#MeToo Movement

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      One of China’s Biggest Stars, Kris Wu, Faces a #MeToo Storm

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      An 18-year-old said the singer Kris Wu enticed young women like herself with career promises, then pressured them into having sex. He has denied the accusations.Several major luxury brands have severed ties with Kris Wu, a Chinese Canadian singer with a huge following, after an 18-year-old accused him of targeting and pressuring her and other young women for sex.The accusations, which Mr. Wu denied in multiple statements, have triggered widespread public outrage and thrown his career into tumult. At least 11 companies including Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Porsche and L’Oréal suspended or terminated contracts with Mr. Wu this week, after his accuser spoke out during an interview with an online Chinese news outlet on Sunday.Mr. Wu, 30, rose to fame as a member of the K-pop band EXO before embarking on a solo career as a model, actor and singer, drawing more than 50 million fans online as well as lucrative endorsement deals. Known in China as Wu Yifan, he is one of the country’s most popular celebrities to face #MeToo accusations.Mr. Wu’s accuser is Du Meizhu, a university student in Beijing who said she first met him when she was 17. She said she had been invited to Mr. Wu’s home by his agent with the suggestion that he could help her acting career, according to her social media posts and the interview with Netease, an online portal. Once there, she was pressured to drink cocktails until she lost consciousness, she said, and later found herself in his bed.Ms. Du said she believed that this was a tactic he used to draw other young women. She accused Mr. Wu of regarding women as though they were all concubines in a harem. “You look at a lot of pictures of girls at drinking parties and select them like merchandise,” she wrote in one social media post, addressing him directly.Mr. Wu has denied the accusations, through his lawyer, Zhai Jiayu, and public statements. On Monday, Mr. Wu said that he had only met Ms. Du once in December of last year.“I declare that there has never been any ‘selecting a concubine’!” he wrote on the social media platform Weibo, referring to Ms. Du’s harem comment. He denied having ever seduced, drugged or raped anyone. “If there was such behavior, please don’t worry, I will go to jail by myself!”His lawyer has vowed to file a lawsuit against Ms. Du and report her to the police for defamation. Ms. Du has also said that she reported her accusations to the police.Ms. Du and Mr. Wu did not respond to emailed requests to comment.Ms. Du’s account has been met with an outpouring of support, a sign of the growing strength of the country’s small Me Too movement. One of her posts on Weibo has been liked by more than 10 million users. Hashtags such as #girlshelpgirls and others calling for Mr. Wu to quit show business have been viewed by millions.Ms. Du’s supporters flooded the social media pages of several brands with threats of boycotts if they did not terminate their endorsement deals with Mr. Wu. One by one, the brands moved to distance themselves from him.“This incident shows that nowadays people will no longer swallow insults and humiliation and be afraid of slut shaming,” said Feng Yuan, a feminist scholar and activist. “People increasingly want to speak up and make themselves heard.”#MeToo activism can be challenging in China, where the ruling Communist Party imposes strict constraints on dissent and public debate. Some women who have come forward with accounts of abuse have faced a public and legal backlash. The authorities often discourage women from reporting rape and other sex crimes.Mr. Wu walking the runway during a Louis Vuitton show in Shanghai last year. Several major luxury brands suspended or terminated contracts with him this week.Lintao Zhang/Getty ImagesIt was unclear how the authorities were planning to respond to the allegations against Mr. Wu, but at least three groups affiliated with the government put out statements calling for an investigation.“Everyone is equal before the law, and celebrities with huge followings are no exception,” China Women’s News, the newspaper of a state-run women’s group, wrote on its social media page. “Believe that the law will not wrong a good person, nor will it let a wicked one go.”Ms. Du first started speaking out on July 8, when she released screenshots of conversations between her and Mr. Wu, as well as people she said worked for him. She accused them of enticing young women by dangling opportunities in show business.In one screenshot, dated July of last year, a person reaching out to Ms. Du on Weibo asked her if she would be interested in working in the movie industry. The person then added her contact on WeChat, a chat app, and asked if she had just completed her college entrance examination, saying that he worked for Mr. Wu’s studio and they were looking for new talent.Ms. Du said she felt helpless when she learned that Mr. Wu specifically targeted young women like her. “Indeed, we are all softhearted when we see your innocent expression, but that does not mean that we want to become playthings whom you can deceive!” she wrote in a post on Weibo.She said soon after that, another associate of Mr. Wu’s contacted her on WeChat to offer what she considered hush money to take down the post. When she demanded a public apology from Mr. Wu, the associate said they were considering legal action against her, according to screenshots of the chat she posted online. She said that 500,000 yuan, or nearly $80,000, was later transferred to her bank account, though she had not given her consent.A store displaying an advertisement featuring Mr. Wu. His accuser, Du Meizhu, has been a target of cyberbullying since going public.Tingshu Wang/ReutersIn the Netease interview on Sunday, Ms. Du said that she had started to return the money in batches and that she was gearing up for a legal fight.In detailing her first encounter with Mr. Wu, Ms. Du said that she had been told that she would be going to discuss potential jobs. She said that she tried to leave, but that his staff took away her phone and warned that if Mr. Wu did not have a good time, it could be detrimental to her future as an actor.Pressured into drinking heavily, she said, she ended up sleeping with Mr. Wu. They dated until March, according to her account of the events, when he stopped responding to her calls and messages.Since then, she said, she had heard from seven other women who had been similarly treated. She said she wanted to fight for their interests as well. She did not identify the other people, and the accusations could not be immediately corroborated.Since going public, Ms. Du said she has been a target of cyberbullying and death threats, and that she had been diagnosed with depression. Mr. Wu’s international fan club said in a post on Weibo: “It’s a pity to see a groundless internet drama turn into an evil carnival that violates the truth and laws.”But several other people on social media this week posted messages of support, including screenshots of chats that they said indicated Mr. Wu or his staff inappropriately targeted young women.“Girls, please protect yourself,” Zhang Dansan, a former member of a girl band, wrote on Weibo on Monday, after sharing screenshots of conversations that she said showed how Mr. Wu had asked her if she was a virgin. “I want to be loved too, but don’t be fooled.” More

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      Her Book Described Bringing Bill Cosby to Justice. Then He Was Freed.

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      Months before Andrea Constand’s memoir about the Cosby case and its aftermath was set to be published, a Pennsylvania Court overturned his conviction for assaulting her and released him.Andrea Constand was taking what she has described as a step toward healing: 16 years after naming Bill Cosby in a lawsuit as the man who had sexually assaulted her, and three years after he was convicted and sentenced to prison for the crime, she was ready to tell her story in a memoir that is due to be published in September.The forthcoming book traces Ms. Constand’s journey from disbelieved accuser to a powerful voice in the #MeToo movement, one of dozens of women who came forward with similar accounts of abuse and misconduct by Mr. Cosby but the one who, in the words of her publisher, had “the power to bring him to justice.”But instead of having the last word, a key part of Ms. Constand’s narrative — if not her book — was rewritten Wednesday when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court freed Mr. Cosby on procedural grounds. The court did not exonerate Mr. Cosby, 83, but said that he should not have been charged because a previous district attorney had given him assurances that he would not be prosecuted.The court’s decision was “disappointing,” Ms. Constand and her lawyers said in a statement, which noted that they had not been consulted on, or even been made aware of, the closed-door prosecutorial maneuverings more than a decade ago that eventually allowed Mr. Cosby to walk out of a maximum-security prison near Philadelphia on Wednesday. And in a case once seen as a harbinger of women’s right to justice, the effect, Ms. Constand and her lawyers feared, would be to once again silence victims of assault.Andrea Constand’s Statement on Bill CosbyAndrea Constand and her legal team released a statement on Wednesday about the overturning of Bill Cosby’s conviction. Read it here.Read Document 1 pageFor other women who said that they had survived assaults or misconduct by Mr. Cosby — more than 50 have come forward — the whiplash was intense, especially for those who gave corroborating accounts in his criminal trial.“We know he’s guilty, but as far as I’m concerned, as of today, the justices that have made this decision have just enabled a criminal to go without a consequence,” Heidi Thomas, who testified that Mr. Cosby raped her in 1984, told a Denver news channel. “What message is that sending to other victims? To other perpetrators? This is one case, but the precedent they have just set is devastating.”Ms. Constand, 48, who is now a licensed massage therapist in her native Canada, has movingly described how much the Cosby case upended her life; she called her memoir “The Moment,” as in, the moment everything changed.“I’m a middle-aged woman who’s been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward,” she said in her victim impact statement before Mr. Cosby’s sentencing in 2018, describing the rippling aftereffects of the night when she said he drugged and violated her in his suburban Philadelphia mansion.At the time, in 2004, she was a 30-year-old director of operations with the Temple University women’s basketball team, and she considered Mr. Cosby, then 66, a grandfather-like friend and mentor. Their encounter — when she was literally immobilized by the pills Mr. Cosby gave her, according to her testimony — was a profound betrayal, she said.Her memoir, “The Moment,” is due to be published in September. Penguin Random House“Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it,” she said in her statement to the court. “He robbed me of my health and vitality, my open nature, and my trust in myself and others.”According to several published excerpts, her book, to be released by Viking Canada, describes her history as a confident, athletic youth from Toronto turned professional basketball player in Europe, who initially connected with Mr. Cosby, a Temple alumnus and donor, over sports.Recounting the assault, first to the police and prosecutors a year after she experienced it and then in a civil suit and two criminal trials, was re-traumatizing, she has said. Lawyers for Mr. Cosby sought to portray the interaction as consensual.“The attacks on my character continued, spilling over outside the courtroom steps, attempting to discredit me and cast me in false light,” she said in her statement to the court in 2018. “These character assassinations have caused me to suffer insurmountable stress and anxiety, which I still experience today.”Writing the memoir was meant to be an act of closure — a long-delayed one. “I did not want to lose any memories to time, and believe that reflection is a necessary final step toward true healing,” she said in an interview with her publisher, according to CBC Books. “By sharing stories, we can begin to help those whose lives have been impacted by sexual violence.”Neither Ms. Constand nor a representative for Viking Canada responded to requests for comment about the status of the book.In an excerpt that was published last month in Elle, Ms. Constand describes the moment in 2005 when she learned that Bruce L. Castor Jr., who was then the district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia, had decided not to move forward with her case.“It was yet another sharp blow in what had already been, without a doubt, the most difficult year of my life,” she wrote.It was a decision that would have unanticipated ramifications this year.Mr. Castor — who earlier this year was one of the lawyers representing President Donald J. Trump’s in his second impeachment trial — announced in a news release at the time that his investigation had found “insufficient” evidence to proceed with the case. He has since said that he assured Mr. Cosby that he would not be prosecuted to pave the way for Mr. Cosby to testify in Ms. Constand’s civil case. In depositions for the civil case, Mr. Cosby acknowledged giving quaaludes to women he was pursuing for sex.When the civil case was settled in 2006 for $3.38 million, Ms. Constand later said, she believed that “this awful chapter in my life was over at last.”But when a new district attorney decided to pursue the charges that Mr. Castor had not, Ms. Constand agreed to once again put herself on the stand, though she was shamed and exhausted by the process, she has said.It ended with his conviction in 2018, a moment that was hailed at the time as a sign that in the #MeToo era the accounts of women would be given more credence.Though her story now has an unwelcome coda, Ms. Constand appears unbowed. On Thursday, she retweeted a message from Hope, Healing and Transformation, a foundation she started last year to offer guidance and support to survivors, which will receive a portion of the proceeds from her memoir. “Your story and voice matter right now more than ever. Silence is NOT an option. BILL COSBY IS NOT INNOCENT.” More

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      Bill Cosby, Free but Not Exonerated, Faces an Uncertain Future

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      Though his conviction was overturned, and his team is discussing future work, experts say it’s not likely the ruling will change the public perception of the former star.Since Bill Cosby left prison this week after three years of incarceration, flashing a defiant V-sign as he returned a free man to his home in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the talk of his inner circle has been celebratory, as those close to him described his first meal of fish and pizza and his determination to rehabilitate his legacy. More

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      Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction

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      The entertainer had been serving a three- to 10-year sentence in a prison outside Philadelphia.Bill Cosby was released from prison Wednesday after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault, a dramatic reversal in one of the first high-profile criminal trials of the #MeToo era.The court’s decision seemed likely to end the Pennsylvania case, legal experts said, and while more than 50 women across the nation have accused Mr. Cosby of sexual assault and misconduct, statutes of limitations in their cases makes further prosecutions unlikely.Mr. Cosby had served three years of a three- to 10-year sentence at a maximum-security prison outside Philadelphia when the court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor meant that Mr. Cosby should not have been charged in the case.Mr. Cosby, 83, returned to his home in suburban Philadelphia Wednesday afternoon where, looking frail and walking slowly, he was helped inside by his lawyer and a spokesman. He flashed a “V” sign as he reached his front door.The court’s decision overturned the first major criminal conviction of the #MeToo era, which came soon after allegations of sexual assault had been made against the powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The accusations and eventual conviction of Mr. Cosby stunned the nation, painting a disturbing portrait suggesting that a man who had brightened America’s living rooms as a beloved father figure had been a sexual predator.The case against Mr. Cosby began with his arrest in 2015 on charges that he had drugged and sexually assaulted a woman at his home in the Philadelphia suburbs 11 years earlier. In April 2018, the jury convicted Mr. Cosby of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, to whom Mr. Cosby had been a mentor and who was at the time a Temple University employee.Ms. Constand had praised the guilty verdict at the time, saying, “Truth prevails,” and the National Organization for Women called it “a notice to sexual predators everywhere.” But Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, who had said at the time that allegations against Mr. Weinstein would make it difficult for them to receive a fair trial, later suggested in an appeal that the outcome had been influenced by what they described as a period of “public panic.”Andrea Constand, who had said “Truth prevails” when Mr. Cosby was convicted of sexually assaulting her, returning to the courtroom in 2018.Pool photo by David MaialettiIn a statement issued with her lawyers, Ms. Constand said Wednesday that the court’s ruling was “not only disappointing but of concern in that it may discourage those who seek justice for sexual assault in the criminal justice system from reporting or participating in the prosecution of the assailant or may force a victim to choose between filing either a criminal or civil action.”In their 79-page opinion, the judges wrote that a previous prosecutor’s statement that Mr. Cosby would not face charges, which paved the way for Mr. Cosby to testify in a civil trial, meant that he should not have been charged in the case. It was a 6-to-1 ruling, with two of the judges in the majority dissenting on the remedy, which barred a retrial.Bill Cosby’s Conviction Is Overturned: Read the Court’s OpinionThe Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which overturned Mr. Cosby’s conviction, wrote that a “non-prosecution agreement” that had been struck with Bruce L. Castor Jr., the former district attorney, meant that Bill Cosby should not have been charged in the case for which he was convicted and sentenced in 2018. The court also barred a retrial. Read the full 79-page opinion.Read Document 79 pagesThe case began in 2005, when Mr. Cosby was investigated in the case of Ms. Constand, and a former district attorney of Montgomery County said that he had given Mr. Cosby his assurance that he would not be charged in the case. The former district attorney, Bruce L. Castor Jr., announced in a news release at the time that after an investigation he had found “insufficient” evidence. He later testified that he had given Mr. Cosby the assurance to encourage him to testify in a subsequent civil case brought by Ms. Constand. (A civil suit she filed against Mr. Cosby was settled in 2006 for $3.38 million.)In that testimony, Mr. Cosby acknowledged giving quaaludes to women he was pursuing for sex — evidence that played a key part in his trial after Mr. Castor’s successors reopened the case and charged Mr. Cosby in December 2015. That was just days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired in the case, and it came amid a number of new allegations from women who brought similar accusations of drugging and sexual assault against Mr. Cosby.“In light of these circumstances, the subsequent decision by successor D. A.s to prosecute Cosby violated Cosby’s due process rights,” the appeals ruling said.Mr. Cosby posted a picture of himself, with a fist raised above his head and his eyes closed, on Twitter, writing: “I have never changed my stance nor my story. I have always maintained my innocence.”Mr. Castor, who this year served as a lawyer for President Donald J. Trump during his second impeachment trial, said after the ruling was delivered on Wednesday that he believed his decision in 2005 had been “exonerated” by the ruling, calling the verdict a “shellacking” for the current district attorney’s office.“I was right back in 2005 and I’m right in 2021,” he said in a phone interview. “I’m proud of our Supreme Court for having the courage to make an unpopular decision.”Brian W. Perry, one of the lawyers representing Mr. Cosby, said he was “thrilled” with the ruling. “To be honest with you, we all believed, collectively, that this is how the case would end,” he said. “We did not think he was treated fairly and fortunately the Supreme Court agreed.”The Montgomery County District Attorney, Kevin R. Steele, said that he hoped the decision would not “dampen the reporting of sexual assaults by victims.”“He was found guilty by a jury and now goes free on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime,” Mr. Steele said in a statement. “I want to commend Cosby’s victim Andrea Constand for her bravery in coming forward and remaining steadfast throughout this long ordeal, as well as all of the other women who have shared similar experiences.”Patricia Steuer, 65, who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in 1978 and 1980, said that she had been preparing herself for the possibility that Mr. Cosby’s conviction would be overturned but that she was still “a little stunned” by the court’s ruling on Wednesday.“I’m wondering what the 43-year ordeal that I went through was supposed to be about,” said Ms. Steuer, who said she found out about the decision on Facebook. But she said she was “consoled by the fact that I believe we did the only thing that we could, which is to come forward and tell the truth.”Scott Berkowitz, the president of RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, said: “We are deeply disappointed in today’s ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and by the message this decision sends to the brave survivors who came forward to seek justice for what Bill Cosby did to them. This is not justice.”Others expressed support for Mr. Cosby. Phylicia Rashad, who appeared as Mr. Cosby’s wife in “The Cosby Show,” praised the decision on Twitter. “FINALLY!!!!” Ms. Rashad, who was recently named the dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts, wrote on Twitter. “A terrible wrong is being righted- a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” (She later wrote: “I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward. My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth.”)The decision undoes a verdict that several women who said that they had been assaulted and raped by Mr. Cosby had praised at the time as a measure of justice that had been long in coming. In a victim impact statement filed with the court in 2018, Ms. Constand had said of Mr. Cosby: “We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over.”And Janice Dickinson, a former model who had told the court that Mr. Cosby raped her in 1982 after giving her a pill — her account was one of five women the prosecution presented from women who said he had drugged and sexually assaulted them — said after the sentencing that “My heart is beating out of my chest at the moment.”“This is fair and just,” she said in 2018. “I am victorious.”The issue of whether the trial court had improperly allowed additional women to testify was not considered because the panel ruled that Mr. Cosby had relied to his detriment on Mr. Castor’s promise and then made statements in the civil case that were effectively used as evidence against him.In a dissent, Justice Thomas G. Saylor disagreed that a statement Mr. Castor made in a news release represented an unconditional promise that bound his successor not to prosecute. Justice Kevin Dougherty, in a separate opinion in which he was joined by Justice Max Baer, found that though Mr. Cosby’s due process rights had been violated when he relied on Mr. Castor’s promise and testified in the civil case, the remedy should not have been barring further prosecution but throwing out the evidence the prosecution gained from Mr. Cosby’s testimony.The reversal now leaves Cosby’s career and reputation in limbo. His conviction, after years of dodging accusations that he had preyed on women, had seemed to cap the downfall of one of the world’s best-known entertainers.Its overturning undid what many women had seen as an early success of the #MeToo movement, a ruling which had been praised at the time as a sign that the accounts of female accusers were being afforded greater weight and credibility.Sydney Ember, Matt Stevens and Jon Hurdle contributed reporting. More

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      ‘Overwhelmed and Devastated’: Cosby’s Accusers on Decision to Free Him

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      Many of the women who accused Bill Cosby of sexual misconduct, and worse, said they were disheartened by the ruling of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.Even before the #MeToo movement transformed the way the country, and the world, viewed sexual misconduct and empowered scores of women to speak out, dozens had already come forward with accusations against Bill Cosby.They were of all ages and from all walks of life — aspiring actors, models and, in one important case, a Temple University employee. Some were young adults. Others were older women with accounts of abuse that stretched back decades.But they all cheered when Mr. Cosby was found guilty in 2018 of assaulting a woman years earlier, hailing the decision as long-awaited vindication and evidence that famous and influential men could be held accountable.That sense of relief and justice came crashing down Wednesday as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction.Andrea Constand, who brought the charges against Mr. Cosby that had led to his conviction, called the ruling “disappointing” and said she worried it could discourage other women from pursuing prosecutions in cases of sexual assault.“We urge all victims,” Ms. Constand said in a statement made jointly with her lawyers, “to have their voices heard.”Patricia Steuer, 65, who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in 1978 and 1980, said that she had been preparing herself for the possibility that Mr. Cosby’s conviction would be overturned but was still “a little stunned” by the court’s ruling.“I’m feeling sad because this is absolutely a perceived loss on my part,” Ms. Steuer said. “I’m wondering what the 43-year ordeal that I went through was supposed to be about.”But she also said she was “consoled by the fact that I believe we did the only thing that we could, which is to come forward and tell the truth.”Gloria Allred, a lawyer who represented a number of women who accused Mr. Cosby of abuse, with several of them at a news conference in 2015.Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images North AmericaWith the ruling, Mr. Cosby “may claim that he’s been vindicated or persecuted or that he’s innocent, but I know that’s not true, and the other women who came forward also know that that’s not true,” Ms. Steuer said.Victoria Valentino, another of Mr. Cosby’s accusers, told ABC News that “my stomach is lurching” and that she was “deeply distressed” by what she said was “the injustice of the whole thing.”In a brief telephone interview on Wednesday, she said only that she was “overwhelmed and devastated.”Ms. Steuer worried about what the ruling meant for the #MeToo movement. “This is going to have ramifications for any woman who has ever come forward about a man who did this to them or any person who is thinking about coming forward,” she said.Eden Tirl, another of Mr. Cosby’s accusers, told Kate Snow of NBC News that the resolution of the case must now also become part of the story of the #MeToo movement and its narrative.“From the very beginning, the rigid constructs of the statute of limitations did not provide protection or a pathway for justice for the women that came out against Cosby,” she wrote to Ms. Snow via text message. “The outdated laws are so clearly in place, protecting men in these cases, more often than not.”“I am completely out of breath,” she added.In a statement, the National Organization for Women denounced Mr. Cosby’s release, saying that “the judicial system in America” had “failed survivors again.”Tina Tchen, the head of Time’s Up, the advocacy organization founded by powerful women in Hollywood, called the court decision “devastating,” but promised that the bravery and resolve showed by the women who spoke out about Mr. Cosby would not be “in vain.”And in her own statement, Gloria Allred, the lawyer for dozens of Mr. Cosby’s accusers, said her heart went out to “those who bravely testified in both of his criminal cases.”“Despite the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision, this was an important fight for justice and even though the court overturned the conviction on technical grounds, it did not vindicate Bill Cosby’s conduct and should not be interpreted as a statement or a finding that he did not engage in the acts of which he has been accused,” Ms. Allred said. More

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      Bill Cosby’s Release Prompts Praise from Phylicia Rashad and Condemnation from #MeToo

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      Many on Twitter condemned Bill Cosby’s release from prison on Wednesday as a setback for the #MeToo movement. But his staunchest supporters, including actress Phylicia Rashad, celebrated his freedom.“FINALLY!!!!” Ms. Rashad, who appeared as Mr. Cosby’s wife in “The Cosby Show,” wrote on Twitter. “A terrible wrong is being righted- a miscarriage of justice is corrected!”Mr. Cosby, whose 2018 sexual assault case was seen as the first major criminal conviction of the #MeToo era, was freed from prison on Wednesday after a Pennsylvania appeals court overturned his conviction.The court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement” should have prevented him from ever being charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, to whom Mr. Cosby had been a mentor.Ms. Rashad, who was recently named the dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts and was scheduled to start the new role on Thursday, has previously spoken out in support of Mr. Cosby.“I just don’t accept what somebody says because they say it, and they say it in a loud voice,” Ms. Rashad told Bustle in an interview when asked about Mr. Cosby last year. “The internet has given a lot of anonymous people a very loud voice.”Ms. Rashad later clarified that she supported survivors of sexual assault coming forward.“My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth,” she said in a tweet. “Personally, I know from friends and family that such abuse has lifelong residual effects. My heartfelt wish is for healing.”Celebrities and prominent fixtures of the #MeToo movement have rushed to reply to Ms. Rashad. The former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, whose sexual harassment suit against the chief executive at the time, Roger Ailes, was among them.“Phylicia! #BillCosby being released from prison on a technicality is a complete miscarriage of justice & will never be an exoneration for the brutal crimes he committed against women,” she wrote on Twitter. “The world is now woke & women will no longer be silenced. You should be ashamed of yourself.”Tarana Burke, the activist who started the #MeToo movement, shared a viral tweet by Marc Lamont Hill, a professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University. “BILL COSBY IS NOT INNOCENT. HE HAS NOT BEEN EXONERATED,” Mr. Hill wrote on Twitter. “His release means that Cosby, a sexual predator, was incarcerated within a criminal legal system that has as little regard for its own rules and procedures as Cosby does for his victims.”Time’s Up, the charity founded by prominent Hollywood figures to support victims of sexual harassment and assault, issued a statement calling the verdict devastating.“The semblance of justice these women had in knowing Cosby was convicted has been completely erased with his release today,” wrote Tina Tchen, the foundation’s chief executive and president. “But let’s be clear, even the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision did not challenge the finding of the jury that Bill Cosby committed sexual assault.” More

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      ‘Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over’ Review: A Punk Provocateur Endures

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      Beth B’s documentary tells the story of an iconic underground New York City misfit and her durable career.The musician, writer and spoken-word artist Lydia Lunch is an immediately provocative figure. The name alone, right? Escaping a horrifically abusive home in Rochester, N.Y., at 16, she took one look at the burgeoning 1970s punk rock scene on Manhattan’s Bowery and was determined to both join and upend it.“I had a suitcase and $200,” she recalls in “Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over,” a vigorous documentary directed by Beth B, whose own work as an underground filmmaker began in the same milieu as Lunch’s early efforts. Lunch’s first band was called Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and one of their songs began with Lunch caterwauling, “The leaves are always dead.”Lunch, now 62 — who, when reflecting on her generation, says, “The ’60s failed us” — had other interests, musical and extra-musical. The abundance of her ideas, and her resourcefulness in executing them, enabled a career that’s been a lot more durable than those of many other iconoclasts of her time. Her musings on the condition of womanhood and the failings of conventional feminism are emphatic, to be sure. She asks how women “devolved from Medusa to Madonna” and offers an unusual perspective on the #MeToo movement that finds its rationale in an examination of cycles of abuse.Lunch’s entire aesthetic is centered around trauma: how abusers dispense it, how it is — and how she thinks it ought to be — received, and turned back on the world. This yields any number of anecdotes, including a tale from the musician Jim Sclavunos about how Lunch took his virginity before admitting him into one of her bands.The footage of her on the road with her current band, Retrovirus, shows her mastery of live performance and also highlights her very urban sense of sarcasm; sometimes she suggests no-wave’s answer to Fran Lebowitz.Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never OverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      Kevin Spacey Cast in Italian Film After Being Sidelined in the U.S.

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      He will play a detective in the movie, directed by Franco Nero, in what is believed to be his first film since sexual assault allegations started surfacing in 2017.Kevin Spacey has been cast in a film in what is believed to be the first time since accusations of sexual assault against the actor started surfacing more than three years ago, prompting several court cases and unraveling his onscreen career. More