Hollywood actor Terry Crews told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday that sexual misconduct is rampant in his industry because dealing with inappropriate behavior is perceived as part of the job, and said men need to do more to hold other men accountable for their actions.
“The silence is deafening when it comes to men talking about this issue because you’re talking about a complicit system,” Crews told the committee.
“In Hollywood, it’s a whole other system where they view the casting couch as ‘perks of the job,’ where they literally judge the women on how they look, and who’s going to attack her first,” he continued. “I was complicit because I looked the other way.”
Crews’ appearance before the committee is part of the panel’s investigation into how the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights has been implemented since being signed into law by former President Barack Obama in October 2016. The legislation provides federal statutory rights for survivors of sexual assault and rape.
“I heard time and time again about the rights that my predator had, but I was never told about the rights that I had as a survivor,” said Crews, a former NFL player who accused a Hollywood agent of groping him at a party, “Now if you know what you can do, you can actually do something about it.”
Crews gave testimony alongside Amanda Nguyen, who on Monday was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in drafting the Survivors’ Bill of Rights and her ongoing advocacy through Rise, the civil rights nonprofit organization she founded and still runs. The pair are pushing for states to adopt their own versions of the Survivors’ Bill of Rights.
Crews, 49, in November named Adam Venit, head of William Morris Endeavor’s motion picture department, as the man who groped him at an industry event in February 2016 while he was in the company of his wife, according to ABC News. He had alluded to the alleged assault on Twitter in October.
Crews, a father of five, filed a police report on the incident on Nov. 8 and fired William Morris Endeavor as his agency the day after. In December, he sued Venit for assault, sexual battery, emotional distress, and negligence.
Venit denied all of Crews’ allegations, according to court documents filed in January in response to Crews’ lawsuit.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office, however, announced in March they had both rejected Crews’ criminal case. The Los Angeles County District Attorney found the allegations did not amount to a felony because, in part, Venit did not touch Crews’ skin, multiple outlets reported. The city attorney dismissed the matter because it was beyond the statute of limitations for a misdemeanor, which is a year.
