When Shia LeBeouf came out last week and claimed he’d been raped by a woman during an art exhibition, the reaction was surprise – and frankly a little skepticism.
The actor/artist/guy who wears a bag over his head to premieres said that during the #IAMSORRY show last year, a woman raped him while her boyfriend stood outside the door, and we all sort of went, ‘WHAT?’
‘[She] whipped my legs for 10 minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape me,’ Shia said in the *Dazed & Confused *interview. ‘There were hundreds of people in line when she walked out with dishevelled hair and smudged lipstick. It was no good, not just for me, but her man as well.’
READ MORE: Shia LeBeouf Claims He Was Raped During His Art Show
Perhaps we responded so because Shia’s currency tends to be that of the bizarre and the shocking, just to see what effect it will have on us all. But, it seems we’ve all learnt a valuable lesson today as Shia’s friends have come forward and confirmed the actor’s story.
Artists Luke Turner and Nasta Sade Ronkko, who worked on the exhibition with Shia, took to Twitter to clarify what actually took place on Valentine's Day show last year. ‘Nowhere did we state that people could do whatever they wanted to Shia during #IAMSORRY,’ wrote Luke. ‘As soon as we were aware of the incident starting to occur, we put a stop to it and ensured that the woman left.’
If Shia was a girl, we’d have taken this claim incredibly seriously and started looking into tracking down the rapist and serving out justice. And, the friends who have come out and confirmed that Shia was indeed raped, would surely have called the police and had the perpetrator arrested on the spot.
Piers Morgan questioned Turner on Twitter last night, asking why they had let an alleged rapist walk away. ‘It wasn’t clear at the time precisely what had happened, & the 1st priority was to ensure everybody’s safety in the gallery,’ Turner tweeted, before going on to say, ‘She ran out, rather than simply walking away. Beyond that, it’s not my place to comment.’
‘On top of that, my girl was in line to see me because it was Valentine’s Day and I was living in the gallery for the duration of the event – we were separated for five days, with no communication.’ Shia told Dazed & Confused. ‘So it really hurt her as well, as I guess the news of it travelled through the line. When she came in, she asked for an explanation and I couldn’t speak, so we both sat with this unexplained trauma, silently. It was painful.’
His girlfriend was there, and hundreds of other people, and the fact that nobody responded, and this woman is presumably still a member of the general public, says a lot about our attitudes to rape when the genders are reversed.
Around 3% of American men have experienced rape or sexual assault and yes, it's nowhere near the figures for the other way around, but that’s still a significant proportion. And one that means we need to start taking it more seriously, and bringing the perpertrators to account – regardless of how we perceive the victim or the rapist.
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Picture: Rex
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.