“As far as sci-fi and fantasy, I love that genre because there are so many things you can do, like rip someone’s tongue out of their throat and get away with it and rape beautiful women,” said the actor to some crowd laughter about his barbarian warrior character Khal Drogo.
Now Momoa is opening up about the incident in a statement on Instagram.
“I awoke in Australia to the justified reactions by many people to a distasteful joke I made years ago in Hall H for which I am sorry,” Momoa said. “I am still severely disappointed in myself at the insensitivity of my remarks that day. I know my sincerest apology now won’t take away those hurtful words. Rape and sexual harassment can reach anyone and I have seen first hand its painful torment among members of my own family and friends.”
He continued: “I made a truly tasteless comment. It is unacceptable and I sincerely apologize with a heavy heart for the words I said.”
The actor is introduced as Aquaman in Warner Bros.’ upcoming superhero mashup while Affleck reprises his role as Batman.
At 2:21 Saturday afternoon, the Memphis police department tweeted the news: “Ernest Suttles was charged with rape.”
Until that moment, Suttles was a senior defensive lineman for the University of Memphis.
Less than half an hour later, Memphis kicked off a football game against Navy.
It was a massive win for the Tigers.
It was the second win this season against a Top 25 team -- the first time any Memphis team has ever done that -- and it gives the Tigers a real shot at making the American Athletic Conference championship game.
So, believe me, there is nothing I would like better than to write a column celebrating that victory and the players — especially on the previously-embattled defense — who made it happen.
But how do you fully celebrate when a player who was supposed to suit up for Memphis Saturday may have raped someone the night before?
The first obligation of a football program — and it’s unfortunate to even have to type this — is to recruit players who will not endanger members of the community.
Twice in the past three weeks, there is evidence that Memphis may have failed in that regard.
On Sept. 29, Memphis safety Shaun Rupert was charged with aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary and possession of a firearm during commission of a dangerous felony in April.
According to a police report, Rupert and another man pushed their way into the apartment of a another Memphis student, held the student at gunpoint and stole the student’s two watches, an Xbox and an Apple Macbook. The men then allegedly forced the student to get into the bathtub and told him, “If you call the police, there will be consequences.”
That was a black eye to the program. Rupert had been recruited to Memphis after being dismissed from Missouri in the wake of misdemeanor drug charges.
Memphis doubtless did its “due diligence” before accepting Rupert as a transfer.
Sometimes, that isn’t diligent enough.
Indeed, Suttles was also dismissed from his previous school. He was bounced by Nebraska in 2013 after getting into an altercation with a teammate.
Suttles then transferred to Memphis and emerged as a widely-admired team leader, a player that former coach Justin Fuente invariably included on the panels he assembled to talk to incoming recruits. I once wrote a glowing column about Suttles, and the person he had evidently become.
“Every day he is the same guy," Fuente told me. "Whether it's on the field or off, there's a purpose to what he is doing at all times.”
So it came as a shock Saturday when Memphis first announced that Suttles had been suspended and “removed from campus” as a result of an off-campus incident, and when the MPD then announced that Suttles had been charged with rape.
According to the police, officers responded to St. Francis Hospital at 3:15 a.m. Saturday for a reported assault. The incident occurred in the 3800 block of Douglas Avenue near the Memphis campus, on Thursday. The alleged victim told police she had been in a relationship with Suttles for approximately two months.
And, yes, it is important to note that both Suttles and Rupert are innocent until proven guilty, and that Suttles -- through his attorney, Blake Ballin -- specifically "denies the accusation of rape."
But it is just as important to recognize that two felony charges in three weeks is at the very least a troubling trend, and a reason to make certain that the football program isn't recruiting players who are putting other members of the community at risk.
By all accounts, coach Mike Norvell is a man who cares deeply that his players are good citizens. He runs a program that is known for its openness precisely because -- as he said during his impassioned remarks after the Navy game -- it has nothing to hide. Beyond all that, it was Fuente, not Norvell, who recruited Rupert and Suttles to Memphis in the first place. Those judgment calls were made before Norvell arrived.
But football can obscure anyone’s judgment. That was reaffirmed Saturday afternoon. As my colleague, Mark Giannotto, tweeted out updates to the Suttles story, a Memphis fan responded: “Enough, there is a game going on.”
And so there was. The home team won it. That’s to the credit of all involved. But on this day, given the news from the MPD, it was a good deal harder to celebrate.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) Police say Memphis defensive end Ernest Suttles has been charged with rape after an incident near campus, and Suttles was dismissed from the team before the Tigers played Navy on Saturday.
The Memphis Police Department wrote on Twitter that Suttles was charged after officers were called to a location near campus at 3:15 a.m. Saturday. Online records show he was booked into jail Saturday afternoon.
School officials released a statement Saturday morning saying the 23-year-old Suttles had been suspended for violating team rules for an off-campus incident. After police announced Suttles had been charged, school officials said the redshirt senior had been dismissed and removed from campus.
Suttles had been listed as a co-starter against Navy. He transferred to Memphis before the 2013 season after Nebraska kicked him off the team for allegedly hitting a teammate in the head with a bottle.
A woman who accused rapper Nelly of raping her on his tour bus near Seattle last week has decided to drop her claims. The woman’s lawyer, Karen Koehler, announced late Friday that her client wanted to stop the investigation and has refused to testify against Nelly in court. She “wishes she had not called 911 because she believes the system is going to fail her,” Koehler said. Nelly, whose real name is Cornell Iral Haynes Jr., was booked in Auburn, Washington last Saturday on suspicion of rape. He was later released and has not been charged with a crime.
SEATTLE — A woman who said the rapper Nelly raped her on his tour bus in a Seattle suburb last weekend is dropping her pursuit of criminal charges.
News outlets report that lawyer Karen Koehler said in a statement Friday that her client wanted to stop the investigation and would refuse to testify in court.
Recording artist Nelly watches the game between the New York Knicks and the Charlotte Bobcats during an NBA basketball game in Charlotte, North Carolina, April 15, 2013. Chris Keane / Reuters
Koehler says the woman "wishes she had not called 911 because she believes the system is going to fail her."
Auburn police arrested Nelly, whose real name is Cornell Iral Haynes Jr., early Saturday in his tour bus at a Walmart. He was booked into jail on suspicion of second-degree rape and released later that day.
HARI SREENIVASAN: During the past six weeks half a million Muslims from Myanmar known as the Rohingya have fled across their countries border into Bangladesh. The exodus comes after witnessing or experiencing horrific atrocities by government soldiers who rampaged in their villages as part of a crackdown on the long-persecuted ethnic minority. New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman has reported vividly on the range of refugees, the widespread burning of homes the systematic raping of women and brutal killings of men and children. Gettleman is a Pulitzer Prize winner and currently the South Asia bureau chief. He joins me now via Skype from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
So first of all, for people who haven’t read your story, you end up helping us personalize this through one particular tale of a woman named Rajuma. Kind of summarize that for us.
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN: Yeah, this was this was one of the most upsetting stories I’ve ever done and I’ve been covering conflicts for 20 years and I was deeply disturbed and felt really helpless working on this story.
So I centered a piece on a young woman named Rajuma who had watched her village burn down in front of her eyes, was captured by government soldiers went back along with many other civilians and she told me that the soldiers separated the men from the women, they methodically executed all of the men and then began to rape the young women and Rajuma had a toddler boy in her arms and she said the soldiers ripped the little baby out of her arms, threw him into a fire, and killed him right in front of her and then proceeded to rape Rajuma and then left her in this burning house to die. And it was only a miracle when she woke up smelling smoke, ran out, naked, covered in blood, hid in a field and then kept running for the next three days until she got to the border of Bangladesh.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Well what’s remarkable about your story is, besides the fact that you verified all this from other witnesses and so forth, is that unfortunately her story is not an anomaly. You’re kind of trying to describe something that’s on a scale that we haven’t really heard about.
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN: Yes. This is just it. I mean I was I was in these camps in Bangladesh where half a million people have arrived nearly overnight fleeing these atrocities in Myanmar. And everywhere you go people have these stories to share, that are so disturbing. And the more you listen, the more you understand that the Rohingya have been demonized and dehumanized for decades. Like many people in Myanmar refer to them as insects or vermin. And then there was this official policy that they weren’t citizens, they didn’t really count. They were the most lowly people in the entire country. So then in August you had this attack by Rohingya militant groups against government positions and this became a long-awaited excuse for the military to just wipe out these people and they went village to village burning entire villages to the ground. More than 250 of them. And then they began to slaughter anybody they could get their hands on.
HARI SREENIVASAN: You know as these stories get documented as people start keeping track of, whether you want to call it a humanitarian crisis, crimes against humanity, a war crime, etc., what has the government response been?
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN: The Myanmar government has been denying that anything horrible happened and has called these clearance operations and said that the government troops were just trying to eliminate militants. But a half a million people fled. And they only did that because they felt like they would have been killed, had they stayed. And so many people told me these firsthand accounts, people from different villages, from hundreds of miles apart. And there was a distressing harmony to the accounts. And so you have this huge population that is now trapped in this border area not allowed to leave, not welcome by either side. When in these camps it was just this sea of plastic shelters as far as you could see to the horizon set up in these muddy hillsides, with just tons of people packed together, with very little food or shelter, and they all have been traumatized.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right Jeffrey Gettleman from the New York Times thanks so much.
Actress Lysette Anthony claims Harvey Weinstein raped her at her home in the 80s. A new interview details the alleged attack, which the 54-year-old labelled ‘revolting’ and ‘pathetic. In the interview with The Times, she claims he showed up at her home in the late 1980s at 10am and pushed his way inside while she tried to fight him off. She told the London Times: ‘He pushed me inside, rammed me up against a coat rack. He was trying to kiss me and shove me inside.’ She says she pushed him away but he was too heavy and ‘finally I just gave up.’
Lysette said the attack was ‘revolting’ and left her ‘disgusted and embarrassed’. Scotland Yard were said to be investigating her claims last week. Harvey Weinstein has been stripped of his Oscars membership (Picture: Getty) It comes as news surfaced that the Oscars board have voted to expel the producer. The board for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted ‘well in excess of the required two-thirds majority’ in favour of expelling him, according to the BBC. The Academy’s rules state that the board of governors, with a two-thirds vote, may eject a member “for cause”. Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Whoopi Goldberg are some of the names on the 54-member board. In a statement, the Academy said: ‘We do so not simply to separate ourselves from someone who does not merit the respect of his colleagues but also to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behaviour and workplace harassment in our industry is over.’ It added: ‘What’s at issue here is a deeply troubling problem that has no place in our society. The Board continues to work to establish ethical standards of conduct that all Academy members will be expected to exemplify.’
One of Harvey Weinstein’s former employees has accused the movie mogul of raping her in the basement of his London offices, the Daily Mail reported.
The ex-Miramax employee said she was so traumatized by the attack that it took her until last week to tell her husband about it.
“I just felt mortified and ashamed — and that no one would believe me,” she told The Mail on Sunday.
“He was incredibly well-connected, powerful and important — and I was just a nobody.”
Weinstein’s accuser has changed her name to “Sarah Smith” in order to protect her identity.
She said the assault took place in 1992 at the Miramax offices in Fulham in West London.
Smith, now in her 50s, said, “I was there on my own when he came to the office. He went down to the basement and he called my name. I went down — he was standing there with nothing on. I started to back away.”
She recalled being terrified by his strength and size.
“He grabbed me and he was so big and powerful. He just ripped my clothes away and pushed me, threw me down. Then...I kept shouting, ‘No! Stop!’ and tried to push him off. But he forced himself on me,” she said.
She recalls saying, “No!” over and over again.
“I was very aware that if a woman says no, it means no. And that was the one thing going through my mind throughout, ‘No, no, no, no!’” she said.
She remembers the encounter being over quickly, before he told her to “get out!”
“I remember walking home that night and it was cold and sodden. I was mortified and ashamed. I didn’t tell anyone,” she said.
“We live in more enlightened times now, but back then I just thought no one would believe me.”
She said she still suffers emotionally from the encounter.
“Even after all these years, I can still wake up screaming.”
Smith’s accusations come on the heels of an English actress’s allegations that Harvey Weinstein raped her in her London home in the 1980s.
Lysette Anthony, 54, reported the claim to Scotland Yard Wednesday.
“Have just reported an historic crime to @MerseyPolice...feel sick..so sad..” she wrote on Twitter.
Metropolitan police said Thursday that it was investigating Weinstein over claims that he had sexually abused an actress in London in the 1980s. They did not identify her.
Anthony described the encounter to the Times of London.
She said Weinstein showed up unannounced at her apartment one morning.
“He was trying to kiss me and shove inside me,” Anthony said. She said she tried to restrain him but he was too heavy.
“Finally I just gave up,” the actress reportedly said.
Anthony described the assault as “pathetic” and “revolting” in an interview Saturday.
She said she felt “disgusted and embarrassed.”
Dozens of women have accused the disgraced film industry icon of sexual assault.
