Summary: Terry Crews’ criminal complaint against Adam Venit has been dismissed.
Actor Terry Crews’ criminal complaint against a powerful Hollywood agent has been dismissed. According to TMZ, officials in Los Angeles said that the case exceeded the statute of limitations.
Last year, Harvey Weinstein was exposed as a sexual predator by the New York Times, and his outing encouraged numerous victims to come forward and share their stories of being sexually harassed or assaulted. One of those alleged victims was Brooklyn Nine Nine’s Terry Crews, who said that he was groped by WME agent Adam Venit.
Crews said that he was at an industry party in 2016 when Venit approached him, made a lewd gesture, and then grabbed Crews’ genitals. Crews said he was humiliated by the experience and that he did not have a previous relationship with the agent, who represents talent such as Brett Ratner.
In November of 2017, Crews filed an official police complaint against Venit, but the office of the Los Angeles District Attorney dismissed the case because Crews filed it too late. In the city, victims have one year to report misdemeanors, and Crews’ complaint came over one year from the date of the party.
In addition to filing the police report, Crews also complained to Venit’s employer, talent agency WME. The agency suspended Venit in November of 2017 and conducted an investigation, and they allowed him to return to the company with a demotion. WME told Deadline earlier this year that they had handled the groping complaint when it had first occurred and that Crews revisited it even though he had accepted an apology.
“Mr. Crews accepted the apology and then told the only two WME employees to whom he had spoken about the incident that everything was okay,” WME said. “It was the last mention Mr. Crews made of the incident to anyone at WME for nearly 18 months — during which time he remained a WME client.”
On Twitter, Crews expressed his disapproval of WME’s decision to reinstate Venit, writing, “Someone got a pass.” He has a civil lawsuit against WME and Venit that is pending.
“What’s so strange and crazy is that I’m still paying them (the talent agency that employs Venit),” Crews said to Variety. “I go to work, and I still have to send a cheque to my molester. This is Hollywood, it is insane. I look at my bank statement, and I’m like, ‘Damn, this is the most wrong thing of all time.’ I’m calling it, I’m going to play this whole thing out. If I don’t get justice, nobody can.”
In February, Venit issued a legal response to Crews’ civil suit. He denied Crews’ sexual harassment claims, and he said that he had grabbed Crews but that it was not in a sexual way. He said that he had been drinking and that he was playing around.
After Crews came forward with the groping allegation last year, he has since left WME.
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