Letter: Kirby’s Morgan Freeman column shows he doesn’t get it
(Richard Shotwell | Invision | The Associated Press) In this Jan. 6, 2016, file photo, actor Morgan Freeman participates in the "The Story of God" panel at the National Geographic Channel 2016 Winter TCA in Pasadena, Calif. Freeman says he likes to compliment people to make them feel at ease around him but that he has never sexually assaulted women. The Academy Award-winning actor is fighting back against charges of bad behavior made by multiple women in a CNN report this week. He said in a statement late Friday, May 25, 2018, that the report has devastated him and that "it is not right to equate horrific incidents of sexual assault with misplaced compliments or humor."
By JJ Esplin | The Public Forum
| May 29, 2018, 8:30 p.m.
| Updated: 4:58 p.m.
In his May 27 column, Robert Kirby talks about Morgan Freeman’s fall resulting from the #MeToo movement and asks how we know he hasn’t been sexually harassed or assaulted.
True, but does he know what it is like to be subjected to sexual harassment from the time he hit puberty? To spend an entire life afraid to walk on dark streets because he might be raped while men do that freely? To have to put up with sexual harassment to keep a job he needs to feed his kids or to be harassed just for walking down the street — for his entire life? No, you don’t get it.
JJ Esplin, Salt Lake City