PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2018-06-12 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Was Robert De Niro Involved in a Child Sex Trafficking Ring? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • On 11 June 2018 a social media rumor spread that suggested actor Robert De Niro had been involved in a child sex trafficking ring: Clickbait sites often attach pedophilia charges to celebrities in the news to generate traffic, and in this case it was framed as the reason De Niro hated President Donald Trump. De Niro made headlines for remarks about the President delivered at the Tony Awards on 10 June 2018: By 12 June 2018, the pedophilia claim was virally popular on social media sites and forums. Trend-monitoring site Trendolizer flagged the rumor as having originated with the extremely dubious (and pedophilia-focused) Your News Wire: It appeared that De Niro's expletive-littered Tony Awards speech was the sole reason the story became popular, as the trending article was published in July 2017. It held that the actor was once linked to a prostitution ring that victimized children: On 11 June 2018, the True Pundit blog published an article with the headline Attorney Denies Robert De Niro Was Client of Prostitution Ring With Underage Girls; Police Interrogated Star for Nine Hours. Readers might have missed the post's first paragraphs: We travel back to 1998 and things get very interesting indeed... Actor Robert De Niro’s attorney denied his client’s involvement in an international prostitution ring. As the excerpt noted in its first few paragraphs, the referenced events were cited in court documents from 1998. Your News Wire linked to a 15 November 1998 Independent article about the prosecution of six individuals in Paris, none of whom were De Niro: De Niro was referenced as a possible client of the individuals being prosecuted — evidently because his name was mentioned by one of the girls — but he was mentioned only once in passing, with no additional details provided. News articles rarely mentioned him, and in June 1997 the Associated Press reported that the charges related primarily to pimping: In February 1998, the London Independent published statements made by the actor's lawyer about his questioning by French authorities: On 6 January 1999, the BBC reported a defendant in the case was convicted of procuring: Robert De Niro's June 2018 Tony Awards speech re-renewed interest in a 1997 and 1998 procuring prostitution case in France. Archived news items from 1997 and 1998 indicated that De Niro was questioned at length in early 1998 after his name was mentioned by one of the call girls, and the number of articles that remained accessible showed that the case did in fact receive extensive media attention and coverage... in 1998. None of the reporting indicated that De Niro was among the ring's clients, and although 2017 and 2018 rehashes of the case described a child sex ring, a BBC article reported that the youngest sex workers in the case were 15 and 16 years old. The age of consent in France is 15, but the word minors is used for anyone under the age of 18. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url