There have been many reported cases and accusations of sexual abuse in the American film industry reported against people related to the medium of cinema of the United States.
Accusations of sexual assault in the industry go back to 1921, and during the last decades they have gained strength due to the accusations against producers, directors, actors and related publicists. Speculation about sexual assault in the industry grew in 1977, when director Roman Polanski left the United States after being convicted on charges of drugging and raping a thirteen-year-old girl.
In October 2017, the issue gained extensive media coverage after producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexually abusing more than 80 women. The accusations of Weinstein led to dozens of men and women to publicly begin to denounce sexual aggressions, in what became known as the Weinstein effect and the MeToo movement. Some actors in the medium joined the protest and publicly supported the victims. The subject is of ongoing general interest to the public and continues to feed public opinion, and moreover has served to heighten public awareness and interest in general industry trends that allow events such as these to happen. The public has begun to increasingly look at not only the constraints that women are placed in but also the way the legal system only strengthens these constraints through contracts and such in Hollywood.
Fatty Arbuckle case The first case of sexual assault in Hollywood to receive widespread media attention occurred on September 5, 1921, when comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was accused of sexually assaulting actress Virginia Rappe. Arbuckle had organized a party in which, it was alleged, he took advantage of Rappe's drunkenness to rape her. The aggression was so violent that Rappe died four days later. The news coverage reached such a pitch that journalist and newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst wrote columns in which he directly accused Arbuckle and added details to the event, such as that Arbuckle had raped Rappe with a bottle.
Arbuckle was the defendant in three widely publicized trials for the rape of Rappe, and after the first two trials, which resulted in hung juries, Arbuckle was acquitted in the third trial and received a formal written statement of apology from the jury. Despite Arbuckle's acquittal, the scandal was enough to end his career.
Patricia Douglas case Patricia Douglas, a dancer and film extra, reported being raped by David Ross, a sales employee at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, during a party she was hired to entertain guests with dozens of other women hosted by the company in 1937. Patricia reported she was force-fed alcohol, then when she went outside to vomit, Ross forced her into a car and violently raped her. She immediately went to the hospital and filed reports for prosecution, even paying her own legal fees.
A massive retaliation was waged against Patricia to blacklist and ruin her so the case was dropped. Patricia was cleaned at the hospital instead of evidence being collected, news reports revealing her personal information lied that she was promiscuous and had contracted a sexually transmitted disease, and even the prosecutor was accused of taking bribes in exchange for dropping the charges. Director David Stenn found Patricia before she died in 2003, insisting to ask her account once again, which was published in an article by Vanity Fair magazine. Stenn would later release the documentary Girl 27 to cover Patricia's reports and legal efforts and ensuing fallout, as well as other sexual abuses of female celebrities in the American entertainment industry.
Actresses and feminist activists Rose McGowan and Jessica Chastain have voiced their support for the documentary and believe it to be vital education on sexual abuse cultures in Hollywood. McGowan has since publicly accused Hal Roach, at whose ranch the party was held, of facilitating the sexual abuses of even more women at the party, but details haven't been elaborated to expend on the case any further.
Arthur Freed case
In 1988, former child actress Shirley Temple accused Arthur Freed of having sexually harassed her both in her autobiography and in an interview on Larry King Live. Temple alleged that Freed called her into his room and undressed in front of the then-twelve year old actress.Handy, Bruce (February 14, 2014). [ "The Art Of The Creep: When Good Movies Happen To Bad People".] Vanity Fair. Retrieved June 11, 2016.
Louis B. Mayer case
Louis B. Mayer has been accused of sexual abuse, including having groped a then-teenage Judy Garland. According to Gerald Clarke's book Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, Mayer "held meetings with the young woman seated on his lap, his hands on her chest".
Shirley Temple also made allegations against Mayer in her autobiography, having accused him of sexually propositioning her mother Gertrude in an adjacent room during the incident Temple had with Freed.
Roman Polanski case
In 1977, Samantha Geimer, then 13 years old, accused director Roman Polanski of forcing her to have sex with him. Geimer stated that the director took her to the house of actor Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles, under the pretense of wanting her as a model for a photo shoot for Vogue magazine. There, Polanski supplied her quaaludes and later photographed her topless. Both were alone in Nicholson's house, so Polanski took advantage of the situation by taking her to the master bedroom and then raping her. Polanski was accused of sexual abuse of a minor, drug use, perversion and sodomy, but only convicted pursuant to a plea of unlawful sexual intercourse. The Court ordered 90 days of state prison that included a psychiatric evaluation, while deliberating the final sentence. However, Polanski requested another 90-day probation period to finish a then-current project, which was granted. After filming finished, the director returned to the United States for his evaluation period and was released after 42 days. However, Polanski fled to Europe before his sentencing, after reportedly learning that the judge in the case would renege on a probation agreement and instead impose a jail sentence. Polanski settled in his native France, where his French nationality prevented him from being extradited to the United States. The Polanski case sparked the interest of the American media, who condemned the actions of the French authorities.
In March 2003, during the 75th Academy Awards ceremony, Polanski was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Pianist; Polanski did not attend. Attendees at the ceremony gave the director a standing ovation, despite his being absent. In September 2009, he was arrested at the Zürich Airport in Switzerland at the request of American authorities on the Samantha Geimer case. However, the following year, the Justice Department announced that Switzerland would not extradite Polanski. In December 2016, the Supreme Court of Poland rejected a request for Polanski's extradition. Polanski is a dual citizen of France and Poland, and lived in France, which does not extradite its citizens. In 2017, Geimer herself asked to close the case, saying that she had forgiven him years earlier.
In 2010, Charlotte Lewis also accused Polanski of predatory sexual conduct against her when she was 16 years old, claiming that Polanski insisted that she sleep with him in return for casting her in the 1986 film Pirates.
Woody Allen case
In 1978, actress Mia Farrow and her husband André Previn adopted Soon-Yi Previn, born in Seoul. After Farrow's divorce from Previn, she began a relationship with film director Woody Allen. In December 1987, Farrow and Allen had a son, Satchel (who would later go by the name Ronan Farrow). Farrow had adopted two other children by herself: Moses in 1978 and Dylan in 1985. Allen would co-adopt them in December 1991.
In January 1992, a crisis in the relationship between Farrow and Allen appeared when Farrow discovered Allen and her oldest adopted daughter Soon-Yi were having an affair, which the couple admitted. Later that year, on August 17, Allen issued a statement saying that he was in love with Previn and the affair still existed.
The relationship between Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn had started in December 1991, when Soon-Yi was 21 years old. The discovery of their affair sparked a dispute over custody of the younger children Satchel (later: Ronan), Dylan and Moses, in the course of which an allegation of sexual abuse against Allen arose. While the parties were negotiating how to resolve custody of the children, they had agreed that Allen could make supervised visits to the minor children.
On August 4, 1992, Farrow received Allen in her Connecticut holiday home and went shopping with a friend, leaving 7-year-old Dylan and 4-year-old Satchel under the care of two babysitters, who had explicit instructions never to leave the children alone, and were accompanied by another nanny and the three children of Farrow's friend Casey Pascal. Moses Farrow, who was then 14 years old, was also present. Although no one observed that Allen or Dylan had left the group that day, the babysitters retraced their steps and concluded that there may have been a period of 10 or 20 minutes in which they were neither with Allen nor Dylan. At this point, Allen was alleged to have taken Dylan to a crawl space behind Mia Farrow's bedroom closet and sexually abused her.
The police investigation began several days later, after a pediatrician whom Mia had taken Dylan to had informed the police (as required by law). The State Police and Connecticut Attorney's Office referred Dylan to the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic at Yale New Haven Hospital to determine if she had been sexually abused. After a six-month investigation, the hospital's Child Sexual Abuse Clinic concluded that Dylan was not sexually abused by Allen and that Dylan's statements did not refer to actual events that occurred to her. They stated that the allegation was likely a combination of emotional distress and coaching by her mother.
The allegation was also investigated by New York Social Services, who concluded that there was no credible evidence of abuse, and by the New York Supreme Court in the custody case, which dismissed the abuse allegation.
In the closing statements of the custody trials, Mia Farrow's attorney, Eleanor Alter, acknowledged the possibility that the allegation of abuse was all Dylan's fantasies, but that Dylan still believed it had actually happened. In February 2014, when she was 28, Dylan repeated the assault allegation in an open letter in the New York Times blog of Nicholas Kristof, a family friend, stating: "When I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and took me to a dark attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lie on my stomach and play with my brother's electric train. Then he abused me sexually, he spoke to me while he was doing it, whispering to me that I was a good girl, that this was our secret and he promised me that we would go to Paris and I would become a movie star."
Although Allen has denied the allegation against him, his son Ronan defended his sister. Ronan was one of the first journalists to write about the sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, leading to the Weinstein effect and the Me Too movement. Conversely, Ronan and Dylan's older brother, Moses Farrow, who was 14 years old in 1992, wrote an open letter saying that he was in the house that day and had never lost sight of Allen and Dylan, that there was no sexual abuse, that the allegation was a fabrication by Mia Farrow and that there had never been an electric train set in the attic, as Dylan had claimed.