The #MeToo movement sends Hollywood figures into exile, not jail.
The #MeToo movement sends Hollywood figures into exile, not jail.
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The #MeToo movement has sent dozens of powerful Hollywood players into exile, but few of them have been placed in handcuffs or jail cells. And it is increasingly evident that the lack of criminal charges may remain the norm.
Harvey Weinstein has been accused of sexual assault in New York, and Bill Cosby He was sent to prison in Pennsylvania in the year that stories about Weinstein in The New York Times and The New Yorker unleashed waves of revelations of inappropriate sexual behavior in Hollywood. But those two central figures are exceptions.
A task force launched last November by Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey to handle the increase in accusations against entertainment figures has addressed criminal cases involving nearly two dozen figures in the entertainment industry. entertainment. None has been accused.
The lack of prosecutions is due to a clash between the #MeToo spirit, which encourages victims to present themselves years or even decades after the abuse and harassment they have maintained in private, and a legal system that demands the swift notification of crimes and hard evidence.
The task force has considered charges against 22 suspects, including Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, director James Toback and former CBS executive director Leslie Moonves, all of whom have denied participation in any sex that has not been consensual.
The charges have already been rejected by the majority. Cases involving six suspects, including Weinstein and Spacey, both with multiple accusers, remain open.
In 14 of the closed cases, the charges were rejected because the complaints were reported too late and, therefore, outside the statute of limitations. The rest was rejected for insufficient evidence or because the accuser refused to cooperate with the investigators after initially reporting the incidents.
Although disappointed by the lack of results, several accusers said they were still happy to have talked to police and prosecutors, for a variety of practical and emotional reasons.
"For me it was not necessarily a closure, but one of the healthiest things I've done for myself," said Melissa Schuman, whose 2003 case against Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys was rejected by the statute of limitations. "It felt therapeutic to tell the authorities, to get it out of my body and my mind and denounce it."
Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women's Law Center, which oversees the legal defense fund Time's Up, said some "the act of reporting, putting it on the register is critical, even if they are beyond limitations."
When law enforcement agencies welcome women to report on their experiences, it can eventually result in further prosecution, he said.
"In too many cases, the police have sent a signal that they will not address these problems," said Goss Graves. "If you have created a climate and a space that is friendly to the people who show up, more people will show up."
Schuman said he found that climate. She was well treated by the investigators of the working group and the police in what could have been a much more difficult process.
"I really felt supported, I listened, I cared and I believed," Schuman said.
Carter has denied the accusations from the beginning. He said that through his lawyer, when the charges were rejected, he felt confident that there would be no basis for the charges and that he was happy to leave the matter behind. One representative did not respond to a request on Friday for further comments.
There may be more tangible benefits to the reports. In California, simply filing a police report entitles victims to benefits that may include free psychotherapy. The reports also create additional claims that can help in further investigations or be brought to court to show a pattern of behavior, as they were for the Cosby trial.
"It just gives me peace to have it documented and filed," Schuman said, "and if my abuser does it again, the authorities told me they could use me to help corroborate."
The case of sexual assault that sent Cosby to prison was in 2004 and was prior to the #MeToo movement. It was filed just when the statute of limitations expired.
California requires that charges be filed within a year for many sexual crimes and within 10 years for many of the most serious crimes, including rape and sexual assault.
The working group has been studying complaints of incidents that are sometimes decades old. A rejected case against Spacey dates back to 1992. The accusations against Moonves date back to the late 1980s. A case for Toback dates from 1978.
In the documents published by the working group that explain why no charges were filed, some officials simply declare the effort useless and say little else. In other cases, prosecutors provide long and sometimes detailed descriptions of acts and laws that may have been violated, only to conclude reluctantly that too much time has passed.
Page after page of the documents end with the same sentence, "the processing is rejected".
In addition to confirming which cases you are considering and have rejected, the district attorney's office rejected the comments for this story.
California has already amended its laws to help victims, eliminating the statute of limitations for rape and other forms of sexual offenses of sexual abuse. But the courts have ruled that the statutes of limitations can not be modified to include suspects who have already exceeded them, so the new laws only apply to offenses starting in 2017, which means that the practical effects probably do not They will feel for years.
Many of the old cases taken into consideration probably would never have reached prosecutors before Weinstein's story broke and cultural attitudes began to change.
Even beyond the problem of the time limit, "it would be almost impossible for a research agency to find witnesses to corroborate and gather evidence," said Alan Jackson, a former prosecutor in the district attorney's office who ran against Lacey in 2012 and now works. as a defense lawyer.
Many accusers whose cases were considered by the working group have filed civil lawsuits that may have more staying power.
Goss Graves said it is desirable to leave as many options open as possible.
"The responsibility and final healing for the survivors will vary," he said. "In many ways, we're not in the middle of this process, we're in the beginning."
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Follow Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton.
SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
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