- Kidnapped 18-year-old escapes home after being chained to bed, raped for weeks: cops New York Post
- Texas duo allegedly held 18-year-old against her will for nearly 30 days: police Yahoo News
- Parents accused of chaining 18-year-old to bed, forcing her to have sex during month-long kidnap… KPRC 2 Click2Houston
- Couple accused in monthlong kidnapping of 18-year-old can’t contact each other, even with 2-week-old baby in NICU KTRK-TV
- Multiple padlocks, chains found in bedroom where kidnapping victim was held, officials say KHOU.com
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: raped
Brooke Shields reveals she was raped shortly after college in Pretty Baby documentary
Craig Barritt/Getty
Brooke Shields has never shied away from talking about the ways she was sexualized as a child star in Hollywood. But now the actress is revealing that she was raped as a young adult.
In new documentary Pretty Baby, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Shields did not name her attacker but detailed the events of a sexual assault that occurred shortly after she graduated college at Princeton, during a period where she was struggling to find work after her early success. Shields met with the man in question for dinner, ostensibly to discuss work. She then returned to his hotel room to wait to call a taxi.
“He said, ‘Come back to the hotel and I’ll call a cab,'” Shields explains in the film. “And I go up to the hotel room, and he disappears for awhile.”
Shields, feeling uncomfortable in a room that wasn’t hers, decided to use binoculars the man had left in the room and watched some volleyball players out the window. “The door opens, the person comes out naked, and I’ve got the binoculars and I’m like, ‘S—,'” she continues. “And I put the binoculars down and he’s right on me. Just like, was wrestling.”
Continuing with her account, Shields explained that she didn’t try to run away because she feared it would provoke further physical violence. “I was afraid I’d get choked out or something,” she says. “So I didn’t fight that much. I didn’t. I just absolutely froze. I thought one ‘No’ should’ve been enough, and I just thought, ‘Stay alive and get out,’ and I just shut it out. God knows I knew how to be disassociated from my body. I’d practiced that…. I went down in the elevator, and I got my own cab. I just cried all the way to my friend’s apartment.”
The actress didn’t even process the experience as a sexual assault for a long time. Even when it was pointed out to her by her security specialist Gavin de Becker. “He said, ‘That’s rape.’ And I said, ‘I’m not willing to believe that,'” she says.
Shields had already been sexually objectified by Hollywood, appearing nude and kissing a 29-year-old Keith Carradine in the 1978 film Pretty Baby (which lends its title to the documentary) when she was only 11-years-old. At 15, she appeared in two more films, Blue Lagoon and Endless Love, that included sex and nudity, as well as her iconic Calvin Klein jean ads that touted, “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.”
Getty Images/Courtesy of Sundance Institute Brooke Shields appears in documentary ‘Pretty Baby,’ which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
Even with that history, Shields couldn’t help but feel that she was culpable in some way for her own assault. “That was what I had to do to my brain,” she admits. “He said to me, ‘I can trust you and I can’t trust people.’ It’s so cliché, it’s practically pathetic. I believed somehow I put out a message and that was how the message was received. I drank wine at dinner. I went up to the room. I just was so trusting.”
She then goes on to say that she wrote her attacker a letter, writing that he had destroyed a “huge trust” in him, but that it was dismissed.
“I just threw my hands up and said, ‘You know what, I refuse to be a victim because this is something that happens no matter who you are and no matter what you think you’re prepared for or not,'” she concludes. “I wanted to erase the whole thing from my mind and body and just keep on the path I was on. The system had never once come to help me. So I just had to get stronger on my own.”
Shields has previously addressed being sexualized from a young age in two memoirs. But this is the first time she has revealed details of an assault of this nature.
Lena Wilson (Miss Americana) directed the documentary, which will be on Hulu later this year.
Additional reporting by Mike Miller.
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UN panel reports Ukrainian children have been raped, tortured by Russian forces
The United Nations offered a chilling update Friday about an investigation opened into possible war crimes committed in Ukraine amid its war with Russia.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry into Ukraine reported instances of rape, torture and unlawful confinement, according to findings published to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights website.
“Investigating cases related to sexual and gender-based violence present specific challenges. The Commission has found that some Russian Federation soldiers committed such crimes,” the panel wrote.
“These acts amounted to different types of violations of rights, including sexual violence, torture, and cruel and inhuman treatment.”
The commission said that it found Russian forces forced family members to witness crimes committed against their loved ones. Those who experienced sexual or gender-based violence ranged in age from 4 to 82 years old, according to the update.
“The Commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined,” the panel added.
The grim news comes after Ukraine notched several wins in recent weeks over the Russian military, taking back land in the northeastern and southern regions of the country.
Among the recaptured territory was the city of Izyum, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said country officials have exhumed a mass burial site.
“We want the world to know what is really happening and what the Russian occupation has led to. Bucha, Mariupol, now, unfortunately, Izyum … Russia leaves death everywhere. And it must be held accountable for that,” Zelensky said last week.
Mass grave sites were also found in the Ukrainian city of Bucha earlier in the conflict, and there have been reports of Russian bombs hitting hospitals and other civilian buildings.
The U.N. commission was established in March over accusations of war crimes committed in Ukraine. The group of three officials was tasked with investigating in the cities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.
The panel wrote in its update that there have also been a number of indiscriminate attacks carried out “without distinguishing between civilians and combatants.”
“This included some attacks with cluster munitions or multi-launch rocket systems and airstrikes in populated areas.”
The panel added that it was “struck” by the large number of executions in the areas it visited. Common signs of executions included gunshot wounds to the head, hands tied behind backs and slit throats.
There have been two processed incidents of the “ill-treatment” of Russian forces.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial call-up of the Russian military, prompting mass protests in the country. Hundreds of people have been arrested in connection to the protests.
Far-right Italian PM hopeful Georgia Meloni tweets video of woman being raped | Italy
Giorgia Meloni, the far-right politician leading the race to become Italy’s next prime minister, has been accused of shameful electioneering by her rivals after posting a video of a Ukrainian woman being raped by an asylum seeker from Guinea in an Italian city.
The 55-year-old woman was assaulted on a pavement in the city of Piacenza early on Sunday, local officials said. The incident was videoed by someone in a flat overlooking the street and the assailant was arrested.
Police confirmed the arrest and said the man was being detained as the investigation continued.
Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party heads the polls ahead of the 25 September national election, tweeted the video, which had been posted on a newspaper website with the image blurred but the woman’s cries clearly audible.
“One cannot remain silent in the face of this atrocious episode of sexual violence against a Ukrainian woman carried out in daytime in Piacenza by an asylum seeker,” Meloni wrote. “A hug to this woman. I will do everything I can to restore security to our cities.”
The tweet drew a barrage of criticism online, including from Meloni’s political opponents.
“It is indecent to use images of a rape. Even more indecent to do so for electoral purposes,” Enrico Letta, the head of the centre-left Democratic party (PD), wrote on Twitter.
Another centrist leader, Carlo Calenda, called Meloni’s tweet “immoral”. Igiaba Scego, a prominent Italian writer of Somali heritage, accused Meloni of exploiting the rape victim.
“Offered up as clickbait voyeurism instead of being protected. This electoral campaign is horrendous,” she wrote.
Meloni, who has called for a naval blockade of north Africa to prevent migrant boats from setting sail, said on Facebook her rivals had used the rape to attack her while ignoring the victim to avoid addressing what she called the immigration emergency.
Letta’s post had said: “Respect for people and victims always comes first” and Calenda wrote “only the victims matter”.
American tourist raped in public toilet near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
An American woman was raped in a public toilet in the bustling heart of Paris’ tourist district Saturday.
The 27-year-old was walking with a boyfriend on the River Seine across from Notre Dame Cathedral when she stopped to use a public bathroom around 1 a.m., according to The Sun.
“It is well lit, and there were plenty of people around, but the woman’s partner became concerned when she remained inside for a long time,” a source told the paper.
Her boyfriend then approached the toilet, heard her cries and reportedly witnessed the attack.
The victim managed to break free from her attacker, who was detained by her companion and other women in the bathroom before police arrived, according to the outlet.
The 23-year-old suspect denied wrongdoing and claimed he had a “consensual arrangement with the woman,” according to the report.
He was charged with rape and remained in custody while the victim was treated at a hospital before returning to the states.
She remained in touch with French police and prosecutors.
Anne Heche’s father raped her, her brother committed suicide and her mom disowned her
Troubled actress Anne Heche’s life has been beset with pain and heartache, even before her fiery car crash in California on Friday.
On August 5, Heche was involved in multiple car crashes, first slamming into a garage at an apartment building, then careering into a home in her blue Mini Cooper leaving her ‘severely burned’ and ‘intubated’ in a Los Angeles hospital.
Before the star was born, her sister, Cynthia, died from a heart defect at two months old. Things steadily went from bad to worse.
Her family constantly moved as their father struggled to provide for the family. Born in Ohio, Heche and her transient family would move to southern New Jersey, back to Ohio and finally to Chicago during her adolescence.
In 1983, her father, Donald, became one of the first people in the United States to be diagnosed with AIDS, which was how his family came to learn that the Baptist minister and choir director had been living a secret homosexual life.
According to Heche, her father never admitted to being gay. He died from the disease at the age of 45.
That same year, Heche’s 18-year-old brother, Nathan, crashed his car into a tree and was killed. That’s just scratching the surface of the actress’s tragic life.
The Heche family, left to right, Nancy, Abigail, Nathan, Donald and Anne Heche
In her 2001 memoir, ‘Call Me Crazy,’ Heche disclosed that her father was a closeted homosexual who sexually molested her and gave her genital herpes. ‘He raped me… he fondled me, he put me on all fours and had sex with me,’ she wrote.
Heche also said that she feared for her life as she was worried that he transmitted the disease to her.
‘I think my father was a sexual addict. I think he saw everybody as a sexual being. But I think at that time he was living a very flamboyant homosexual lifestyle,’ she told Larry King in a 2001 interview. ‘You know, at that time there were bath houses where the whole trick was how many can you do a night. You know, there is no question of what he was doing at that time.’
Anne Heche says her relationship with her mother was strained even before the actress went public about her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres
Heche pictured attempting to escape a gurney as firefighters bring her to safety following her fiery crash on August 5
Three months after her father died, Heche’s brother, Nathan, was killed in a car crash after apparently falling asleep at the wheel and crashing into a tree. He was 18.
Heche has said she believes he committed suicide. The Camden Courier-Post reported that Nathan was traveling along on a wet road when he careered into a tree.
Following her brother and father’s death, her mother moved the family to Chicago. In an appearance on ‘Hollywood Medium,’ Heche said: ‘His death is the reason I moved from New Jersey to Chicago.’
Medium Tyler Henry claimed to have connected with Nathan saying: ‘He’s proud that you’ve been able to talk about these things and discuss these things, because you’re doing it for him too. And he appreciates that.’
Her sister, Susan Bergman, published her own memoir about their childhood in 1994 titled ‘Anonymity.’ Bergman died in 2006 at the age of 48 following a battle with brain cancer.
In the 1990s, even prior to her sister’s fame, Susan Bergman, the eldest of the Heche family, wrote a book about their father’s secret life as a homosexual
In her book, Bergman spoke about her father’s clandestine life, saying the family found out he was a homosexual the same year he died. Bergman also said he was a talented musician but was ‘detached from reality,’ according to the Chicago Tribune.
Bergman was a well-known writer who lectured at New York University, Northwestern University and the University of Notre Dame.
She told the Tribune that her father was constantly chasing major business deals that often left the family destitute.
‘I think I, and my sisters, started looking around for a real father in some ways,’ she said.
Heche said in her book that during her 20s, she had romantic affairs with much older men such as comedian Steve Martin and Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsay Buckingham. In her book, Heche wrote about her thoughts of Martin saying: ‘Why couldn’t my father have been more like him?’
In 2019, Bergman’s widower, Jud Bergman, was killed at 62 alongside his second wife, Mary Miller-Bergman, when the taxi they were traveling in was hit by a drunk driver. During the crash, Bergman was thrown from the car and died instantly.
Heche’s has expanded on her sister’s portrait of their family life in interviews over the years.
In a 1998 interview, Heche told the Tampa Bay Times: ‘We never told the truth in our family – never told the truth about one thing.’
She went on: ‘We were poor, but we said we were rich. We were falling apart, but we said we were good Christians. We had a father who lived a double life, but we pretended that we were absolutely fine. We lived on the streets but said we didn’t. Everything we did was a lie. Denial, denial, denial.’
Speaking about her life in Chicago, Heche said: ‘My days were spent in school, my afternoons were spent working at Haagen-Dazs and other places and my evenings were spent holding my mother, who kept crying.’
She continued: ‘We lived in a one-room apartment. My mom tried to keep it together, but at night she would break down. I didn’t cry about their deaths until five years later when I moved out.’
Heche told the Advocate in a November 2001 interview saying: ‘My father was a schizophrenic. He lived two complete lives, one as a heterosexual man who directed the choir and had a family and one who went away. We didn’t know what he did until years later.’
Susan Bergam pictured on her sister’s Instagram page. Bergam died following a battle with brain cancer in 2005
Heche’s other sister, Abigail. She’s an Illinois-based jewelry designer. Heche said in an interview that she had rebuilt her relationship with her sister following a years long absence from each other’s lives
In a 1998 interview with Allure, Heche said her father lived as a strict religious choir leader while cruising gay bars at night.
She continued: ‘My father was doing things that are attributed to schizophrenia – big [business] deals, delusions of grandeur. Which I also had, so I know there’s a lot of connections with the insanity that I had with my father.’
Following an arrest in Fresno, California, when she was taken into custody for wandering on to private property in her underwear and began talking to children about taking them to heaven in a space ship, Heche described it as a ‘psychotic break’.
She told the Advocate: ‘I knew that I was sane. But I needed to go to a psychiatrist and a doctor and make my friends feel safe that I was sane.’
In response to Heche’s autobiography, her mother, Nancy, said: ‘I am trying to find a place for myself in this writing, a place where I as Anne’s mother do not feel violated or scandalized.’
Her sister, Susan, said she objected to not being consulted by Heche about her book.
Abigail Heche, a jewelry designer, said: ‘It is my opinion that my sister Anne truly believes, at this moment, what she has asserted about our father’s past behavior … [but] based on my experience and her own expressed doubts, I believe that her memories regarding our father are untrue.’
In order to cope with her alleged abuse, Heche said that she developed an alter-ego named Celestia. She told Barbara Walters in an interview about the persona saying: ‘I believed that I was from another planet. I think I was insane.’
Thanks to a role in a 2004 TV movie named ‘Gracie’s Choice,’ where Heche played an abusive alcoholic mother, she told the Los Angeles Times that she came to terms with the idea that her mother didn’t love her.
Heche’s mother, Nancy, lectured for years on the ‘evils’ of homosexuality following her husband’s death in 1983
Nancy Heche pictured with her daughter, Abigail. In addition to her mother, Heche said her sister remained distant from her relationship with Ellen was made public
Speaking about how her mother seemingly ignored the abuse she faced from her father, Heche said: ‘I always wondered if my mother was conscious – if you can treat children that way and still love them.’
She said that she did not feel that it was possible to still love your children and to allow them to suffer. Heche added: ‘It was a relief to me to finally come to terms with this question.’
In preparation for her role in the psychological thriller The Vanished, Heche said that she also used her real-life trauma as motivation: ‘The thing about mourning and loss is that you don’t have to do much research if you’ve experienced it on different levels, and I think we all have on different levels. This character, who loses her child, required a deep dive into the sorrow that I’ve been through in my life.’
She continued: ‘Unfortunately, there have been multiple deaths in my family. So in order to pull off playing this role, I couldn’t hold back how deep that loss goes.’
Heche has long claimed that she was black listed in the early 2000s in the fallout from her public lesbian romance with Elle DeGeneres.
She told the Guardian in 2000 about their relationship’s effect on her family life saying: ‘I was naive, hugely naive. I fell in love and I didn’t believe people would care. The Hollywood community and friends and family backed away.’
In the same interview, Heche said that her religious mother did not speak to her after the actress came out. She also said that the her two sisters remained distant from her.
In 1998, Heche told the Tampa Bay Times that her mother believed that her lesbian relationship was a ‘sin.’
While Nancy Heche told the Christian Broadcasting Network that she felt her daughter’s relationship with Ellen DeGeneres was ‘Like a betrayal of an unspoken vow: We will never have anything to do with homosexuals.’
In a separate interview, Nancy told AL.com in a 2009 that she felt as though she didn’t handle her daughter coming out in 1997 well. She said: ‘I’m sorry I didn’t know how to deal with it well. God was giving me an opportunity. We had good moments of trying to connect. All of us were learning how to handle it. We loved each other; how do you live out that when you disagree?’
It took firefighters more than hour to put out the blaze caused by Heche crashing into the home in the Mar Vista section of Los Angeles on Friday
During the interview, Nancy said that she was an ‘advocate’ for ‘showing love and respect to the gay community.’ In the same year as the interview, Nancy was speaking at multiple homophobic conferences across the country.
Nancy also said that she found out her husband was a homosexual from his doctor. She said: ‘We fail. We betray each other. It’s a sad story. God had to teach me a lot. We’re to act out of our healing, not out of our woundedness. I was hurt and felt betrayed.’
She also downplayed any tension between her and her daughter saying that they have a ‘typical mother-daughter relationship.’ She said: ‘We connect and we don’t connect. That’s pretty typical. I have a growing relationship, a loving relationship with her. I love her.’
Heche admitted in a 2011 interview with the Daily Telegraph that she had recently begun to rebuild her relationship with her sister following a 20-year feud. The ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ star said: ‘She came out to visit last week, and we’re having a wonderful time in our friendship as we’ve gotten closer. We’ve both put our stuff behind us.’
In that interview, Heche said that she was still estranged from her mother. Heche said that when she called her mother to confront her once, she hung up after her mother said: ‘Jesus loves you, Anne.’
Heche said: ‘Forgiveness is a funny word for me. I’m OK with my mother living her life the way she wants to live it, and I’m OK with her not participating in my life the way I want to live it.’
In 2015, Nancy Heche conceded: ‘[Anne has] stopped talking to me. She made the decision to cut off communication.’
WWE’s first female ref, who claimed Vince McMahon raped her in the 1980s, reveals new details
WWE’s first female referee who claimed she was raped by former chairman Vince McMahon in the 1980s revealed new details about the incident amid a slew of fresh allegations against the wrestling boss.
Rita Chatterton, who became a licensed wrestling referee in New York in 1984, had previously accused McMahon of forcing himself on her in a limo in a 1992 interview with Geraldo Rivera.
Her allegations were corroborated by former pro wrestler Leonard Inzitari in a new report by New York Magazine — which also delved into what led up to the harrowing encounter nearly four decades ago.
“He promised me half-a-million dollars a year,” she told the outlet in the story out Monday, referring to the contract offer McMahon extended over the phone following her television debut with the then-WWF in January 1985.
McMahon, whose father started WWF, had called Chatterton to tell her he was “impressed” with her work and wanted her to go “full-time” but had a warning for her, she told New York Magazine.
“Keep yourself clean,” he said, according to Chatterton.
“I don’t wanna see you messing around with any of the wrestlers. You keep it professional.”
The wrestling mogul also told Chatterton she’d be on the cover of glossies like Women’s Day, Better Homes and Gardens and Time, so she quit her job as a delivery driver with Frito-Lay and began to pursue wrestling full-time. But the relationship soured when the young ref tried to follow up – and McMahon allegedly raped her in July 1986.
During her interview with New York Magazine, Chatterton refused to go into specifics but Inzitari, a longtime friend from the business, corroborated her story for the first time since the allegations were made.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Inzitari told the outlet.
“She was a wreck. She was shaking. She was crying.”
Inzitari, whose stage name was Mario Mancini, said soon after the incident, he found Chatterton standing by herself close to the wrestling ring and when she saw him, she burst into tears and told him she was in McMahon’s limo when he “took his penis out.”
“He kinda forced my head down there, and I made it known I wasn’t interested in doing that,” Inzitari recalled Chatterton telling him.
“Then, [McMahon] pulled me on top of him,” she told Inzitari and soon, “He was inside her.”
Chatterton told the outlet the attack happened after she asked McMahon to discuss her career and he told her to meet her at a diner after the show.
Later, while sitting at a “big round table” with about a dozen others, Chatterton brought up her career but McMahon told her to keep quiet, she told the outlet.
“[He] put his finger to his mouth, in a shhh sign,” she recalled.
“When I come out of the ladies’ room, McMahon’s standing there … and he says, ‘I don’t wanna talk to you about your career in front of all these people, because it’s none of their business.’”
He suggested the two go to another diner down the street but when she left the restaurant, McMahon said he was tired and asked to speak inside his limo.
“It’ll only take 10 minutes,” he allegedly said.
During her interview with Rivera, Chatterton claimed McMahon then unzipped his pants and orally raped her.
“Vince continued to, you know, ‘If you want a half-a-million-dollar contract, you’re going to have to satisfy me, and this is the way things have to go,’” she said at the time.
“Vince grabbed my hand, kept trying to put my hand on him. I was scared. At the end, my wrist was all purple, black, and blue. Things just didn’t … He just … God, he just didn’t stop. This man just didn’t stop.”
Chatterton told Rivera that McMahon asked how her daughter planned to go to college and said “Of course, she doesn’t have to go to college.”
“I was forced into oral sex with Vince McMahon. When I couldn’t complete his desires, he got really angry, started ripping off my jeans, pulled me on top of him, and told me again that, if I wanted a half-a-million-dollar-a-year contract, that I had to satisfy him. He could make me or break me, and if I didn’t satisfy him, I was black-balled, that was it, I was done,” she told Rivera.
Speaking to New York Magazine, Chatterton recalled what McMahon said once the attack was over.
“One of the things that sticks with me, and always will… was, after he got done doing his business, he looked at me and said, ‘Remember when I told you not to mess with any of the wrestlers? Well, you just did,’” she recalled.
Following the attack, Chatterton told New York Magazine she went to the diner’s restroom and “cried my heart out” before going home and taking a “five-hour shower.”
While she did contact a lawyer in hopes of holding McMahon accountable, she ultimately decided against it.
“It came down that it was my word against McMahon’s, because I took a shower and didn’t go to the hospital,” she said.
“I was scared … He was powerful. It was gonna be him over me.”
When Chatterton first told Rivera her story in 1992, WWE was already in the midst of numerous scandals and her claims were buried in the noise. Soon, she left wrestling altogether and became a youth counselor.
Earlier this month, McMahon was accused of paying millions of dollars in hush money to a female employee he had an affair with, leading to his resignation from his role as CEO and chairman of WWE.
The fresh claims are what inspired Chatterton and Inzitari to speak out after so much time had passed.
“I’m sure others will come forward. Because we’re not the only two. There’s not a doubt in my mind about that,” Chatterton told the outlet.
“As far as wrestling goes, I guess I’m the first in a lot of things … As far as I know, I’m the first to come out with the whole issue of what a scumbag he is.”
Inzitari, who has avoided speaking negatively about McMahon in the past, agreed.
“I’ll tell you why I’m hopping on the bandwagon now,” he said.
“There’s worse stuff than that.”
WWE didn’t return a request for comment.
Ex-Wrestler Backs up Claim That Vince McMahon Allegedly Raped Referee
A former wrestler is claiming that allegations made by the WWE’s first female referee — who accused the organization’s former CEO Vince McMahon of raping her in 1986 — are true.
Leonard Inzitari, the ex-wrestler whose in-ring name was Mario Mancini, claimed that the allegations made by Rita Chatterton were true. He made the claim to journalist Abe Riesman in a story published by New York Magazine on Monday. Riesman is writing a book about McMahon, called “Ringmaster,” which will be released in March 2023.
It’s the first time a wrestler has backed up Chatterton’s accusation.
Chatterton first came forward publicly with the accusation in 1992, claiming that McMahon raped her in his limo in 1986. But Chatterton declined to press charges, and the statute of limitations for rape had passed at the time, according to Riesman’s story.
Inzitari claimed in the New York Magazine story that Chatterton confided in him in 1986 what had allegedly happened. Before a WWF show (WWE was known as the World Wrestling Federation at the time), Chatterton “burst out in tears” in front of Inzitari, he claimed.
Inzitari claimed that Chatterton told him McMahon “took his penis out” and “forced my head down there.” McMahon then “pulled me on top of him,” forced off her jeans, and was then “inside her,” Inzitari said that Chatterton told him.
WWE did not respond to a request for comment from Insider on behalf of the company or McMahon. McMahon’s lawyer, Jerry McDevitt, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider on McMahon’s behalf. Inzitari declined to comment further to Insider.
“He was willing to take the case, but he knew it would be an uphill battle,” Chatterton told Riesman, referring to a lawyer she contacted after the alleged encounter with McMahon. “It came down that it was my word against McMahon’s, because I took a shower and didn’t go to the hospital … I was scared. He was powerful. It was gonna be him over me.”
Chatterton had made her claim public on “The Geraldo Rivera Show.” The WWF didn’t comment at the time on the allegation, but McMahon called the accusation false in a lawsuit after the interview, according to Riesman.
McMahon and his wife, Linda, sued Chatterton, Rivera, and members of Rivera’s production team after the interview, claiming that the defendants were part of a conspiracy to inflict “severe emotional distress” on the McMahons with “the fabrication of a false accusation of rape.” The lawsuit was eventually dropped, according to Riesman.
Meanwhile, McMahon recently voluntarily stepped away from his role as WWE’s chief executive and chairman amid a special committee of the company board’s investigation into separate misconduct claims made against him and the company’s head of talent relations.
“I have pledged my complete cooperation to the investigation by the Special Committee, and I will do everything possible to support the investigation,” McMahon said in a statement released by WWE. “I have also pledged to accept the findings and outcome of the investigation, whatever they are.”
McMahon continues to oversee the company’s creative content. His daughter, and WWE’s brand chief, Stephanie McMahon, stepped in as interim CEO and chairwoman.
The Wall Street Journal first reported earlier this month that WWE’s board was investigating payments McMahon made to former female employees, some of whom had accused McMahon and the head of talent relations of misconduct. The payments prohibited them from speaking out about the agreements, The Journal reported, citing people familiar with the investigation.
The inquiry started in April after the board received a tip about a $3 million payment to a former female paralegal that McMahon is alleged to have had an affair with, The Journal reported.
A WWE spokesperson told The Journal that McMahon’s relationship with the former paralegal was consensual. McDevitt, his attorney, told the Journal the paralegal hadn’t claimed any harassment against McMahon and that “WWE did not pay any monies” to her.
‘He Raped Me for Days,’ Alleged British Victim of Paul Haggis Told Cops
ROME—Police in the southern Italian city of Brindisi say the British woman who has accused Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis of brutal rape has injuries consistent with her allegations. “I was raped for days,” the woman told investigating prosecutor Antonio Negro, according to a summary of the arrest document relayed to The Daily Beast. “We were supposed to work together, but instead he raped me from Sunday evening to Wednesday.”
The woman, who Negro’s office says holds a British passport, was left last Wednesday before dawn by the director outside the Brindisi airport in the province of Puglia, which sits at the heel of Italy’s boot, according to her testimony to police. She says she did not have an airline ticket, but that he gave her money to buy one when the airport opened, according to the prosecutor’s office.
The prosecutor’s office says the woman was discovered cowering in a corner of the small airport by a flight attendant who immediately alerted authorities. “She was destroyed,” the attendant told police, according to the initial investigative document. “She spoke with difficulty.”
After an initial medical examination at the airport health clinic, she was taken to the hospital for treatment in line with Italy’s “pink protocol” for rape victims, which includes psychological counseling. The prosecutor’s office says she “suffered repeated non-consenting sexual assaults” including one so violent she was “forced to seek medical attention.”
That horrific event is apparently what led to the end of her ordeal, when she says Haggis drove her to the airport in the early hours of Wednesday. The medical examiner’s report says that she was left incapable of having sex from the violence.
The prosecutor’s office says that after she was left incapacitated, he drove her alone to the airport from the tourist town of Ostuni about an hour away where the 69-year-old—who has been accused of sexual misconduct by four other women—was headlining the Allora Fest with Oliver Stone, Matt Dillon, Edward Norton, and Marisa Tomei. The music and film festival immediately distanced themselves from Haggis, canceling all events he was scheduled to take part in.
Police then investigated the new allegations, surveying camera footage outside Haggis’ hotel room and the airport that reportedly proves she was with him. They then waited until the woman left Italy safely to arrest the director on Sunday in Ostuni. His family had by then joined him. He was held in custody in the provincial capital city of Brindisi overnight, but has been released under house arrest at a hotel in Ostuni awaiting the equivalent of an arraignment this week.
An attorney for Haggis, Priya Chaudhry, refused to comment on the case to The Hollywood Reporter, citing a non-existent “law” she says prohibits her from commenting on ongoing cases. “That said, I am confident that all allegations will be dismissed against Mr. Haggis,” Chaudhry said in an email to the outlet. “He is totally innocent, and willing to fully cooperate with the authorities so the truth comes out quickly.”
The director’s Italian lawyer, Michele Laforgia, has been speaking to local press entities and confirmed to The Daily Beast that his client’s first court date is scheduled for Thursday. He said he believes that Haggis is “completely innocent and we hope for the maximum speed of all the necessary investigations to clarify the matter.”
He added that until they are presented with details of the charges, “we cannot declare anything else, nor enter into the merits of the accusations.”
Haggis wrote two best picture Oscar films with Million Dollar Baby in 2014 and Crash in 2005. The latest incident is not the first time the Canadian director has been in legal trouble. An ongoing civil lawsuit accusing him of violence was filed against him by publicist Haleigh Breest in 2017. Three more women came forward a year later saying he had sexually abused them. He denies all accusations.
Haggis, who left the Church of Scientology in 2009, has claimed that the sex abuse allegations are simply retaliation by the church. His accusers deny that claim.
Elderly Ukrainian woman says she was raped after Russians took her village: “I wish he had killed me instead of what he did”
The women of Ukraine are living under a constant threat, with growing evidence of sexual violence emerging as the war carries on.
Vera, an 83-year-old retired school teacher, told CBS News that her village was occupied by Russian forces last month when she was raped. For her safety, CBS News is not using her last name or identifying the village where she lives.
“He grabbed me by the back of the neck,” she said. “I started to choke, I couldn’t breathe.”
“I told the one who raped me, ‘I’m old enough to be your mother. Would you let this happen to your mother?'” she continued. “He made me shut up.”
Vera said her husband who has disabilities was in the house when she was attacked and she was also beaten.
“When he finished he grabbed a bottle of vodka,” she said. “I asked if I could put my clothes back on. He barked, ‘No!'”
When the man left her house, he fired his assault rifle in the air three times outside.
The Ukrainian military took CBS News to Vera’s village because they’d heard reports of sexual assault by Russian forces. Locals told us others were also raped there, including a 16-year-old girl. CBS News has not been able to independently verify any of the allegations, but Vera’s story was detailed, compelling and heartbreaking.
She also reported it to the Ukrainian police, she told us, who took sheets away for testing.
“He should have shot me,” Vera said. “I wish he had killed me instead of what he did.”
Vera said she believes her attacker was from Ukraine’s far east, a region controlled by Russian-backed separatists, where men have reportedly been conscripted to fight for Russia.
“Everything hurts,” she said. “I’m in a state where I’m neither dead nor alive. Before I felt joy with the spring, now I don’t feel anything. I have nothing.”
In the U.S., help is available for survivors of sexual violence and their families. RAINN offers resources at 1-800-656-HOPE and on their website, www.rainn.org