TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Terry Crews testifies before Senate on sexual assault, mocked by 50 Cent
Actor Terry Crews testified before a senate committee on sexual assault on Tuesday.
Change Size
Actor Terry Crews in Los Angeles on Sept. 16, 2017. (AFP/Frederic J. Brown)
A
merican actor and former NFL player Terry Crews, known for his work on sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify regarding his own story of sexual assault and to advocate for the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights on Tuesday.
Vulture reported that the bill, which would guarantee subsidies of forensic testing for sexual assault survivors throughout the US, was presented to the Senate this Tuesday.
“This past year we have seen powerful men in Hollywood and elsewhere finally held accountable for sexual assault,” said Crews in his opening statement. “We also saw the backlash survivors faced coming forward. I wanted these survivors to know that I believed them, I supported them, and that this happened to me too.”
As Crews has previously stated, he was attending a party with his wife in 2016, when the head of the motion picture department at his then-agency – since revealed to be Adam Venit of William Morris Endeavor – twice grabbed his genitals. According to Crews, his first reaction “was to be violent and I immediately held back”.
When asked why, Crews replied, “As a black man in America, you only have a few shots at success, you only have a few chances to make yourself a viable member of the community. I’m from Flint, Michigan. I have seen many young black men who were provoked into violence: They were in prison or they were killed. They’re not here.”
“The assault lasted only minutes, but what he was effectively telling me while he held my genitals in his hand was that he held the power. That he was in control,” Crews said of the encounter with Venit, who has been demoted but not fired from the agency.
Read also: 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' saved by NBC thanks to social media outcry
The actor went on to say that his appearance in court was not without consequence. “I’ve done three movies called The Expendables with Sylvester Stallone. The producer of that film called my manager and asked him to drop my case [against Venit] in order for me to be in the fourth installment of the movie, and if I didn’t there would be trouble."
In response, rapper 50 Cent took to Instagram to post a picture of Crews, shirtless, with the words “I got raped, My wife just watched”, above another photo of Crews with a rose in his mouth that read “Gym time”.
Underneath the since deleted post, the caption read: “👀LOL,What the fuck is going on out here man? Terry: l froze in fear,😆they would have had to take me to jail. get the strap.”
Twitter user @wslymcln wrote, “Shit like this is the reason men don’t come forward as victims of sexual assault often". The tweet garnered nearly seventeen thousand retweets at the time of this post.
shit like this is the reason men don’t come forward as victims of sexual assault often. 50 Cent is publicly mocking Terry Crews, allowing Russell Simmons (friends with Crews’ abuser who tried to get him to drop the charges) to openly laugh at him. pic.twitter.com/J16TUvDUYi
— wesley (@wslymcln) June 26, 2018
When TMZ prompted Crews to address 50 Cent’s comments, he said, “I love 50 Cent, I listen to his music while I’m working out,” before continuing, saying, “I prove that size doesn’t matter when it comes to sexual assault.” (sul/wng)
