Posted on 03/02/2020 4:42:59 PM PST by EdnaMode
Oscar winner Timothy Hutton, currently the star of the freshman Fox drama “Almost Family,” has been accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in 1983. According to a report published online by BuzzFeed News, Sera Johnston, who last year filed a criminal complaint against Hutton with the Vancouver Police Department, said she was assaulted by the actor while he was in town to shoot the film “Iceman.”
Johnston told the site that she was just 14 when she and two friends were invited to Hutton’s hotel room, where she said she was raped and assaulted by both Hutton (who was then in his 20s) and one of his friends. Johnston, now 50, said she didn’t come forward until after the #MeToo movement gained strength because she didn’t think anyone would believe her.
Hutton denied the allegations to BuzzFeed, and in a statement to the site contended he never met Johnson, and called her story “fabricated,” with “patently false, scurrilous, and defamatory statements.” (The writers of the BuzzFeed article, Kate Aurthur and Adam B. Vary, currently work for Variety.)
In a statement released by Hutton after BuzzFeed published the story on Monday, the actor said: “For the past two-and-a-half years, I have been the target of multiple extortion attempts by a woman named Sera Dale Johnston to extract millions of dollars from me. She threatened that if I did not meet her demands, she would go to the press with a false allegation that I sexually assaulted her 37 years ago in Canada. I never assaulted Ms. Johnston.
“Today, BuzzFeed chose to publish Ms. Johnston’s false story. BuzzFeed knew the truth because they were provided with documented evidence. What’s really going on here is that Ms. Johnston’s extortion attempts failed. She then decided to follow through on her threat to go to the press with her false story. When I became aware of this, I went to the FBI, signed a sworn statement, and filed a criminal complaint against Ms. Johnston for extortion. I will not stop fighting to expose this story for what it is — a failed extortion attempt based on something that never happened.”
In the story, BuzzFeed tracked down one of the two friends who were with Johnston that night; the woman, who hadn’t been in touch with Johnston for decades, corroborated her account of them visiting Hutton’s hotel room. That friend, only identified by her initials, C.B., signed an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, backing up her recollections.
BuzzFeed talked to five other people who confirmed that Johnston had told them about the Hutton incident over the years.
Johnston’s mother, who worked as a set decorator, told BuzzFeed that at the time they considered going to the police, but feared she might be blacklisted from the film industry. She said she regrets the decision now.
After acquiring a lawyer, Johnston entered arbitration with Hutton’s legal team; she initially agreed to a $135,000 settlement, but later changed her mind when she realized Hutton would be able to completely deny any wrongdoing. Complicating matters, an ex-boyfriend of Johnston’s reached out to Hutton’s friend (the other man whom she said assaulted her that night), offering to broker a settlement. That gave Hutton’s team an opening to question Johnston’s credibility.
In the years since that night, Johnston told BuzzFeed, that what happened “has colored every area of my life.”
Besides Hutton’s statement, his camp also released a statement from his defamation counsel, Tom Clare, who said he has sent BuzzFeed a legal retraction demand. He claimed that BuzzFeed, “facing serious financial struggles and pressure to attract readers, has shamefully disregarded the facts and allowed itself to be used by Ms. Johnston,” and also said the site “ignored hard evidence that Ms. Johnston lied about participating in extortion attempts and turned a blind eye to critical inconsistencies in Ms. Johnston’s story.
“We will be sending BuzzFeed a legal retraction demand. If BuzzFeed wrongfully refuses to retract the article, Tim is prepared to take any and all necessary steps, including the filing of a defamation lawsuit, to clear his name and to hold BuzzFeed and Ms. Johnston accountable for their reckless and self-serving efforts to destroy Tim’s reputation and career.”
A spokesperson for BuzzFeed said the outlet stands by the piece: “BuzzFeed News’ reporting on the alleged rape of a 14 year-old girl by Timothy Hutton is based on interviews with the alleged victim, the account of a woman who was with her that evening, and five separate people who were told of the assault at the time. BuzzFeed News stands unequivocally by our reporting.”
You can say that about every old sex allegation from the Boy Scouts to the catholic church to this sort of thing.
Nothing to go on except reputation tearing.
If it’s proven (to the jury) that the woman’s accusations are false, she should get the sentence she intended for the man. 25 -40 years sound good?
You are right. I have no idea. I also have no idea how anyone would wait 37 years before coming forward with this accusation.
It smacks of #MeTooism.
I’m gonna be very honest here; hopefully it will shed some light on the subject.
I was raped in 1989. I was 27. He was a neighbor in the apartment building.
I can tell you this-if the accusation
is credible & is reported immediately or soon after, & there is evidence you
WILL be believed! But there is so much
shame associated with rape some women
don’t report it at all.
Then there’s the excruciating details of the police report, the DA & questions about my sex life & asked many times many ways. Having to keep
telling what happened over & over
was horrific.
My boss came to pick me up for work
because my car broke down. He busted the door down as I was screaming. He saved my life. One bad man. One good one.
It took me a while to trust men again
But one man is not all men.
The true victims I weep with. The liars destroying a man’s life disgust
me. Hope this adds perspective.
Thank y’all for listening!
“How do you even take a decades old rape charge to court?”
Just as bad, how do you DEFEND yourself from a rape charge of 37 or so years ago. Who can take a random day in 1983 and describe that day in a way that proves their innocence? How do you remember who else would have been there. How many of the witnesses, even if you can remember them have died, changed names or vanished to retirement overseas in some incommunicado backwater.
It would be nearly impossible to mount a defense.
“Unfortunately, her mother worked in the film industry and fairly or unfairly mom believed she would not only lose her current job but also probably be unable to find work in the future!”
Oh yeah, if you were gonna lose your job, what parent wouldn’t coverup their daughter’s rape? Just give em a bar of Lava soap and tell her to go shower. After all, wouldn’t wanna lose your job. That’s parent of the year stuff there LOL.
I am only coming at this from this point of view. My cousins wife just passed of Cancer at a young age. He came across her diaries and discovered that she had been sexually abuses from 11 on for a couple of years. She kept the secret to the grave. So... one never knows. btw the abuser was recently presented with her diaries... Charges are pending.
In 1983 the age of consent in Canada was 14.
Father also in the movie Hell Fighters with John Wayne.Was my Petersaun brave?was a line from GB that I remember to this day.Also in Where the boys are from the early 60s.I liked his movies.
I have. He’s typical Hollyweird against President Trump.
Wonder why they all wait decades before coming out with the accusations...
It would be interesting to know why the Feebs haven’t acted on the alleged extortion...
I think the words “freshman FOX drama” explain the timing pretty well.
What’s the exculpatory evidence that Buzzfeed was shown?
What do the Feebs have?
If Hutton is innocent, I hope he sues Buzzfeed into penury.
Back around 2005 an employee at my plant was arrested, thrown in jail and arraigned for falsely being accused of molesting his adolescent daughter's girlfriend.
The girl lied, she was put up to it by the crazy ex-wife who was trying to get custody of the daughter.......
Certainly more than people who respond to such allegations with lawerly "I don't recall ever assaulting her in any way" type of statement. I follow a simple rule: If you say you can't recall whether you raped someone or not than you raped someone. So Hutton passed that test at least.
All grown women know exactly why a guy is asking you up to his room!
I recognize that some things have changed with the times, however, any guy asking a girl or woman, unrelated to what is essentially up to his bedroom, hasn't changed at all!
Certainly all my male FR friends know what I'm talking about!
Rape is sick and disgusting. I think the penalties should be far more draconian than they are. They can destroy a woman’s life. I have no doubt there are women who never go public and reveal that they were raped. I can understand that. What bothers me is just that there has been a large body of false accusations the past 20 years toward celebrity men, athletes, politicians. False rape accusations should be harshly dealth with as well. I did clearly say she may well be stating the truth and I am very sorry for your horrible victimization. Rape is just evil. It is just really hard these days to separate the wheat from the chaffe there are so many false rape accusations. When somebody accuses a celbrity after 40 years, I have my doubts and wonder if they are just cashing in. There is just no way to know. In addition, if you are silent for 40 years, what can you possible gain by accusing someone 35-40 years after the fact. Does that help the healing any?
There is no statue of limitations on statutory rape in Vancouver Canada. You can be 80 years old and accuse somebody. If you can still prove it, then you have a case. It is pretty tough to preserve evidence after 37 years as in this case. So I don’t really get the point of it. Closure? Finally fed up? Sudden memory syndrome? False allegation? I have no clue.
There is no way to know how many fake rape allegations there are. Some are just very high profile like the Duke LaCrosse case, or even Justice Kavanaugh (one of the 4 women accused him of sexual assault).
The FBI published that 8% of rape accusations are false.
It is very difficult to investigate and many are merely he said/she said and unknowable unless the woman literally confesses to lying or making up the charge. And even then it is not impossible that a raped woman could recant just to make it all go away again.
The one single time that every rape accusation in a community was investigated, the fould that 40% of the rape accusations were fake allegations. It is controversial and a lot of people don’t believe it, but in the 1990s Eugene Kagan looked into over 100 rape allegations from one town and found that 40% of accusers had recanted their rape claim. Following up on that, he studies 2 universities and found that 50% of the women claiming forcible rape later recanted.
Take this with a grain of salt as it is a small sample size with a ton of variables, but at the same time, we used to have a sayingn “hell hath no fury as a woman scorned”.
You get a woman mad and you and it can be the easiest thing in the world for her to say you raped her. In the public eye, you are guilty as charged regardless if charges or filed or you are found not guilty at trial. People will always believe you raped her.
So I know the Kagan studies are tiny in scope and anecdotal, but it is the only time anybody really tried to examine the number of false rape accusations, and it ran 40% to 50%, with reasons ranging from revenge to wanting attention to regret over a consensual sexual act.
Or you can use the FBI value of 8%. That is not insignificant.
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