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      Coming to Terms With the Legacy of Rick James

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      For a new documentary, the director and the star’s daughter examine both his pioneering work and his misogyny, as well as a sexual-assault conviction.It’s no question that Rick James is a legend for helping bring “punk-funk” to the mainstream with classics like “Mary Jane” and “Super Freak”; for breaking down the color barrier in rock ’n’ roll; and for confronting the whiteness of MTV in the ’80s. But how do you reckon with the man who is just as famous for committing sexual assault and perpetuating misogyny in the music industry? To Sacha Jenkins, director of the fascinating new documentary, “Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James,” the answer is complicated.“I think it’s undeniable that he was a brilliant, genius musician and artist, and I think it’s undeniable that he had demons, and it’s undeniable that he did some really horrible, unsavory things,” Jenkins said on a recent video call from Martha’s Vineyard. “So, how do you reconcile the two?”Jenkins talks about his work on the film with the same analytical approach he took to James’s life, allowing audiences to draw their own conclusions about the person behind the larger-than-life image. There is certainly a plethora of biographical information for viewers to take into account in his documentary, debuting Friday on Showtime. “I just wanted to provide folks the tools to make their own decisions,” he added.Jenkins traces James’s story chronologically, from the outspoken musician’s childhood home in 1960s Buffalo, which the singer describes as having, “nice hills, ghetto, rats this big,” stretching out his arms in an archival interview seen in the film.“Bitchin’” details how James began selling drugs there, and how he was in and out of jail several times as a teenager until he joined the military. By 18, he had already experienced the trauma of being sexually abused as a child, getting “whoopings” from his mother and witnessing his father beating her.“I guess you can say, in a way, I was an abused child,” James recalls matter-of-factly in an interview. “But I had a lot of love in my family.”The director Sacha Jenkins, left, with James’s brother, Carmen Sims, center, and Gregory Cromwell, who worked security for James.Christine Shaw, via Mass AppealIt’s fair to suggest that James, who died at 56 in 2004, was already contending with demons he never truly confronted. Even his daughter, Ty James, who is interviewed in the documentary and is a producer, wasn’t privy to the details of his adolescent trauma. “It floated around a little bit, but it wasn’t something that I was totally abreast of,” she said on a separate video call.The world watched those demons play out in personal and professional affairs that were frustrating, toxic and, ultimately, devastating. In essence, he wanted freedom to be a devil-may-care rock star like Mick Jagger — with just as much access to drugs and women. After all, early in his career he performed with Levon Helm (before the Band), and formed the Mynah Birds with the rockers Nick St. Nicholas (who would go on to Steppenwolf) and Neil Young. Later, James battled Motown, because the label wanted to place him in the doo-wop genre, and white-owned networks like MTV because they refused to play music by Black artists.“We’re being sat in the back of the bus, television-style,” he tells a reporter. “This isn’t ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ There are Black people here, and we make music. Don’t we exist?”He had the loud, unapologetic flair of a Black man who grew up powerless, getting beat up by white kids on the block, and who proved revolutionary in another white space: the music industry. In 1981, he called out law enforcement brutality in the song “Mr. Policeman.” “I’m very vocal about injustice,” he says in archival footage. “I’ve never been one to bite my tongue and I never will.”So, in some ways, James was a hero. Even Jenkins, a musician himself, relates to him. “I was someone who liked rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, skateboarding — a broad range of things. And I was sort of an oddball,” recalled the director, known for “Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men” and “Word Is Bond.” He continued, “But today, you can have rappers who are influenced by heavy metal, and no one’s going to say, ‘You’re a white boy or you’re a sellout.’ Rick was an early proponent of that.”But the empowerment he gained from his success also granted him excess and entitlement he’d never experienced growing up. “You mix all of those early learnings with an environment where no one tells you no, that math adds up to a bad equation,” Jenkins continued.This “bad equation” included, by the singer’s own estimate, a $6,000-to-$8,000 weekly cocaine addiction, a parade of women in and out of his home — some of whom, the film claims, he videotaped performing sexual acts at parties. “Daddy had his share of women, that’s for sure,” Ty James says in the film.She first met her father when she was 13 and she and her brother were sent to stay with him. She remembers “walking over naked girls at 7 in the morning.”James battled MTV when it refused to play music by Black artists.Mark Weiss, via ShowtimeTy James didn’t meet her father until she was sent to live with him at 13. ShowtimeThis was indicative of the era when rock stars hosting orgies in their mansions or using drugs on tour buses were normalized — even popularized. Jenkins argues that contextualizing the time period is just as critical to examining the musician’s legacy. “You can judge Rick James by today’s metrics, or you can try to be realistic about the times he was living in and what he was doing,” he said.By maintaining a bad-boy image, James and many others “would probably stand out like a sore thumb and be ostracized” today, Gail Mitchell, executive director of R&B and hip-hop at Billboard magazine, says in the film. Offstage, the budding musician Roxanne Shante recalls how he took her under his wing but also how he referred to a woman he was living with as “Bitch” so many times that Shante thought that was the woman’s name.Still, the songs he wrote and produced for female acts like Teena Marie and the Mary Jane Girls highlighted a surprising consciousness. “I knew I could write for girls,” James says in the film. “It was easy for me to write for them. I’ve been such an asshole to them that I could kind of reverse and know how they feel.”But in 1991, he was arrested for holding a 24-year-old woman hostage, tying her up, forcing her to perform sex acts and burning her with a crack cocaine pipe. James served five years in prison.To omit that period when considering his legacy is to avoid the whole truth and his humanity — both good and bad. That’s something even Ty James, a self-professed “daddy’s girl,” had to face before agreeing to be a part of “Bitchin’.”“I said, ‘You know what? I’m totally OK with that because my dad did his time for the things he got in trouble for,’” she said. “It goes to show that nobody’s perfect, especially dealing with the type of demons he dealt with. I’d already lived through it. Coming to terms with that was the hardest part.”As Jenkins said, every Rick James fan has wrestled with these contradictions at some point, including the director. “He processed his flaws in a way that created songs that still stand the test of time,” he reflected. “He made music reflective of his life experiences — being a Black man of a certain class in America. Is it misogynist? Sure. But has misogyny gone away suddenly? Has racism gone away suddenly? I don’t think so.” More

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      Michaela Coel Puts Herself Together in ‘Misfits’

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      The book, adapted from a speech by the creator and star of “I May Destroy You,” codifies her efforts to achieve transparency in her work and in her life.The city of Edinburgh was the epicenter of a powerful energy pulse on Aug. 22, 2018 — not the kind that precise scientific equipment can detect, but one whose ripples would be felt by sensitive human instruments in the weeks and months that followed.That evening, Michaela Coel, a rising British TV star, was invited to address her colleagues at the prestigious Edinburgh International Television Festival. Speaking to a few thousand industry peers in a lecture hall and countless more viewers watching her online, she shared stories from her ascent, a narrative that was by turns wryly comic and devastating.Coel talked about growing up a member of one of only four Black families in a public housing complex in East London. She described her time at drama school, where a teacher called her a racial slur during an acting exercise. She discussed her surprise, after achieving some professional success, at being sent a gift bag that contained “dry shampoo, tanning lotion and a foundation even Kim Kardashian was too dark for.” She recounted how she had gone out for a drink one night and later realized she had been drugged and sexually assaulted.She spoke of resilience gained from a life spent “having to climb ladders with no stable ground beneath you,” and she classified herself as a misfit, defined in part as someone who “doesn’t climb in pursuit of safety or profit, she climbs to tell stories.”Three years later, Coel — now 33 and the celebrated creator and star of the HBO comedy-drama “I May Destroy You” — regards this speech as a satisfying moment of personal unburdening.As she said in a video interview a few weeks ago, “We go in and out of working with people and we never quite know who they are, and no one ever quite knows who you are. There’s something quite liberating about just letting everybody know.”A misfit, Coel said during her 2018 speech, “doesn’t climb in pursuit of safety or profit, she climbs to tell stories.”Ken Jack/Corbis via Getty ImagesWith its explicit calls for greater transparency, Coel’s address (known formally as the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture) resonated across the entertainment industry and provided a narrative and thematic foundation for “I May Destroy You.” Next month, the speech will be published by Henry Holt & Co. as a book titled “Misfits: A Personal Manifesto.”To an audience that is still discovering Coel, her life and her work, “Misfits” may seem like an artifact preserving the moment that its author became the fullest version of herself.But to Coel, it represents a particularly validating episode in a career where she has always felt empowered to speak her mind.“I’ve always been annoying people about these things,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know where I got the cheek to be like this. But from the beginning, there’s always been a story where Michaela was pushing and saying, ‘There’s something wrong here.’”To this day, Coel is relentlessly candid about the choices that go into her work, even when it comes to the decision to call “Misfits” a “manifesto,” which she said was foisted upon her by her publishers.As she explained, “I was like, ‘But it’s so small, it’s not really a book.’ They were like, ‘A book is a binding of papers.’ OK, fine, can we call it an essay book? ‘Mmm, no.’”Coel’s book “Misfits” is out on Sept. 7.She was more circumspect about discussing where on the planet she was while we had our video conversation. Despite a report in Variety that Coel had joined the cast of the Marvel superhero sequel “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” she said, “I’m in America. I don’t know why I’m here. I have a feeling that I’m not supposed to say.” (A spokesman for Marvel declined to comment.)The actor Paapa Essiedu, a co-star on “I May Destroy You” and a longtime friend of Coel’s, said that since their time together as students at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he had known Coel to be a courageous, forthright person.“Her voice was always very clear,” Essiedu said. “She always felt like she was unperturbed by what was expected of her, and she was able to think and speak independently.”Even so, Essiedu said, “Remember that she is just a normal person,” who talks trash with her friends “and can be funny and can be really annoying. Her day-to-day life is not her espousing how to make the world a better place.”In the speech, Coel described frustrations she had endured on her breakthrough comedy series, “Chewing Gum,” which ran on the E4 channel in Britain and on Netflix in America. She spoke about crying into an unpurchased pair of tights at a drugstore following a phone call where she it was suggested that she would have to hire co-writers to help her on the series.She also talked about turning down an offer to make “I May Destroy You” with Netflix when the streaming service declined to let her keep any ownership rights for the series. (In the lecture, she told this story with an allegorical flair, imagining it as a negotiation with a fictional stepmother she called “No-Face Netanya.”)“I don’t know where I got the cheek to be like this,” Coel said. “But from the beginning, there’s always been a story where Michaela was pushing and saying, ‘There’s something wrong here.’”Wulf Bradley for The New York TimesAmy Gravitt, an executive vice president at HBO who oversees its original comedy programming, said that she was moved by Coel’s lecture when she watched it online.“There was so much that she said in that speech that resonated as a woman working in this industry,” said Gravitt, who first met with Coel in 2017 following the success of “Chewing Gum.”“When she talked about her desire to see another person’s point of view represented onscreen, that resonated deeply with me as a programmer,” Gravitt said.Far from feeling reluctant to work with someone so outspoken, Gravitt said, “I feel like I only want to work with people who feel comfortable speaking their mind.”Coel ultimately ended up making “I May Destroy You” for HBO and the BBC. When I asked her if Netflix must cry itself to sleep every night for losing out on the show, she answered, “Well, melatonin works a charm.”A press representative for Netflix said in a statement said, “Michaela is an incredibly talented artist who we were thrilled to work with on ‘Black Mirror’ and ‘Black Earth Rising’ among others, and who we hope to work with again in the future.”Coel said she never hesitated to tell her lecture audience about having been sexually assaulted. “I never had that thing where I kept it to myself and was afraid to say it because of what people thought,” she said. “And because I never had that incubation period for shame and guilt to make a home inside of me, it never did.”Talking about the assault now was like “looking at a scar,” she said.“I look at the scar, and it’s like, whoa, that happened,” Coel said. “But now I’m alive to look at this scar, which means that I’ve come around the bend.”At the time she gave the lecture, Coel was already writing what would become “I May Destroy You,” in which her character, a young writer named Arabella, is served a spiked drink and sexually assaulted.“I May Destroy You” is up for nine Emmys, including outstanding lead actress.HBO, via Associated PressTo this day, Coel said, she encounters people who are fans of the show but do not realize it is based on her experience. Other viewers approach her, over social media and in person, to tell her about their own traumas. “I’ve cried with strangers on the street,” she said.“I May Destroy You” became a pandemic-era staple when it ran last spring and summer, and it has inspired its fans in other ways.In February, the series received no nominations for Golden Globes, prompting an outcry from its audience. Deborah Copaken, an author and memoirist (“Ladyparts”) who was a writer on the first season of the gauzy Netflix comedy “Emily in Paris,” wrote in an essay for The Guardian that the snub “is not only wrong, it’s what is wrong with everything.”In an interview, Copaken praised Coel for putting “people on the screen you’ve never seen on TV except as extras or others,” in a series that encompassed topics such as sexual consent and the assimilation of immigrants.“It doesn’t do the thing of making people who aren’t white and Western into paragons of virtue,” Copaken said. “These are interesting people with messy lives. At every turn, it challenges viewers’ assumptions.”Coel herself said she was too enchanted with the broader reaction to her series to worry about the Golden Globes controversy. “I was on this cloud of gratitude,” she said, “and I could hear there was something happening. I was like, guys, I don’t know how to come down from the cloud and deal with this.” Last month, “I May Destroy You” was nominated for nine Emmy Awards, including limited or anthology series. Coel and Essiedu both received nominations as actors, and Coel was also nominated as a director and as a writer on the series.Now Coel faces the happy challenge of figuring out a follow-up to “I May Destroy You,” and she is emphatic that the series has concluded.“To me, it’s very clearly finished, isn’t it?” she said. “Imagine if there was a Season 2? I just think guys, come on, it’s done. Unless somebody has this amazing idea for Season 2 that doesn’t destroy Season 1, for me it is closed and finished.”Coel said she faced no external pressures to deliver her next project. “HBO and BBC were very kind,” she said. “They said, ‘Hey, Michaela, you’ve done a great thing for us. You can just chill out, take as long as you need.’ But I’m not like that.”She quickly pointed her camera at a whiteboard on which she had started to map out a new story arc, but she turned the camera back at herself before any words were legible. She would say no more about the new series except that the BBC had committed to making it.Viewers of “I May Destroy You” sometimes approach Coel, over social media and in person, to tell her about their own traumas. “I’ve cried with strangers on the street,” she said.Wulf Bradley for The New York Times(Gravitt, the HBO executive, said that her network was “in the early stages of talking to Michaela and the BBC and various artists who are all a part of the team of ‘I May Destroy You,’ and excited at the prospect of having this new project to work on together.”)Essiedu said that Coel had not been changed much by reaching a new echelon of fame, and that she remained an artist who was motivated more by the work more than by the celebrity.“She deserves the credits and the plaudits,” he said. “She’s not going to shy away from that, which is something that us Brits are very good at doing. She’s maybe a bit more like you Americans in that approach.”But having twice experienced the satisfaction of feeling that her viewers truly and fully received what she was saying — with her MacTaggart lecture, and with “I May Destroy You” — Coel said she could hardly ask for much more.“As a writer, sometimes I’m fraught, I’m frazzled,” she said. “I’m trying to be clear, piece by piece, and the audience valued me and listened to me.”With a mixture of relief and delight, she exclaimed, “The way that people listen to me in this life! All I’ve learned is to be heard.” More

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      Nicki Minaj and Husband Sued, Accused of Harassing Sexual Assault Victim

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      Jennifer Hough said in a lawsuit filed in New York that the couple pressured her to recant her account of the rapper’s husband, Kenneth Petty, sexually assaulting her in 1994.A woman who accused the rapper Nicki Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, of sexual assault during high school filed a lawsuit on Friday against the couple, alleging that they harassed and intimidated her while trying to convince her to recant her account.The case dates back to 1994, when Jennifer Hough, then 16, reported to the police that Mr. Petty — a 16-year-old she had known growing up in Jamaica, Queens — had raped her after leading her into a home at knife point, the lawsuit says. Mr. Petty was arrested that day and was charged with first-degree rape, and subsequently pleaded guilty to attempted rape, said Kim Livingston, a spokeswoman with the Queens district attorney’s office. He served about four and a half years in prison, according to inmate records.According to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Ms. Hough, 43, and her family members started to receive communications from people claiming to be connected with Ms. Minaj and Mr. Petty shortly after Mr. Petty was arrested last year for failing to register as a sex offender in California. The lawsuit alleges harassment and witness intimidation, as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress by Ms. Minaj and Mr. Petty, and seeks unspecified damages. It also alleges sexual assault and battery against Mr. Petty, referring to the mid-90s case.A representative for Ms. Minaj did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Petty, Michael Goldstein, declined to comment on the lawsuit.The lawsuit says that an intermediary offered Ms. Hough $20,000 in exchange for signing a prepared statement recanting the accusation. At one point last year, the lawsuit says, Ms. Minaj called Ms. Hough, saying that she had heard Ms. Hough was willing to “help out”; days later, it says, Ms. Hough and her family members received an “onslaught of harassing calls and unsolicited visits” from people she believed to be associated with the couple.Ms. Hough “has not worked since May of 2020 due to severe depression, paranoia, constant moving, harassment and threats from the defendants and their associates,” the lawsuit says. “She is currently living in isolation out of fear of retaliation.”According to the lawsuit, Ms. Hough was on her way to school on Sept. 16, 1994, when she ran into Mr. Petty, a boy she knew from the neighborhood. The lawsuit says that Mr. Petty held a knife at her back as he led her to a house around the corner, where Ms. Hough said he raped her. The suit says that Ms. Hough escaped, ran to her high school and told security guards, who called the police.In an interview, Ms. Hough said that as her case was prosecuted, she faced harassment and retaliation in the neighborhood, prompting her family to force her to attend a court hearing for Mr. Petty and request that the charges be dropped — a request that was denied. At the time, the suit says, Mr. Petty had already accepted a plea deal.Ms. Hough said in an interview that she left New York City after the ordeal, and for years, it remained in the past: “I didn’t think it would be something that would come back and slap me in the face 20-something years later.”But in 2018, Ms. Minaj — a chart-topping rapper with a fiercely loyal social media following — posted about her relationship with Mr. Petty on Instagram, and questions about his status as a sex offender surfaced.Ms. Hough said in an interview that she had spoken to YouTube bloggers to defend herself and respond to an Instagram comment from Ms. Minaj that stated that Ms. Hough and Mr. Petty had been in a relationship at the time of the assault and that Mr. Petty was younger than Ms. Hough. (They were never in a relationship, and they were the same age, according to the lawsuit.)After Mr. Petty was arrested in 2020, Ms. Hough reconnected with a childhood friend from Queens, the lawsuit says, and told him she “wished it could all just go away forever.” Ms. Hough said that the friend replied, “I can make that happen.”The suit says that a few days later, the friend told Ms. Hough that Ms. Minaj had asked for her phone number, and the rapper later called her and offered to fly Ms. Hough out to Los Angeles or fly her publicist out to Ms. Hough; Ms. Hough said she declined and told the rapper, “I need you to know woman to woman, that this happened.”The lawsuit says there were then a series of encounters where Ms. Hough or her family members were offered inducements if she would recant: $500,000 at one point, $20,000 at another, with a proposed bonus that Ms. Minaj would send birthday videos to Ms. Hough’s daughter. Ms. Hough said she declined.Ms. Hough said in the interview that she never expressed interest in a bribe and was adamantly against recanting her story.“If I lie now and say that I lied then, you know what that does?” she said. “Do you know what that’s going to say to my two little girls, or even my sons?”Ms. Hough said in the interview that at one point she told the intermediary that the $500,000 offer was “not good enough.” She said she had been trying to deflect the conversation, not to express interest in a bribe. Tyrone Blackburn, a lawyer representing Ms. Hough, said Ms. Hough’s comment was an effort to dissuade the intermediary from thinking she would accept anything.At one point last fall, the suit says, Ms. Hough was contacted by a lawyer for Mr. Petty, who asked her about a recantation letter. In response to threatening calls and her own growing paranoia, the suit says that Ms. Hough moved three times in one year.“I feel like I’m living in secret,” she said in the interview, “like I can’t tell people my exact location.”Joe Coscarelli contributed reporting. Alain Delaqueriere contributed research. More

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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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      Drake Bell Given Two Years of Probation in Child Endangerment Case

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      The former star of the Nickelodeon series “Drake & Josh” had pleaded guilty to two charges related to a girl he met online. She attended one of his concerts in 2017.Jared Drake Bell, a former star of the Nickelodeon series “Drake & Josh,” was sentenced on Monday to two years of probation after pleading guilty to two charges against him relating to a girl he had met online and who attended one of his concerts in Cleveland in 2017. 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 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