Actor James Franco has reached an agreement to close a lawsuit for sexual misconduct for which he will have to pay 2.3 million dollars (more than 1.9 million euros) to the victims, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter newspaper.
The agreement was presented on Wednesday, June 30 in a court in Los Angeles, California, where it will have to receive the approval before finishing closing a case in which a group of students denounced that Franco took sexual advantage of the students who attended to his acting classes at Studio 4 school.
The lawsuit was initially filed in 2019 by Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, who signed up for their classes in 2014 and claimed that Franco taught lessons on sex scenes that consisted of “simulations of sexual acts that went far beyond the standards of the industry".
As an example, the students indicated that Franco promoted the alleged filming of an orgy in which he removed the plastic protections that covered the women's vaginas before simulating oral sex.
In addition, the actor approached young women promising jobs in Hollywood projects that never materialized.
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Tither-Kaplan and Gaal will receive a third of the 1.9 million, which will be shared with their lawyers, while the rest of the money will be given to the group of students affected by the behavior of Franco and his partners.
“While the defendants continue to deny the allegations, they acknowledge that the plaintiffs have raised important issues;
and all parties strongly believe that now is a critical time to address the mistreatment of women in Hollywood, ”the documents indicate.
The settlement will require Tither-Kaplan and Gaal to drop their allegations of sexual misconduct and also require the rest of the students to drop their fraud claims.
The controversy surrounding Franco began at the 2018 Golden Globes, where the actor won the award for best actor in a comedy for
The Disaster Artist
(2017) and on whose red carpet he paraded with a pin from the Time's Up movement, created by actresses, directors and producers and whose purpose is to give visibility to women victims of sexual harassment. During the ceremony, several actresses charged on social networks against the alleged hypocrisy of James Franco for wearing one of those badges, since they assured that he was responsible for episodes of sexual abuse in the past.
Those Golden Globes were the first awards to be held after the feminist push against sexual assault by the #
MeToo
movement
and practically all the attendees wore black to show their rejection of machismo.
Days after the Golden Globes controversy, the actor wanted to respond to those accusations in an interview with Stephen Colbert on the late night show The Late Show.
“The things that I have heard that are on Twitter are not accurate, but I fully support that people go out and be able to have a voice because they did not have a voice for a long time (...) The way I live my life, I cannot live if there is a pending compensation (...) If I have done something wrong, I will fix it.
I have to do it, ”he said.