She won’t be sued for defamation going on AMCs record in an internal investigation. That isn’t how this works. Or she might be sued, but she could be sued now. AMC will have other “witnesses” - her mother, for instance. Mutual friends of the former couple who will talk about what they saw when they were together. Or what each had said about the other at the time.
And if I were Hardwick, I wouldn’t go near suing her with a ten foot pole. His hope in this situation is that it blows over and that it gets framed as a misunderstanding…and if he continues to be perceived as a bully by suing her, he will continue to be unemployable for that much longer. But I hear he married VERY well, so he might not care about that. In fact, he might not care about his career at all. At the same time, its unlikely that his relationship with Chloe was perfect - even if it wasn’t the nightmare she describes - and he might not want his wife to hear all the details that might come out in court.
I really suspect Chris Hardwick is a contractor with AMC, and he’s a contractor at Comic Con - he isn’t anyone’s “employee” I’m sure his contracts with each organization allow them to make changes as they see fit (as such, I doubt HR will take care of the investigation, my guess is that it will be an external firm that specializes in this sort of thing.)
Because for her, who was not the important thing, the important thing for her own mental health was to talk about what happened. To break silence over the acts, not the person. Which is common when someone has been abused. I don’t talk about my rapist - that gives him power over me and he really isn’t a focus or worth my time or mental energy. I have talked about the rape.
(ETA: Believe it or not guys, men are not the center of everything. Sometimes we do things that have no relation to you at all).
Some of the back and forth I see is from confusing these different positions:
What she wrote is false and did not happen. The events did not occur at all.
The underlying facts and events in her story are true, but they do not rise to the level that I would consider abuse.
What she wrote is true and is abuse.
My position is #2, where I believe the events happened, but I wouldn’t categorize it as abuse. He’s certainly no saint, but I see this more as assholish/doucheness behavior. I also think that she is recalling the events with a negative bias. It’s like if you ask your kids to empty the dishwasher, and they say you’re the worst parent in the world and you’re treating them like a slave.
For example, this statement from her:
This kind of thing happens to all kinds of people in all kinds of relationships. I know it’s common for women to make the similar request of the men that they are dating. How would she feel if Chris had pictures of women all over his apartment and did best-friend stuff with women? She may not have liked that request, but it’s her choice to go along with it. But from her writing, it sounds like she felt he was forcing her to cut off all ties with other people and she had no other choice. But she could have left if she didn’t like it. I’m not seeing the manipulation or control from him that would make it rise to the level of abuse.
I thought the article was a discussion of the sorts of things that are precursors to abuse–or at least a deeply toxic relationship–and how they can sneak up on you. That’s what a lot of abusers do: it’s a bunch of shit, each piece of which can be rationalized or tolerated, but when taken together demonstrate an unhealthy, manipulative, toxic situation. Often (but not always), once you are in that sort of situation, it can move to more explicit, inarguable abuse but you’re so unbalanced and used to rationalizing that you don’t have a sense that this is not acceptable.
As folks have pointed out in other threads this isn’t true. As described it literally could not be anyone else, which is why we are talking about him by name and why he has bothered to push back. Not naming names in this case is zero defense against a defamation lawsuit.
So, no - that isn’t the reason she didn’t call him out by name.
Her “case” isn’t with him. The article isn’t about him. It’s about her, and the things that happened to her, and the mistakes she made and the things she wishes she’d done differently. She didn’t write it to tell the world about him; she was writing about herself and her own experiences.
Because they figured out he was the one being described( since it was blindingly obvious )and deciding it was bad optics to keep him on air, proceeded to suspend him presumably pending an investigation. I highly doubt Dykstra requested AMC do anything, her story just led to consequences.
AMC is covering its ass. Prior to his actual suspension there was already reports that the company was under intense pressure. Apparently the publicity reps for various celebrities were lighting up the phones saying their clients were uneasy about appearing even on the already taped episodes. At the very least they wanted a delay and investigation. So that is what AMC did.
No, I mean it was a clever tactic. If I believe this poster’s story (whom I don’t know) about being raped, why don’t I accept Chloe’s story at face value? I guess one important difference is that I can interact with people on this forum, where I can’t interact with Chloe. Some parts of her story just don’t add up for me. But point made.
Add in the ass covering of "if this guy is really an asshole, and we ignore it, and he sexually harasses one of our staff - we have exposure. Part of the investigation will be interviewing their employees and discovering if he’s made people uncomfortable…if they discover he’s always been professional around the staff, that will get recorded and they may consider bringing him back (depending on how it blows over). If they discover he has a tendency to refer to the production assistants as “babe” and women avoid standing too close because he can be “handsy” - he is too much of a liability to bring back ever.
By the way, I was out with some of my convention running, deep into fandom female friends. Some of us liked Chris Hardwick from what we saw of him. Others of us thought he seemed rather ‘dudebro’ and one of us said he always struck us as a ‘fake geek guy.’ I laughed.
Thank you. It was long ago. It was a work situation - and part of the reason that I don’t work any longer is due to the anxiety attacks and PSTD related to that. So yeah, its been almost 30 years and I haven’t really “come to terms” with it. And its part of the reason I know how these investigations tend to work from an up close and personal. During the past 30 years, I’ve kind of kept involved with the harassment victims community and news (I worked a rape line, but that’s too much for me). There were no criminal charges - but its significantly changed my own life.
I also know first hand how much people will try and gag the victim and make excuses for the predator.
Because that’s what they made it about–because from the perspective of their business and their brand, that’s what is relevant. But’s it’s not what is relevant to her and it’s not the reason she wrote the story: by all appearances, at least, she didn’t do this to affect his life at all; she did it to talk about her own experiences and the things she learned.