RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week 
Oct. 30 to Nov. 4 

Featured Investigations

As the Harvey Weinstein scandal exposes the hidden-in-plain sight dynamics between power, ambition and sex, many public figures are learning the truth of William Faulkner’s insight, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Dustin Hoffman was accused of inappropriate conduct by two women. The first woman claimed he sexually harassed her in 1985 when she was a 17-year-old production assistant working on a movie adaptation of “Death of a Salesman.” The second woman said that in 1991 the actor had arranged meetings to discuss her script as a ruse to get her in bed.

Kevin Spacey came out as gay after fellow actor Anthony Rapp said Spacey had tried to molest him 1986 when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Afterward, the Guardian reported that “actors and former staff at the Old Vic have accused the theatre of turning a blind eye” to Spacey’s “inappropriate sexual behavior” while he served as the London theater’s artistic director. On Thursday, a man told New York magazine that he had had a sexual relationship with Spacey in 1983, when he was 14 and the actor was 24. Later reports said he made the set of his Netflix series, “House of Cards,” a toxic work environment through a pattern of sexual harassment, including grabbing young men's crotches. Netflix has cut ties with the actor.

Michael Oreskes resigned from his top editorial job at NPR as reports emerged that he had sexually harassed women over the years, including while he was a top editor at the New York Times in the late 1990s. Jill Abramson, who was Oreskes’ deputy at the time and would later become the newspaper’s first female executive editor, told the Washington Post: 

“If I had to do it again, I would have told him to knock it off," said Abramson,  co-author of a book  about the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill harassment case. "I think I should have raised this with [the Times’ human resources department]. . . . Maybe confronting him would have somehow stopped him from doing it to another woman.”

The Los Angeles Times reports that at least six women are accusing filmmaker Brett Ratner of sexual harassment and abuse, in incidents that stretch back to the early 1990s. Ratner denies the charges and has filed a defamation suit against one accuser who called him a “rapist” in a Facebook post. 

Also this week: Actor Jeremy Piven and Mother Jones journalist David Corn were accused of sexual misconduct; the Service Employees International Union fired a senior staff member and accepted the resignation of another following allegations of workplace harassment; and one current and three former female lawmakers told the Associated Press “that they had been harassed or subjected to hostile sexual comments by fellow members of Congress.”

Other Noteworthy Articles

The Lost Children of Tuam
New York Times
The lucky ones were shunned and segregated, looked upon by others and themselves as another species because their mothers were not married. The others, 796 of them, most under three years of age, died of disease and neglect. Their bodies were wrapped in gray blankets and stacked like cordwood in the septic system beneath the St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home run by the Catholic Church in Tuam, Ireland, from 1925 to 1961. Dan Barry tells their stories in vivid, understated prose.

In Reforming Campus Justice, DeVos Faces an Unruly Class 
RealClearInvestigations
Thanks but no thanks has been the response so far from colleges and universities to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s offer of more flexibility in how they handle allegations of sexual assault. Yale, Duke, Syracuse and the University of Colorado Boulder are among the schools that say they will continue to adhere to Obama administration guidance issued in 2011 that made it easier to punish alleged perpetrators.

New Bin Laden Documents Reveal Iran’s Ties to Al Qaeda
Long War Journal
Iran was al Qaeda’s “main artery for funds, personnel, and communication,” according to newly released documents gathered during the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The material, which also includes a handwritten, 228-page journal kept by bin Laden, also indicates that terror groups “regularly sought and received the al Qaeda master’s direction” until his death.

Rotting Corpses, Maggots and Other Funeral Home Horrors
Associated Press
A funeral home in Flint, Michigan, is finally closing after facing several complaints and fines for its treatment of the bodies entrusted to its care. After 10 bodies were found in a garage last September, the state attorney general fired charges of gross negligence and incompetence. Before that, another funeral director complained of the smell and lack of cleanliness in the preparation room.

Governments’ Gender Pay Disparity Starts At The Top
Open the Books
The analysis cast a wide net, examining the 500 most highly compensated employees from each of the largest 25 federal agencies; the 1,000 top-paid Congressional staffers; the White House payroll; and the 1,000 most highly compensated public employees within each of the five most populous states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois. It found the same pattern everywhere: top paid men far outnumber highly compensated women.