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Just in case you were wondering, Hollywood is still a wreck, but they’re hoping you won’t notice as criminal prosecutions for sexual assault and abuse are continuing to stall out.
The initial #MeToo wave has broken, and Hollywood is clearly of the opinion that it has “Done Enough” and can move on with business as usual. The Los Angeles Times is now reporting that no charges can be filed against director James Toback, though 395 women have reported some form of abuse or assault, because the statute of limitations has passed.
Writer-director James Toback, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by scores of women over his decades in Hollywood, will not face criminal charges in five investigations into his conduct because the allegations are beyond the statute of limitations, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Monday.
The alleged victims in the five investigations conducted by the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills police departments say they were abused from 1978 to 2008. The papers declining to file charges were signed Thursday by Deputy Dist. Atty. Liliana Gonzalez, who found the allegations were all too old to prosecute and, in one case, the alleged victim failed to appear for an interview.
The most recent allegation reviewed by L.A. County prosecutors involved a woman who had dinner with Toback in the fall of 2008 and then agreed to accompany him to a private screening.
When she arrived at the home, she found Toback alone, according to the prosecutor. “The suspect instructed the victim to masturbate in his presence. Victim reports she complied out of fear,” the prosecutor wrote.
During that time, Toback sat in a chair by the door and then made her sit in the chair while he rubbed his groin on her bare leg until he ejaculated, according to the prosecutor’s review of the Beverly Hills police investigation. Gonzalez declined the case, citing a one-year statute of limitation for sexual battery.
The victims were identified only as Jane Does 1 through 5.
Now, Toback is probably a C-list writer/director these days, and if he is able to make any more films, it will only be because Hollywood enables him to do so. Still, the enormity of the number of women who accused him of similar abuses is staggering, and tells you all that you need to know about how the Hollywood system works. Toback used his ability to name-drop to get aspiring actresses to bend to his sexual fetishes, and did it hundreds of times.
Alternately, the crimes of Harvey Weinstein are still in plain sight, and…. crickets. Weinstein is still cooling his heels in expensive rehab resorts and watching his production company head for bankruptcy, while pending criminal cases just sit. Weinstein himself is now radioactive, but needs to be held to account. According to reports, there are open criminal investigations in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, New York, and London. Is this a case of no one wanting to go first?
Meanwhile, Hollywood continues to chug on, despite having shamed and exposed multiple people in the industry during the #MeToo wave, showing that sometimes these people are just scumbags to begin with.
T.J. Miller arrested for allegedly calling in a fake bomb threat https://t.co/ezaZPIeWEO pic.twitter.com/DNYDPAQTYW
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) April 10, 2018
Miller was arrested last night at LaGuardia Airport in Queens. He appeared today before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer in New Haven and was released on a $100,000 bond. The charge carries a maximum term of imprisonment of five years. https://t.co/h92VmBI0iL
— Ryan Parker (@TheRyanParker) April 10, 2018
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/983739701210308610
That's a long way to fall in a short period of time. https://t.co/YnMgsX62b0
— Jeff B. (@EsotericCD) April 10, 2018
The charging document is here, and holy cow, is Miller in trouble.
Wow. Miller was ruinously drunk on an Amtrak train, got into loud arguments with people, including one particular woman in the 1st class cabin, got THROWN OFF THE TRAIN in NY for being drunk and disorderly, and then phoned in the bomb threat, attributing it to the woman. https://t.co/A0bJVgd1RJ
— Jeff B. (@EsotericCD) April 10, 2018
And the punchline: Miller was so stupid-drunk that he phoned in *the wrong train number* for his fake bomb threat.
What an epic asshole.
— Jeff B. (@EsotericCD) April 10, 2018
Miller’s star was already sinking over his abuse allegations, and this pretty much guarantees that he will never work in Hollywood again because he’ll most likely be serving real jail time.
Hollywood is desperately hoping that they’ve done enough to sweep all their scandals of the last six months under the rug in time for the spring/summer blockbuster season and rebound from the terrible ticket sales of 2017. It’s going to be up to the viewing public to see if they make more than just the big films profitable this year. Just remember that there is plenty of ugly still swimming below the gilded surface, and so long as they make money, Hollywood has no interest in cleaning house any more than they’ve been forced to already.
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