5 AREA MEN ORDERED TO TRIAL ON RAPE CHARGES.Byline: Associated Press A former ABC-TV casting director and four other men were ordered Thursday to stand trial on charges that they gang-raped an aspiring male actor. Municipal Court Judge Charles Rubin called the case ``strange, bizarre and weird'' at the conclusion of a four-week preliminary hearing as he ordered the defendants to trial. The Superior Court arraignment A criminal proceeding at which the defendant is officially called before a court of competent jurisdiction, informed of the offense charged in the complaint, information, indictment, or other charging document, and asked to enter a plea of guilty, not guilty, or as otherwise permitted was set for Jan. 9. Rubin threw out one count of kidnapping against each of the five defendants but ordered them held on charges of sodomy sodomy Noncoital carnal copulation. Sodomy is a crime in some jurisdictions. Some sodomy laws, particularly in Middle Eastern countries and those jurisdictions observing Shari'ah law, provide penalties as severe as life imprisonment for homosexual intercourse, even if the and oral copulation copulation /cop·u·la·tion/ (kop?u-la´shun) sexual union; the transfer of the sperm from male to female; usually applied to the mating process in nonhuman animals. cop·u·la·tion n. 1. . ``This is one of the most troubling cases I've had to deal with in many years,'' Rubin told ex-casting director Jerry Marshall, Fred Goss, Ken Dixon, Michael Sullivan and Osbourne Parker. The victim said Marshall invited him to his home Aug. 15, 1993, on the pretense of meeting other ABC ABC in full American Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. television network. It began when the expanding national radio network NBC split into the separate Red and Blue networks in 1928. executives. Once there, he allegedly was drugged, bound and gang-raped by Marshall and the other four men, who were not ABC employees, according to court records. The aspiring actor, who said he was a homosexual, later was driven in his own car to Beverly Hills and abandoned, according to prosecutors. Police found him in a drugged stupor stupor /stu·por/ (stoo´per) [L.] 1. a lowered level of consciousness. 2. in psychiatry, a disorder marked by reduced responsiveness.stu´porous stu·por n. . The man said he did not report the rape for several weeks because he did not suspect it had occurred until a drug dealer told him that there was a videotape. No videotape was produced during the preliminary hearing. However, prosecutor Mary Hanlon said there was ``enormous circumstantial evidence'' in the case. The aspiring actor earlier sued Marshall's former employer, Capital Cities/ABC Inc., for sexual harassment sexual harassment, in law, verbal or physical behavior of a sexual nature, aimed at a particular person or group of people, especially in the workplace or in academic or other institutional settings, that is actionable, as in tort or under equal-opportunity statutes. , seeking unspecified damages. A judge dismissed the case, but it was reinstated by a state appellate court A court having jurisdiction to review decisions of a trial-level or other lower court. An unsuccessful party in a lawsuit must file an appeal with an appellate court in order to have the decision reviewed. Nov. 8. The 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that, due to the wide scope of a casting director's duties, the corporation could be held liable even though the alleged attack occurred on a Sunday in a private home. Mark Johnson, a vice president of Capital Cities/ABC network communications, repeatedly has said the company wouldn't comment on the case. |
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