Comic admits to sexual misconduct as his career crumbles

Louis CK has admitted that the reports about his sexual misconduct  are true.

Five women went public with their stories last night, prompting a huge fallout as media companies distanced themselves from him.

Netflix cancelled a planned stand-up special, HBO dropped his shows from their on demand service and his new film, I Love You Daddy was pulled from release by distributors The Orchard and FX, which airs his shows such as Louie and Baskets said it was reviewing the situation.

Louis CK’s statement following the New York Times article that exposed him said:

These stories are true. At the time, I said to myself that what I did was O.K. because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. 

The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly. I have been remorseful of my actions. And I’ve tried to learn from them. And run from them. 

Now I’m aware of the extent of the impact of my actions. I learned yesterday the extent to which I left these women who admired me feeling badly about themselves and cautious around other men who would never have put them in that position. 

I also took advantage of the fact that I was widely admired in my and their community, which disabled them from sharing their story and brought hardship to them when they tried because people who look up to me didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t think that I was doing any of that because my position allowed me not to think about it. 

There is nothing about this that I forgive myself for. And I have to reconcile it with who I am. Which is nothing compared to the task I left them with. I wish I had reacted to their admiration of me by being a good example to them as a man and given them some guidance as a comedian, including because I admired their work.

The hardest regret to live with is what you’ve done to hurt someone else. And I can hardly wrap my head around the scope of hurt I brought on them.

 I’d be remiss to exclude the hurt that I’ve brought on people who I work with and have worked with who’s professional and personal lives have been impacted by all of this, including projects currently in production: the cast and crew of Better Things, Baskets, The Cops, One Mississippi, and I Love You, Daddy.

 I deeply regret that this has brought negative attention to my manager Dave Becky who only tried to mediate a situation that I caused. I’ve brought anguish and hardship to the people at FX who have given me so much The Orchard who took a chance on my movie. and every other entity that has bet on me through the years. I’ve brought pain to my family, my friends, my children and their mother.

I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen. Thank you for reading.

The women who spoke out were 

◦ Comedy duo Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov who revealed   that while they were hanging out in CK’s hotel room at the Aspen comedy festival in 2002, he ‘got completely naked, and started masturbating’. They said they were ‘paralysed’, screaming and laughing in shock.

◦ Comedian Abby Schachner revealed that when she called CK to invite him to one of her shows in 2003, she could hear him masturbating at the other end of the line as he started to describe his sexual fantasies.

◦ Comedy Central star Rebecca Corry, said that while she was appearing with Louis CK on a television pilot in 2005, he asked if her if ‘we could go to [Corry’s] dressing room so he could masturbate in front of her’. She declined.  

◦ An anonymous woman said that while they were both working on the Chris Rock Show in the late 1990s, where CK was a writer and producer, he repeatedly asked her to watch him masturbate. She said she agreed because of the ‘culture’ and the time, despite knowing it was wrong, adding: ‘He abused his power.’

Published: 10 Nov 2017