Warner Bros chairman-CEO resigns after sexual impropriety allegations

Kevin Tsujihara is stepping down after an investigation was launched into his relationship with British actor Charlotte Kirk whose career he allegedly elevated

The Warner Bros chairman-CEO, Kevin Tsujihara, has resigned after allegations of sexual impropriety.

The 54-year-old has been embroiled in controversy since the Hollywood Reporter published an article suggesting that he engaged in a sexual relationship with the British actor Charlotte Kirk amid promises that he would help her get roles in the studio’s movies. read more »

Pediatrician gets at least 79 years for assaulting patients

former Pennsylvania pediatrician was sentenced to at least 79 years in prison on Monday for the sexual assault of 31 children, most of them patients, in a case that state medical regulators failed to act on nearly two decades ago. read more »

Harvard’s Harvey Weinstein Problem

Students upset that a law professor’s representing the wrong guy in court.

These are tense days for elite institutions of higher learning. Students at Sarah Lawrence College began occupying the main administration building last week with a list of over 100 demands. And at Harvard, a distinguished law professor and faculty dean of one of the university’s 12 undergraduate resident houses is under fire for joining disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s defense team.

Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. is a former public defender who’s helped to secure the release of over 6000 falsely imprisoned people. He’s a legal hero, which at an institution like Harvard you’d think would gain him substantial social capital. But it doesn’t work that way anymore. When you’ve pushed some students’ hot buttons by choosing to represent America’s number one pariah, your slate’s wiped clean. read more »

How Cardinal George Pell Became the Highest-Ranking Catholic Official to Be Convicted of Child Abuse

He made a name defending the Catholic Church from accusations of sexual abuse. A jury just found he was abusing children

In late October 1996, Cardinal George Pell stood before a panel of reporters in Melbourne, Australia, and apologized. He apologized on behalf of the Australian Catholic Church, who, as it had recently surfaced, was complicit in covering up pervasive and unimaginable child abuse by priests. “I would like to make a sincere, unreserved, and public apology,” Pell said, according to David Marr’s The Prince: Faith, Abuse and George Pell. He had a peculiar manner of speaking — an Australian accent polished by an Oxford education. “First of all to the victims of sexual abuse, but also to the people of the archdiocese for the actions of those Catholic clergy.” He declared himself an advocate in the fight against child abuse, and announced a new compensation scheme for the victims of his religious brothers.

Yet only a few weeks later, Pell cornered two thirteen-year-old choirboys in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and sexually abused them, a jury has found. He forced one boy to perform oral sex while the other flinched away — “crying” and “sobbing” and “whimpering,” as a judge later described. It was a Sunday morning, after mass. The boys had just finished singing hymns. They were on a singing scholarship and came from poorer communities. Pell had just been appointed archbishop.

After years of accusations involving Pell’s complicity and direct abuse — and several trials later—Cardinal Pell has been convicted of child abuse on five counts and sentenced to six years in jail. read more »