Free Republic

The family court judges were in different New Jersey counties, but the question prosecutors asked them was the same: Can we charge these male juveniles as adults on allegations of rape? Judge James Troiano in Monmouth County said a 16-year-old girl who accused a 16-year-old boy of sexually assaulting her — and filming it — at a pajama-themed party should have been told by prosecutors to consider the long-term damage to the boy before she decided to pursue criminal charges against him. G.M.C., as court documents identified the suspect, allegedly sent a text to his friends that read, “When your...

As more and more women step forward to give public testimony about their alleged abuse at the hands of Hollywood power — Harvey Weinstein, Ben Affleck, Amazon Studios chief Roy Price — more and more women are coming out about their alleged abuse at the hands of Hollywood power. Funny how that works. And on Friday morning, three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone was added to the list. New York Daily News: Carrie Stevens, a former Playboy Playmate, claims that some 26 years ago, when she was just 22 years-old, Stone grabbed her breast at a party. “He was really cocky,...

Col. David “Wil” Riggins, after a highly decorated Army career that included multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was on the verge of promotion to brigadier general in July 2013 when he got a phone call at the Pentagon from the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division to come in for a meeting. Once there, he learned that a blogger in Washington state had just accused him of raping her, when both were cadets at West Point in 1986. An investigation was underway.Then, Riggins sued Shannon for defamation, claiming that every aspect of her rape claim on the West Point campus was...

Since it swept the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prizes and sold in a stunning $17.5 million worldwide rights deal to Fox Searchlight at January’s Sundance Film Festival, Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation has been considered a front-runner film in the Oscar race. A brewing controversy threatens to challenge the trajectory of that inspiring narrative. Memories of 17-year-old rape charges waged against both Parker and Jean McGianni Celestin (who shares co-story credit with Parker) while they were roommates at Penn State in 1999 left Fox Searchlight in full crisis mode these past weeks, scrambling to figure out how...