Them too - The Reckoning thread

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crime family values, that is.

So, to borrow an old bumper sticker, his karma ran over his dogma, did it? Good. 'bout time.

(LONDON) — The International Committee of the Red Cross has joined the list of prominent charities that have uncovered sexual misconduct among its staff.

Plan International UK has also disclosed wrongdoing. The charity group says it has confirmed six cases of sexual abuse of children by staff, volunteers or partner organizations and has pledged to do more to prevent misconduct.

Charities in the U.K. have been under increased scrutiny in recent weeks following allegations that senior staff from the British aid organization Oxfam used prostitutes and downloaded pornography while working in Haiti after the 201

Ryan Seacrest will still host the E! network's red carpet preshow at Sunday's Academy Awards, despite renewed conversation around sexual harassment allegations made against the host and producer by a former stylist and calls from at least one high-profile actress for him to skip the event.

E! confirmed to CNN that Seacrest will lead its coverage of the Oscars, adding in a statement that the network's investigation into the allegations was "extremely comprehensive and thorough."
"Over the course of a two month process, our outside counsel interviewed more than two dozen people regarding the allegations, including multiple separate meetings with the claimant and all firsthand witnesses that she provided," E!'s statement read. "The investigator is an attorney with nearly 20 years experience and is highly regarded professionally. Any claims that question the legitimacy of this investigation are completely baseless."
Seacrest issued a statement late Tuesday that read in part, "I have worked extremely hard to achieve my success and I don't take my opportunities for granted. I don't want to accuse anyone of not telling the truth but in this case, I have no choice but to again deny the claims against me, remind people that I was recused of any wrongdoing, and put the matter to rest."

News that Seacrest was facing workplace misconduct allegations first came to light in November, when Seacrest released a preemptive statement about an investigation E! was conducting.

He has repeatedly denied the allegations.

In February, E! concluded its investigation, saying in a statement at the time that outside counsel "found insufficient evidence to substantiate allegations against Seacrest."

Seacrest's former stylist, Suzie Hardy, went public on Monday, giving an interview to Variety in which she detailed allegations of groping and sexual harassment.

Hardy worked for Seacrest from 2007-13. She claims she was terminated in retaliation for reporting Seacret's alleged behavior, according to a letter obtained by CNN that Hardy's attorney sent to E!, NBC Universal and representatives for Seacrest back in November.

Former USA Volleyball coach Rick Butler was accused of sexually abusing “no fewer than six underage teen girls” while his wife attempted to silence the victims, a new lawsuit alleges.

Rick Butler, who founded Sports Performance Volleyball, a sports club based in Aurora, Illinois, was named in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that alleged he “used his position” to abuse the underage girls in the 1980s, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Butler, who was considered one of the “most powerful coaches in youth volleyball,” is also accused of impregnating one of his victims.

t was as if there was no 2003, when a woman said that Bryant had raped her in his Colorado hotel room. The details of what the woman told police are worth going over, again, because so much of it has been lost to time. A woman who worked at the hotel, she was 19 at the time, showed him to his room and he asked her to come back later. She did. When she left the room, according to police records, a coworker saw her shaken and crying. Investigators later found out she had blood on her underwear. Her blood was on Bryant’s shirt too. She spoke to police, then watched as the criminal proceedings descended into what even the usually reserved New York Times described as having “veered from melodrama to farce.” Everything from her sexual history to her mental health was game, for both reporters and sports fans.

How did Bryant’s legal team defeat her? Using the same legal strategies as always—naming and shaming. From Lindsay Gibbs in ThinkProgress on the case and its legacy.

The preliminary hearing in October 2003 was supposed to merely be a chance for the judge to decide whether there was enough evidence to require a trial. But Bryant’s attorney, Pamela Mackey, used it as a chance to smear the alleged victim’s reputation.

Not only did Mackey use the alleged victim’s name a staggering six times during the hearing, but when she was presented with the woman’s vaginal injuries, Mackey used the victim’s sexual history against her. The high-powered lawyer brought the hearing to a screeching halt, asking, “Could it be that [the alleged victim’s] injuries were caused by having sex with three men in three days?”

As Shapiro wrote in his book, Mackey’s tactic was an effective one, because that became the story of the day, and not the evidence displayed by Deputy District Attorney Gregg Crittenden and Eagle County Sheriff’s Detective Doug Winters.

The woman eventually said she would not testify—no surprise given what had happened to her entire life since first saying that Bryant had raped her—ending the criminal case. Bryant settled with the woman instead of defending himself in a civil lawsuit. He then went on to have what is widely considered a glorious NBA career, made a ton of money, and had his own official day in the city of Los Angeles. He even got to keep his wife. It’s as if nothing happened.

But there he was, Sunday night, smiling on that Oscar stage. Cracking a joke he clearly pre-wrote and getting a laugh anyway. Thanking his wife. And I couldn’t help but cry for the woman who is asking herself, right now, if I report him will anything happen to him? And I want to scream because Bryant on that stage, clinging to that golden statue, reminds her and me that the answer, still, is no.

Another winner was best actor Gary Oldman, who took home his first Oscar for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour.” Oldman’s ex-wife, Donya Fiorentino, accused him of assault in 2001, according to papers she filed in L.A. Superior Court.

“As I picked up the phone to call the police, Gary put his hand on my neck and squeezed,” she alleged. “I backed away, with the phone receiver in my hand. I tried to dial 911. Gary grabbed the phone receiver from my hand, and hit me in the face with the telephone receiver three or four times. Both of the children were crying.”

Oldman denied the allegations, calling them “replete with lies, innuendoes and half-truths.” No charges were filed. A judge awarded Oldman sole custody of their two children. Oldman has also been criticized for defending Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks. In an email to The Post in November, Oldman wrote, “This was a deeply personal and painful time in my life and I appreciated the due diligence of all involved. I was most thankful for the outcome.”

On Friday afternoon, the journalist Sandra Muller turned to Twitter to recall a humiliating and inappropriate sexual come-on from a powerful French executive.

“You have big breasts. You are my type of woman. I will make you orgasm all night,” she quoted him as having said, adding the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc, or “Expose Your Pig.”

By Tuesday, tens of thousands of Frenchwomen had heeded that call, posting disturbing accounts of sexual harassment and abuse, although most stopped short of identifying their harassers.

This response to the scandal engulfing the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was akin to the Twitter outpouring in the United States and elsewhere under the hashtag #MeToo, inspired in part by a tweet from the actress Alyssa Milano. In France, however, where a chauvinistic culture has long enabled powerful men to misbehave with impunity, the social media debate may push forward changes not only in the culture but in the law.

Proposals are under discussion to fine men for aggressive catcalling or lecherous behavior toward women in public, to extend the statute of limitations in cases of sexual assault involving minors, and to create a new age ceiling under which minors cannot legally consent to a sexual relationship.

Marlène Schiappa, a feminist and writer who is France’s junior minister for gender equality, said on Monday that the government was considering precisely how to define street harassment and how much to fine. The government would consult legal professionals on its proposals and hold workshops for citizens across the country, she said, aiming to put measures before Parliament next year.

Some commentators argued that sexual harassment accusations would be better handled in a courtroom than on social media. “Denouncing sexual harassment on a social network with a hashtag isn’t the appropriate place at all,” said Christophe Noël, a labor lawyer. “It can rebound on the accuser and create an open door to excesses and defamation.”

Ms. Muller, the journalist who first tweeted the “Expose Your Pig” hashtag, said in a phone interview on Tuesday that although she was overwhelmed by the hundreds of reactions she had received, she didn’t want Twitter to become a tribunal. “I’m not a judge,” she said.

Two lawyers for the executive Ms. Muller named in her tweet demanded on Tuesday that she delete it; one of the lawyers, Nicolas Bénoit, called her accusation a case of defamation but declined to comment further. The executive didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

In France, the Weinstein affair has recalled the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief and one-time presidential contender who was arrested in New York in 2011 and accused of assaulting a hotel housekeeper. Those charges were dropped, but helped dent a longstanding French reluctance to breach the privacy of public figures, no matter their sexual transgressions.

Sandrine Rousseau, a former leader of the French Green Party and leading advocate for victims of sexual harassment, said the Weinstein case had particular resonance in France because women had suffered in silence for so long.

Ms. Rousseau was one of a dozen women who in 2016 accused a Green Party legislator, Denis Baupin, of sexual harassment, saying he had pushed her up against a wall and kissed her against her will. Mr. Baupin, who resigned as vice president of France’s National Assembly, denied the accusations and the case was dropped on the grounds that too much time had elapsed.

“DSK was the first blow, and Baupin the second one,” Ms. Rousseau said in an interview, referring to the initials of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. “The Weinstein revelations have had a strong echo in France, because what used to be seen as naughtiness is now being considered as sexual harassment.”

In December, Georges Tron, who was a mayor and a government official under former President Nicolas Sarkozy, will stand trial on accusations of rape and sexual harassment after two women said he had assaulted them in a locked room in the town hall when he was mayor of Draveil, south of Paris. Mr. Tron resigned in 2011 over the accusations, which he denies.

In Europe, several countries have moved in recent years to criminalize sexual harassment, including Portugal, where the left-leaning government in 2015 made verbal sexual abuse a crime with a fine of up to 120 euros, or about $142. Belgium has also moved against sexual harassment, and in 2014 introduced penalties including a jail sentence of up to one year for remarks intending to express contempt for a person because of his or her gender.

In a sign of how French mores have evolved, President Emanuel Macron on Sunday announced that he had begun the procedure to strip Mr. Weinstein of France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, which he had received in 2012 for his work promoting foreign cinema in the United States.

Several French actresses are among the more than two dozen women who have stepped forward with accusations against Mr. Weinstein, among them Florence Darel, Judith Godrèche, and Léa Seydoux, who starred in the James Bond film “Spectre.”

For the first time, a Belgian criminal court has convicted a man of “sexism in the public space,” for verbally abusing a female police officer who tried to question him after he was seen jaywalking.

The man, whose name was not disclosed, was convicted of sexism, slander and threatening a police officer, and fined 3,000 euros, or $3,725. He did not appear in court, and he can appeal the conviction, but failure to pay the fine could land him in prison, officials said.

“Shut your mouth, I don’t talk to women, being a police officer is not a job for women,” the man told the female police officer during the arrest, according to Gilles Blondeau, a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office. The officer arrested him and filed charges.

The verdict was the first conviction under a Belgian law criminalizing sexism in a public place. The sexism law was passed in 2014 as an amendment to an earlier law condemning discrimination in general.

The Belgian Parliament passed the law after a public outcry over a documentary called “Femme de la rue,” or “Woman of the Street,” which exposed the abuse that women faced on a daily basis in Brussels.

Sexism, according to the law, is defined as “every gesture or deed” that is “clearly meant to express contempt of a person based on sex,” or considers a person inferior based on sex, or reduces a person solely to a sexual dimension, and which “gravely affects the dignity of that person as a result.” Violation of the law can lead to a prison sentence of up to one year and a fine of up to €10,000.

The conviction took place in November, and went almost entirely unnoticed until a legal magazine reported on it recently. In an atmosphere charged by the #MeToo movement, the verdict has now drawn extensive coverage in Belgium.

Although several police officers were present, the man only insulted the female officer. “The case was easy to prosecute,” said Mr. Blondeau, as the arrest and the abuses happened in a very public space “with several bystanders serving as witnesses.”

During the arrest, the man claimed to be the victim of discrimination “because of his dark skin color,” Mr. Blondeau said.

The Metropolitan Opera has fired its longtime conductor James Levine. Per The New York Times, the Met released a statement Monday evening that said it had “uncovered credible evidence that Mr. Levine engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct toward vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers, over whom Mr. Levine had authority.” This news follows the Met’s decision to suspend Levine in December of last year.

As the Times notes, Levine’s firing creates a difficult situation for the Met, which costs $300 million a year to run and relies on donations to operate. But the termination also comes as no surprise. In December, the Times first reported allegations that Levine had sexually abused four men decades ago, including Chris Brown, who was 17 when he first met Levine at a summer music program in 1968.

According to the Times, Johanna Fiedler, a former press representative for the Met, wrote in her 2001 book, Molto Agitato: The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera, that these rumors about Levine had been going around since at least the late 1970s.

New York City men are protecting themselves from the dark side of the #MeToo movement, including an upswing in false accusations and blackmail, lawyers and private eyes say.

One young technology exec said he has six Nest cams installed inside his swanky downtown condo to “document and provide corroboration for what’s happening in my private life.”

“It’s an insurance policy,” he said.

When he recently brought home a date and realized she was highly intoxicated, he turned to one of the cams and called her a ride home.

“I tried to keep the interaction fully within views of the camera before calling her a Lyft,” he said.

The exec says #MeToo — while giving a voice to victims of sexual assault and harassment — has emboldened other women to falsely accuse well-appointed men for financial gain, fame or vengeance.

“Anonymous accusations are now possible, and the media believes the court of public opinion should not hold itself to anything resembling the court of law,” he said.

“Since October, I’ve gotten about 25 cases of solid extortion threats,” said Weisberg, managing director of Sage Intelligence Group.

“I think in some cases, a few manipulative people are using the #MeToo movement as leverage . . . It gives their baseless, false claims more teeth.”

Weisberg says it has become a common tactic for extorters to e-mail a man with whom they have had relations and demand an apology in writing.

“They claim that their therapist says that’s the important first step,” Weisberg said.

“Let’s just say a high-powered person writes an e-mail back and says, ‘Wow, I’m really sorry you feel that way, and I’m sorry if I did anything,’ they are basically admitting wrongdoing, whether or not they even know what they are apologizing for.”

Weisberg said he considers it a red flag when an accuser seeks money directly from the accused or threatens to go public on social media.

“If you’re going to do it, do it — go on social media. But don’t threaten the person in advance . . . That’s what we call in the business a ‘cash grab.’ ”

On edge over the wave of sexual-misconduct allegations against prominent figures, professional men in New York say they have been avoiding evening outings with female colleagues.

One corporate lawyer scratched his tradition of grabbing Christmas drinks with a female mentee, and opted for the safer alternative of lunch. Another city businessman now brings his lawyer to meetings with women to avoid any misconstrued messages.

“I even think to myself, ‘Should I be meeting someone at my office at 9 o’clock at night when no one else is there?’ ” admitted criminal-defense attorney Jeremy Saland, who has seen an uptick in #MeToo-inspired extortion cases. “Anyone can make an allegation.”

“Our clients are seeking protection from extorters because they are petrified that if a claim is made public, shared with family or reported to employers, perception — not the truth — will carry the day.”

The tech exec, meanwhile, is trying to stay one step ahead with his in-home security system.

“I think that every single man in New York . . . is being a lot more careful now,” he said, “which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

That could easily backfire against some of those guys. Installing cameras in your home so you can record your dates without their permission, even if it's to "ensure everyone's safety" could potentially be illegal, depending on what revenge porn laws are like where you live. Secretly recording people never occurs to me like a good solution to any problem.