts in The Matrix Reloaded and was set to appear in the third sequel) and if she survived I'm sure more people would have been asking about that relationship.

I doubt it.  If you read through articles about Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson and their first marriage and when they started dating,  the older the article time stamp, the younger Melanie Griffith gets. And the older ones that throw around tidbits that they met when she was 14, moved in together at 15, and married at 18 with quotes from Tippi Hedren, Melanie Griffith, and Don Johnson liberally scattered through talking about it as the article waxes poetic about the impending second marriage.  Find anything more recent and they met and starting dating when she was 16, but its hard to work around the date of the movie and the marriage..  Which still bad, but not 14/15 bad.

I don't think anyone wants to unearth any open secrets because then they have deal with it being an open secret and no one being particularly motivated to give a shit about it.

57 minutes ago, ParadoxLost said:

I doubt it.  If you read through articles about Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson and their first marriage and when they started dating,  the older the article time stamp, the younger Melanie Griffith gets. And the older ones that throw around tidbits that they met when she was 14, moved in together at 15, and married at 18 with quotes from Tippi Hedren, Melanie Griffith, and Don Johnson liberally scattered through talking about it as the article waxes poetic about the impending second marriage.  Find anything more recent and they met and starting dating when she was 16, but its hard to work around the date of the movie and the marriage..  Which still bad, but not 14/15 bad.

I don't think anyone wants to unearth any open secrets because then they have deal with it being an open secret and no one being particularly motivated to give a shit about it.

Agreed. Not the same but in a similar vein, I remember being a teen in the early 2000s and wearing out my stepmom's Led Zeppelin Box Set from 1990*. It came with a booklet about the band, and I am pretty sure that the booklet in this widely commercially released commemorative set talked openly and casually about Jimmy Page's 14-year-old girlfriend Lori Maddox in the 70s. I would have been about the same age when I ran across that, and I admit it did make me do a double-take. But I also remember being way more sickened at the time by some story about him egging on a fight over him between her and one of his older but still very young other girlfriends just because it seemed really sadistic and manipulative. I can't imagine that being released now with the specifics of that story in a booklet or at least the specifics in that same casual tone. 

*Disclaimer. Not 100% sure the story was from that set so am open to being corrected by someone who can verify, but I am pretty sure it was. We didn't have internet at the time, so basically all I knew about Led Zeppelin at the time was from the booklet. 

  • Useful 2

The relationship that always grossed me out was Elvis and Priscilla.    Her parents did nothing to stop it, and then let her move to Memphis with him at a very young age.    She was born in 1945, and she moved in with him in 1962, but they had been together for a long time before that.   They didn't marry until 1967, but lived together for years by then.   They met when she was 14, in Germany.      Who let their 14 year old date a grown man, and then let her move in with him?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Presley

  • Love 10
4 minutes ago, CrazyInAlabama said:

The relationship that always grossed me out was Elvis and Priscilla.    Her parents did nothing to stop it, and then let her move to Memphis with him at a very young age.    She was born in 1945, and she moved in with him in 1962, but they had been together for a long time before that.   They didn't marry until 1967, but lived together for years by then.   They met when she was 14, in Germany.      Who let their 14 year old date a grown man, and then let her move in with him?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Presley

Yeah I had a pretty big crush on young Elvis even as a 90s kid, but that squicked me out too. 

You also have both Steven Tyler and Ted Nugent legally adopting the minors they were living with in the 70s. Why their parents agreed to that baffles me. 

  • Useful 6

My guess is there was money involved.   Also, some families marry young, or start adult relationships young, and for that family it's normal to them, no matter how icky we find it.

My father's relatives had a bunch of kids (three of his siblings had kids) that all married young, and it was quite legal, but the spouse was close to their ages, not years older.    Of course, my cousins seemed to marry instead of date.    The early marryers all divorced before 20, and married in a real adult relationship.    

 

Edited by CrazyInAlabama
  • Useful 2
  • Love 4
2 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

f you read through articles about Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson and their first marriage and when they started dating,  the older the article time stamp, the younger Melanie Griffith gets. And the older ones that throw around tidbits that they met when she was 14, moved in together at 15, and married at 18 with quotes from Tippi Hedren, Melanie Griffith, and Don Johnson liberally scattered through talking about it as the article waxes poetic about the impending second marriage. 

The thing about Don Johnson is he has a long history of dating very young women.  There was Melanie.  And there was a fling with Uma Thurman when he was 38 and she was 18.  When he was 47, he dated the 18-year old actress who played his daughter on Nash Bridges. And that last one has some double ickiness to it because he was Nash Bridges and an executive producer on the show.

  • Useful 13

I'd like to hear more about this new lawsuit against Cosby.

Loretta Lynn may have been 13 for her marriage. Remember, it's only been in the last hundred-ish years that it's become looked down on or illegal for younger teen girls to marry. In many parts of the world it's still common. Historically, pretty much all societies considered girls to be of marriageable age as soon as they hit menarche.

  • Useful 4
  • Love 3
On 9/8/2021 at 5:40 PM, merylinkid said:

Geez, none of them are getting serious time.   Even being able to call them FELONS for the rest of their lives isn't enough to make up for the INCREDIBLY LIGHT sentences.   Guess running a sex cult that BRANDED WOMEN is NBD right?

NBD?

10 hours ago, CrazyInAlabama said:

The relationship that always grossed me out was Elvis and Priscilla.    Her parents did nothing to stop it, and then let her move to Memphis with him at a very young age.    She was born in 1945, and she moved in with him in 1962, but they had been together for a long time before that.   They didn't marry until 1967, but lived together for years by then.   They met when she was 14, in Germany.      Who let their 14 year old date a grown man, and then let her move in with him?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Presley

People interested in money and one degree of separation from fame.

10 hours ago, Zella said:

Yeah I had a pretty big crush on young Elvis even as a 90s kid, but that squicked me out too. 

You also have both Steven Tyler and Ted Nugent legally adopting the minors they were living with in the 70s. Why their parents agreed to that baffles me. 

See above.  Watch/read about enough reality TV and you quickly learn the extents people will go to for their fifteen minutes of "fame".

  • Love 4
1 hour ago, icemiser69 said:

 

In general, IMO the body and mind don't often mature at the same rate.  Meaning, just because someone has the ability to legally be in an intimate relationship, that doesn't mean that the individual is mentally mature enough to handle such a relationship.

 

You mean every male out there, right?

  • LOL 7
2 hours ago, Leeds said:

NBD?

People interested in money and one degree of separation from fame.

See above.  Watch/read about enough reality TV and you quickly learn the extents people will go to for their fifteen minutes of "fame".

I'm well aware that people are capable of being greedy, selfish assholes. It doesnt make their decision to offer up their children to powerful men any easier for me to understand. If they want proximity to fame and fortune that badly, then just fuck the celebrity in question themselves. 

Edited by Zella
  • Love 7
2 hours ago, Zella said:

I'm well aware that people are capable of being greedy, selfish assholes. It doesnt make their decision to offer up their children to powerful men any easier for me to understand. If they want proximity to fame and fortune that badly, then just fuck the celebrity in question themselves. 

Well, that’s because said celebrity is not interested in the adult parents. Disgustingly, they want the children ie Michael Jackson and others. With the Michael Jackson and R.Kelly cases there were several instances where the parents were aware of the rumored abuse or were making foul decisions regarding their kids ie letting them move in with a said celebrity, spend the night with the celebrity etc.

Perhaps they believed the celebrity couldn’t possibly be a pedophile because they are a …celebrity? The parents were willing to disregard all inappropriate behavior because the person is famous and have money. When the likelihood of them allowing their child to move in with or spend the night with (in the same bed mind you) with a regular everyday stranger is close to nil, unless the parent has some type of addiction issue. It’s all about the potential financial rewards and access to things that come with status. It’s truly despicable how many of these parents pimped their kids out, which is just as bad as what the predators have done to them. 

  • Love 10
1 minute ago, Enero said:

It’s truly despicable how many of these parents pimped their kids out, which is just as bad as what the predators have done to them. 

This was my main point in my original post. I find it appalling, and I was trying to express how appalling I find it. It's not that I am completely unaware of why people do this for their own mercenary reasons. I probably did a bad job of expressing that in my posts, but I was essentially asking a rhetorical question. 

My mother didn't protect me from abuse as a child from a stepparent, which she was well aware was going on because it occurred in front of her at times, and didn't involve someone rich and famous. So, perhaps that colors my own perception of this, but I'm inclined to think the parents just don't give a shit about their kid. I know in some cases, it really is parental ignorance, but when you're signing your guardianship rights away? Allowing your child to live with a celebrity and sleep in said celebrity's bed? I think they're in much less of a position to argue that they were just ignorant of what was going on. As to paraphrase the movie Casino, they're either stupid or they're in on it. And I'm not entirely sure that they wouldn't do this with someone who wasn't rich and famous. Abducted in Plain Sight illustrates that. 

  • Love 4
11 hours ago, Vermicious Knid said:

I'd like to hear more about this new lawsuit against Cosby.

Loretta Lynn may have been 13 for her marriage. Remember, it's only been in the last hundred-ish years that it's become looked down on or illegal for younger teen girls to marry. In many parts of the world it's still common. Historically, pretty much all societies considered girls to be of marriageable age as soon as they hit menarche.

According to Wikipedia and several other sources Lynn was 15 when she married. At that point many states hadn't changed laws from colonial/pioneer times that allowed girls, sometimes as young as 12 and boys 14 to marry.

  • Useful 3
Quote

"It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimization on my part," she says. "I would always say I was consenting, and then I'd be reminded like 'Hey, you were 15, you're not consenting at 15.' Now I'm like, 'Oh yeah, they're all pedophiles. It's all statutory rape."

Who she is referring to remains unclear; Morissette does not name any of her alleged abusers. But she says she issued calls for help and implicates the music industry in not listening.

"I did tell a few people and it kind of fell on deaf ears," she says. "It would usually be a stand-up, walk-out-of-the-room moment."

Quote

In the movie, Morissette is critical of the music establishment at several turns, calling out male journalists for labeling her an "angry young female" and shaking her head at the pressure she faced to maintain a low weight. That pressure was so intense, she says, that a male producer would count cheese slices to make sure she wasn't eating them, giving rise to her decades-long eating disorder.

Quote

"You know a lot of people say 'why did that woman wait 30 years? And I'm like f— off," she says, using an expletive. "They don't wait 30 years. No one was listening or their livelihood was threatened or their family was threatened," referring to her failed attempts to tell people about the statutory rapes at the time.

"The whole 'why do women wait' thing?" she adds. "Women don't wait. Our culture doesn't listen."

Copied from the Alanis article because I think it's important.

Quote

The movie is being produced by Bill Simmons, founder of literary sports website "The Ringer," who has a deal with HBO, as part of a series of music-themed films. 

I've heard rumblings about Simmons not being great but no formal claims of anything. Nothing predatory just that he's not great for... reasons. Anyway, the article is super vague on why she isn't going to the premiere but it could really be anything.

  • Useful 2
  • Love 14
39 minutes ago, bobalina said:

According to Wikipedia and several other sources Lynn was 15 when she married. At that point many states hadn't changed laws from colonial/pioneer times that allowed girls, sometimes as young as 12 and boys 14 to marry.

Loretta says that she was 13 when she got married. A few years ago AP got her birth certificate and two documents signed by each of her parents that say she was 15. I’ve never understood why people believe that over Loretta since the birth certificate was filed in the 60’s. It seems way more likely that they lied so it would legal for her to marry and she was the one telling the truth years later. 

5 hours ago, Dani said:

Loretta says that she was 13 when she got married. A few years ago AP got her birth certificate and two documents signed by each of her parents that say she was 15. I’ve never understood why people believe that over Loretta since the birth certificate was filed in the 60’s. It seems way more likely that they lied so it would legal for her to marry and she was the one telling the truth years later. 

If her birth was not registered until the 1960's Lynn may not know how old she is. As late as 2000 girls in Kentucky could be married with parental consent at 13 so no need to lie. And I'm sure things were looser in the less populated areas. In Newcastle, PA in 1935 my great aunt was married at 15.

 

  • Love 2
Message added by OtterMommy

The guidelines for this thread are in the first post.  Please familiarize yourself with them and check frequently as any changes or additions will be posted there (as well as in an in-thread post).

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...