The Celebrity Sexual Harassment and Rapists Thread

[hallicks]

Wrong'uns? 

[BomberPat]

On 3/8/2019 at 6:05 PM, Really Big Shoe said:

Their "story" has nothing to do with getting justice, what are they going to do exhume his remains and lock them in prison?

Imagine making this argument about Jimmy Savile rather than Michael Jackson. After all, he was dead when the bulk of the allegations came out, and the damning documentary was aired. Should have just let the mad old nonce rest in peace? 

A key thing that's rumoured to be bubbling under in the broader US media landscape is that this could be the beginning of their "Yewtree". Because the questions after "did Jackson do it?" is "how many people enabled it?" and "who else?". This shit didn't die with Jackson, nor should we let it.

On 3/9/2019 at 11:25 PM, Astro Hollywood said:

One thing that wasn't really touched on in the film, which I've always been really fascinated by, is to what level the public character of MJ was the real him. He definitely contrived the whole 'Wacko Jacko' deal, with all those mad rumours about buying the elephant man's bones and whatnot, but was that part of his grooming, to create the perception of a sexless manchild it's fine to leave your kids with, or a deliberate marketing act too? Like was he selling more shirts that way? 

I'm not sure it was so much about creating the image of a sexless manchild, as it was Jackson being sick of the media prying into his personal life looking for stories (noncing or otherwise), and realising that if he could give them a steady stream of tabloid fodder like "Jackson has a chimp now" and the stuff about the Elephant Man's bones, they could just print that and not go digging any further, more or less leaving him alone. 

[Surf Digby]

6 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I'm not sure it was so much about creating the image of a sexless manchild, as it was Jackson being sick of the media prying into his personal life looking for stories (noncing or otherwise), and realising that if he could give them a steady stream of tabloid fodder like "Jackson has a chimp now" and the stuff about the Elephant Man's bones, they could just print that and not go digging any further, more or less leaving him alone. 

And just stop dogging him around?

[Steve Justice]

He he. 

[Brewster McCloud]

On 3/11/2019 at 9:42 PM, Carbomb said:

And there's also the added element of pressure via leveraged gratitude, from all the gifts he lavished on them before this happened - they seemed to feel they couldn't say anything at the time as a result of it. I daresay that, during the court cases where they testified for him, they were probably terrified that they wouldn't be believed, because they'd accepted houses and whatnot.

It's a bit more sinister than just that: the victim of the abuse can end up falling in "love" with the perpetrator and make misguided attempts to protect the faux-relationship when it's threatened. Bill Hicks used to have a bit about the TV programme Cops - you'd always see trailer park dwelling women hootin' and holllerin' in anger at the rozzers when their abusive spouse got hauled off, and he couldn't fathom why. When adults are concerned you can consider Stockholm syndrome at play, or for someone with nothing, even an abusive husband is better than none at all. For the infants who Jackson preyed upon, though, he was seen by them as another parental authority as well as in his quasi-messiah role. What 7 year old wants to see Daddy 2 go to prison? It's an incredible burden to put on a child, hence their initial unwillingness to implicate Jackson. 

The director of the film explains it very well in this article:

"This misplaced loyalty often persists into adulthood, even though the adult knows by now that child sexual abuse is a crime. “I felt anointed,” as Wade puts it."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/10/dan-reed-shocked-those-wont-accept-michael-jackson-abuser

Edited March 13, 2019 by Brewster McCloud

[Carbomb]

38 minutes ago, Brewster McCloud said:

It's a bit more sinister than just that: the victim of the abuse can end up falling in "love" with the perpetrator and make misguided attempts to protect the faux-relationship when it's threatened. Bill Hicks used to have a bit about the TV programme Cops - you'd always see trailer park dwelling women hootin' and holllerin' in anger at the rozzers when their abusive spouse got hauled off, and he couldn't fathom why. When adults are concerned you can consider Stockholm syndrome at play, or for someone with nothing, even an abusive husband is better than none at all. For the infants who Jackson preyed upon, though, he was seen by them as another parental authority as well as in his quasi-messiah role. What 7 year old wants to see Daddy 2 go to prison? It's an incredible burden to put on a child, hence their initial unwillingness to implicate Jackson. 

The director of the film explains it very well in this article:

"This misplaced loyalty often persists into adulthood, even though the adult knows by now that child sexual abuse is a crime. “I felt anointed,” as Wade puts it."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/10/dan-reed-shocked-those-wont-accept-michael-jackson-abuser

Absolutely. My post was actually a reply to complement that previously-made particular point, though. It's basically brain-washing.

[Brewster McCloud]

2 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Absolutely. My post was actually a reply to complement that previously-made particular point, though. It's basically brain-washing.

And it's fascinating, yet horrible, to see how the nuts and bolts of brainwashing actually work in the case of the documentary we're discussing. You can see Jackson in a similar light to Jim Jones: it's almost like there's a playbook for these swine: pick your target, isolate them, turn their loved ones against them etc. 

I wasn't having a pop, Carbomb, but before I watched Leaving Neverland I'd never considered that the child - the fucking child - might fall in love with the abuser. It's even grimmer than I'd thought. 

[David]

Interesting that Wade Robson was set to direct the dance movie Step Up Revolution, even claiming in a blog post that was documented in his court papers in December 2017 that the role was the "fulfilment of Michael Jackson's prophecy" that Wade would go on to do big things in the directing industry, only for him to unfortunately have to relinquish the role due to personal issues.

He claimed that he was "ravaged by a feeling of shame that he was a complete failure. I was fulfilling Michael Jackson's prophecy and then I blew it. Therefore my entire life, I believed, had been in vain."

It seems he then recognised the upcoming Jackson Las Vegas show, in partnership with Cirque Du Soleil, as his opportunity to get back on track after his personal issues, and he contacted the director asking about an opportunity to choreograph the show, claiming he wanted to "really do the show."

He was then told to contact a guy by the name of John Branca, who was the co-executor of Jackson's estate and who was in charge of selecting for key roles in conjunction with the Jackson family. He would need to be selected by them and put forward for the role.

Branca testified later that he decided instead to select someone else called Jamie King to do the job, claiming that King was "better qualified" for the position, but said in the same testimony that King would have been free to hire Robson in a lesser role if he saw fit, but it wouldn't have been a leading creative position.

This was apparently a few months before Robson switched gears and started making the claims he did. 

Seems that this dude has been under a shitload of pressure to deliver on lofty expectations since he was a kid and doing those talent shows and appearing with Jackson, with two nervous breakdowns coming in his adult life. There are numerous blog posts from him that show someone who was struggling under huge pressure to perform and meet expectations.

It also seems that his mothers testimony would suggest that he was facing some financial problems, and that he was worried about not being able to provide for his family due to his personal issues. There was also claims in his own deposition that his wife had threatened to leave him if he didn't get himself right and start earning money for his family again.

All very interesting stuff indeed. This is worth a watch for anyone who's interested in some of the quotes from various depositions and lawsuits etc. The lawsuit and deposition stuff comes at about the 11 minute mark. 

As for the title of the documentary, it's actually a term that Wade Robson used to describe himself on a few occasions.

 

[Devon Malcolm]

On a non-Jacko note (he probably deserves his own thread), this is an interesting story I've happened across today:-

https://avn.com/business/articles/legal/jimmy-lifetsyles-makes-statement-addressing-emma-hix-accusations-825222.html

Quote

WankzVR director Jimmy Lifestyles posted an over 10-minute long video to Twitter early Tuesday morning in which he offers apologies to performers Emma Hix and Emma Starletto for actions he took during a shoot Sunday evening that both women claim they did not consent to before the scene commenced.

Hix originally took to Twitter after leaving the set Sunday night to relate her account of what had taken place in a series of videos that did not identify Lifestyles. She soon did name him, however, following calls from a number of other performers to out the director in question. A debate then ensued between Lifestyles and Hix on the social media platform that continued into Monday morning about whether the director had overstepped the line of consent during the shoot, with Starletto—Hix's co-star in the scene—joining in to corroborate Hix's claims.

Those claims were that Lifestyles, who appeared in the scene in a non-sex role as a leprechaun, licked both girls between their buttocks in what was supposed to be a softcore shot of them putting their behinds in his face. 

In the video posted this morning, Lifestyles says, "I've reached out to the agents involved; the girls I've apologized [to] for my horrible communication on the day of the shoot in question with Emma Hix and Emma Starletto. It was a bad, bad choice, a mistake indeed."

He goes on to say, "Moving forward, I'm going to clean up the way I approach things. ... I had no idea that my approach to shooting porn was having a negative effect on people to the point to where they didn't want to shoot with us anymore. .... This day, the day in question, I took things too far. ... I got in the 'mode' because I have done scenes and that one, you know, seconds of the day just shattered a whole repuatation, and that shouldn't happen. That's irresponsible on my part. ... Please accept my deepest apologies, Emma Hix, Emma Starletto. It was a moment that I can't take back, and it was a bad decision, and let's try to move on. Anyone looking to shoot with us in the future, just know that I'm not going to put you in that situation. I'm going to retire myself from being any sort of talent in the scenes and yeah, let's just make good porn, everybody. Let's get back to work."

Hix retweeted Lifestyles' video with the comment, "Thank you, an apology is all I wanted. The act itself upset me, but you not apologizing, taking responsibility and listening to how I felt when I confronted you was really what hurt me, and which is why I resorted to Twitter to feel heard. So thank you for apologizing."

Approximately an hour later, Hix posted, "To make this clear; I appreciate the apology & thank him for saying it, but I do not forgive him. I would not have gotten the apology if i didn't post on twitter. An apology is a big step, but it doesn't always make everything go away. Just to make things clear."

See Lifestyles' full video below:

From the outset this might seem like quite a frivolous incident compared to some, inside and outside porn. But with so much debate right now about consent and the specifics of consent, I reckon this is actually going to be quite an important moment for the industry.

[SuperBacon]

There was also a pretty distressing account from Leigh Raven last year about a shoot she had been abused on, where IIRC her performer refused to take any responsibility whatsoever and she says this led to her being blacklisted by some performers/directors

https://jezebel.com/porn-actors-leigh-raven-and-riley-nixon-allege-abuse-v-1823677195

 

[Carbomb]

You'll know better than I will, Devon, but I'd imagine that porn is probably one of the industries where it's even more essential and urgent to have this sort of debate and delineation, with all the risk of blurred lines that arises from both the cultural and social perception of it.

[Devon Malcolm]

@SuperBacon - It's worth noting that apparently some female performers have reportedly refused to work with her since as well. The same has apparently happened with Stoya since her James Deen accusations. Which is going to make a tough environment to report such abuse in even harder.

@Carbomb - The problem porn has is that if a performer goes to the police and says "X sodomised me on a set and I had only consented to vaginal sex" then they're almost certain to be thrown out of the place. In some ways, porn is a place where it's carte blanche for abusers to thrive because taking such accusations to legal channels gets an exaggerated negative response to those who are sexually abused outside of the industry often receive. The industry needs to self-regulate because nobody else is going to help, and significant steps have been taken but it's a very slow process. The rise of more female-produced porn and 'ethical porn' is really key, I think.

[Carbomb]

Just read that Leigh Raven article SuperBacon posted. Fucking hell. That Rico Strong guy sounds like a prick too - black people already have enough to put up with, being accused frequently and frivolously of "playing the race card", and he actually plays the race card. 

[Jazzy G]

I was on a website and there was a rather long video which was apparently raw footage of the incident in question to try and discredit Leigh Raven's story. It's like 2-3 hours if I remember. 

[Devon Malcolm]

Oh, there's always a video to refute stuff. Like the arsehole on PornHub who put together a collection of all the scenes Stoya and James Deen did together. That scenes where abuse took place ever see the public spotlight is awful.