Barbra Streisand said she's never suffered sexual harassment but has felt abused by the media.
During a tribute to Streisand's decades of TV music specials and other programs, producer and long-time admirer Ryan Murphy queried her about her career, the #MeToo movement and her aversion to interviews.
In this Oct. 11, 2012, file photo, singer Barbra Streisand performs at the Barclays Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York. During a Friday, March 16, 2018 tribute to her decades of TV music specials and other programs, Streisand said she's never suffered sexual harassment but has felt abused by the media. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
"Never," she replied when asked if she had been sexually mistreated. "I wasn't like those pretty girls with those nice little noses. Maybe that's why."
She acknowledged the power of protests against gender inequality sweeping through Hollywood and society.
"We're in a strange time now in terms of men and women and the pendulum swinging this way and that way, and it's going to have to come to the center," Streisand said during Friday's Paley Center for Media event held at a packed theater.
Her reluctance to talk to news outlets is based on years of what she called inaccurate reporting, including one story that claimed she has an "awards room" at home dedicated to her Oscars, Emmys and other trophies. But it was the late TV journalist Mike Wallace who came in for the sharpest criticism.
In this June 12, 2016, file photo, Barbra Streisand presents the award for best musical at the Tony Awards at the Beacon Theatre in New York. During a Friday, March 16, 2018 tribute to her decades of TV music specials and other programs, Streisand said she's never suffered sexual harassment but has felt abused by the media. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
Streisand said that when she was a young star (and before Wallace joined "60 Minutes"), he asked her hurtful questions during a TV interview and she called him afterward to complain. But on a subsequent show, Wallace told viewers who'd objected to his treatment of Streisand that she "loved" the interview, according to the star.
"I thought, I don't know what date rape is, it's terrible ... but it was such a violation," she said. "Why lie?"
Streisand said she demands control in her work but only in service to her art that's included directing, acting and producing TV movies, among them 1995's "Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story," about anti-gay discrimination in the military.
Murphy ("Glee," ''American Horror Story"), who admitted to being nervous as he began his one-on-one conversation with the star of "Funny Girl" and award-winning TV specials dating back to 1966's "Color Me Barbra," said he owed his career to her.
"People talk about Barbra as the greatest female star. I say, no, that's not enough," Murphy said, calling her a groundbreaker for those who don't fit the mold. "She was a touchstone, a beacon I followed my entire life.
The tribute, which kicked off the 35th annual PaleyFest LA television festival at the Dolby Theatre, was capped by the presentation to Streisand of the 2018 PaleyFest Icon award.
Streisand is a "truly magical artist," Maureen J. Reidy, Paley Center president and CEO, said of her work as a singer, actress, director and producer.
Streisand also is known for her political activism on behalf of Democratic candidates and issues including gay rights.
BUNEOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — An Argentine judge on Friday ruled that 20 cloistered nuns had suffered abuse for more than two decades at the hands of high-ranking clergy in the country's conservative north, and ordered the accused archbishop and church officials to undergo psychological treatment and training in gender discrimination.
The ruling in the homeland of Pope Francis cast a spotlight on the long-standing of abuse of nuns by priests and bishops in the Catholic Church.
Though long overshadowed by other church scandals, such abuses in religious life are increasingly being aired and denounced as a result of nuns feeling emboldened by the #MeToo movement, which has a corollary in the church, #NunsToo.
“I conclude and affirm that the nuns have suffered acts of gender violence religiously, physically, psychologically and economically for more than 20 years,” Judge Carolina Cáceres said in the ruling from Salta in northwestern Argentina.
She also ordered the verdict be conveyed to Francis.
The four accused clergy members have denied committing any violence. The archbishop's lawyer, Eduardo Romani, dismissed Friday’s ruling as baseless and vowed to appeal. Still, he said, the archbishop would abide by the order to receive treatment and anti-discrimination training through a local NGO “whether or not he agrees with its basis.”
The nuns' lawyer hailed the verdict as unprecedented in Argentina in recognizing the plaintiffs' plight and the deeper problem of gender discrimination.
“It shatters the ‘status quo’ because it targets a person with a great deal of power,” said José Viola, the lawyer.
In recent years, several prominent cases have emerged involving nuns, laywomen or consecrated women denouncing spiritual, psychological, physical or sexual abuse by once-exalted priests.
But complaints have largely fallen on deaf ears at the Vatican and in the rigid all-male hierarchy at the local level in Argentina, apparently prompting the nuns in Salta to seek remedy in the secular justice system. A similar dynamic played out when the clergy abuse of minors scandal first erupted decades ago and victims turned to the courts because of inaction by church authorities.
The 20 nuns from the reclusive order of Discalced Carmelites at San Bernardo Monastery — dedicated to solitude, silence and daily contemplative prayer — brought their case forward in 2022, sending shockwaves through conservative Salta.
Their complaints cited a range of mistreatment including verbal insults, threats, humiliation and physical — although not sexual — assault.
The nuns describe archbishop Mario Cargnello as grabbing, slapping and shaking women. At one point, they said, Cargnello squeezed the lips of a nun to silence her. At another, he pounced on a nun, striking her as he struggled to snatch a camera from her hands. They also accused Cargello of borrowing nuns' money without paying them back.
Cáceres, the judge, described the instances as “physical and psychological gender violence."
Associated Press writers Nicole Winfield in Rome and Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.
FILE - Women gather round the San Bernardo Convent in support of the convent’s cloistered nuns who accused the Archbishop of Salta Mario Antonio Cargnello and other church officials of gender-based psychological and physical violence, in Salta, Argentina, May 3, 2022. An Argentine court ruled on Thursday, April 4, 2024, that Cargnello and three other church officials committed different forms of violence against the cloistered nuns of the convent. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)
