Jamie Lee Curtis said Eliza Dushku’s shocking confession about being molested as a child is a sobering reminder to everyone.
The longtime actress, who starred as Dushku’s character’s mom in “True Lies”, addressed Dushku’s allegations against stunt coordinator Joel Kramer in a new piece for The Huffington Post.
“Eliza’s story has now awakened us from our denial slumber to a new, horrific reality,” said Curtis. “The abuse of children.”
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Curtis said Dushku opened up to her about the alleged sexual abuse “privately a few years ago,” and that Curtis “was shocked and saddened then and still am today.” Dushku publicly accused Kramer on Jan. 13 of molesting her at age 12 in a Miami hotel room.
“I have pretended to be the mother of young actors for a long time,” continued Curtis. “Even at 19, when I was in the original ‘Halloween,’ I was the babysitter to then-child actor, Kyle Richards. After I hit the mom-in-movies age, I have pretended to be the mom of the future Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and have worked with numerous other young actors, including Macauley Culkin, Anna Chlumsky, and Lindsay Lohan.”
The Golden Globe-winning actress detailed the complex nature of working with children in film: “It is a complicated relationship working with children as they are being asked to do adult work with you in an adult field, surrounded by hundreds of adults who want them to perform for them, and yet are still inherently children. I have wrestled with my role as a mentor, colleague, surrogate, and friend, and each relationship is individual and unique. Are we really friends? Are we workmates? Children are not mature enough to recognize that subtle difference.”
Curtis acknowledged the “industry-wide legal protections for these young performers that have been long-held and hard-fought” and that “there are always teachers and advocates and adult family members or surrogates for the children on set and rigid rules that need to be followed,” she conceded, “Yet sadly, as with any rules, these are often broken.”
The actress next tackled the accusations against Kramer, saying “the stunt coordinator in question was literally in charge of our lives, our safety. Stunts always require an enormous amount of trust and on that movie, in particular, we all were often suspended by wires and harnesses, very high in the air.”
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“In my case, I was suspended under a helicopter by a wire,” she added. “Holding onto the hand of the man who is now being accused of abuse.”
Explaining, “Many of us involved in ‘True Lies’ were parents. Jim, Arnold and myself. Parents of daughters. What allegedly happened to Eliza, away from the safety net of all of us and our purview is a terrible, terrible thing to learn about and have to reconcile.”
“The truth will set us all free,” concluded Curtis. “Hopefully that freedom will bring a new ability to call out abuse and, when that abuse occurs, to have swift and consistent action, so that no one again will have to wait 25 years for their truth to be heard.”
