Hollywood Behaving Badly: Assault, Abuse and Other Crimes

[boxofrocks]

Danny Masterson's trial for rape declared a mistrial. The article also says a civil trial is pending.

A retrial date of March 27 has been penciled in. and Masterson remains free on bail of $3.3 million. A hearing on next steps is set for January 10. However, likely before that, the actor’s defense team plan to file to have all the charges tossed out. The move is based on the inclination of the jury made public today.

Civil suit against Horatio Sanz alleging rape of teenage girl in the early 2000s was dismissed with prejudice.

The suit, filed in August 2021 in New York City Supreme Court by a woman identified as a “Jane Doe,” was dismissed by both parties on Nov. 23, according to the filing. Supreme Court is the name of New York’s top trial court.

In a statement, an attorney for the plaintiff said, "The parties have resolved their dispute and have moved on."

Emphasis mine. Sounds like they settled and once concluded, the lawsuit was dropped.

[Auroranorth]

Nov 29, 2022 8:59:13 GMT -4 Millis said:

I'm not giving all of these parents a pass here, but one of the hallmark traits of abusers is that they find victims that do not have a strong support system. That might be because the parents are eager to push their child in the vicinity of fame, but it could also be a single mom or dad struggling to raise kids while working three jobs and welcome any opportunities for their children to have more than they can provide. Are these parents naive or just desperate? Probably a combination of both. I feel privileged that I can say unequivocally that I would not allow my children to pal around with an older adult, or spend time in the homes of people with questionable life choices.

That's a fair point. I know of a local case where a boy was molested and everyone involved was a member of a local hobby group. The mother was a single parent, not well liked in the group, and her son was kind of an outsider (socially awkward, from what I was told.) So when things blew up and it was reported, nobody wanted to hear her because the molester had been "mentoring" her son and everyone knew him and liked him and "he never bothered MY child!" was rampant from parents. Yeah, I'm sure he didn't, because you and your spouse are stalwarts of the club and well known and liked. Also, he apparently only went for boys and your child is a girl. So that means squat.

[lizziebeth730]

Deleted

[hellsbells]

Nov 29, 2022 8:59:13 GMT -4 Millis said:

I'm not giving all of these parents a pass here, but one of the hallmark traits of abusers is that they find victims that do not have a strong support system. That might be because the parents are eager to push their child in the vicinity of fame, but it could also be a single mom or dad struggling to raise kids while working three jobs and welcome any opportunities for their children to have more than they can provide. Are these parents naive or just desperate? Probably a combination of both. I feel privileged that I can say unequivocally that I would not allow my children to pal around with an older adult, or spend time in the homes of people with questionable life choices.

Of course you are right, and predators do predate on kids whose parents are unavailable due to a number of reasons. So I don't think it's right to blame the parents. (If my previous post did so, I apologize. We can all miss some things out there in the world and feel that gut punch if the awful happens to someone in our family.) I do think about parents who brought their kids over to Michael Jacksoon's house. You had aspiring young actors spending all their time there. Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. Aaron Carter. Macauley Culkin. Soleil Moon Frye. All of their parents were pretty present stage parents. It was the 80s. Times were different. But man!

[Deleted]

I think people were just naive in those days.

Back when I was a kid (late 80s) there was a local tutor that was very popular with the parents in my neighborhood. A few years later, it came out that he had molested several of his preteen clients, one of whom was a friend of my brother (I'm talking serious stuff, like actual rape). He told my brother years later he kept telling his mom he didn't like going there, he'd throw a tantrum, she'd ignore him and all but drag him over. I guess he was too embarrassed or ashamed or just didn't know how to verbalize what was going on. She was a single mom (the dad was out of the picture) and kind of a tough lady, doing the best she could for her kids. I'm sure she just felt frustrated when he'd throw a tantrum, thinking about the hard work and money it was costing her, and how she was sacrificing to give him a good education, and would shut her ears to his tantruming and drag him out to the car. Mom's were kind of tough in those days tbh--helicopter parents were few and far between. And of course the tutor knew which were the vulnerable kids who were "safe" to target.

By the time all this came out, he was a troubled teenager and had basically left home and never came back. He's in his 40s now, is estranged from his mom, has never returned to the area, and as far as I know has had nothing to do with his mother/siblings for years, he blames her to a certain extent, which is understandable, I get where he is coming from even though from an objective look back I can say she obviously had no clue at the time. I have no doubt she feels terrible and blames herself. But parenting was just different in those days. I have much younger siblings who grew up well over a decade after me and I can say the way they were raised by my parents/the world they were raised in was totally different than mine/my peers.

[cremetangerine82]

Nick Carter accused of rape.

[Auroranorth]

At this point, I feel like I've exhausted my capacity to be shocked when accusations pop up. I might feel mild surprise at a specific name, but that's as far as I go.

[chiqui]

Jen Shah, of the Real Housewives franchise (Salt Lake City) sentenced for defrauded elderly people out of their savings to fund her luxurious lifestyle.

It didn't help that she "mocked the system" earlier by declaring she was "Shah-mazing." d'oh!

[heyalice]

Now I have to watch the upcoming seasons!!

[Auroranorth]

Now she's Shah-meful. And going to prison. Also, the feds are going to be able to sell off a lot of her fancy handbags and jewelry to give some of the money back to her victims.