Crisis Pr In The Hollywood Sexual Abuse Summary

Mini-Lit Review: Crisis PR in the Hollywood Sexual Abuse Scandals

The ongoing sexual harassment scandals that have been occurring in Hollywood has quickly unfolded into a chain reaction, with more accusations coming to light each day. Allegations against Harvey Weinstein, a famed movie producer and film studio executive, started these discussions, with social media users coining the situation “The Weinstein Effect”. Celebrities involved in the scandal all have different approaches to tackling their responses. Many social media users actively voiced their opinion on how Weinstein and his company are handling the scandal. From a public relations standpoint, how it was handled was considered disastrous by most experts. Upon researching crisis

The Roman Catholic Church of Ireland is considered a prime example of how officials handled everything completely wrong. In “Clerical Child Sex Abuse: The Response of the Roman Catholic Church”, Elizabeth Dunne examines the pros and cons of how Church officials used bribes, threats, and lies to avoid repercussions from both the media and the law during a sexual abuse crisis where priests were attacking children. When these allegations broke to the media, officials responded, but used extremely vague statements to place the blame on others instead of themselves. “The sexual abuse of children by priests is an especially grave and repugnant sin. To all victims of such abuse, to their families and to their parish communities, we again offer our profound apologies” (Dunne 8). The church seemed to be making a statement about child sex abuse cases instead of admitting that they were involved in such a case. Dunne states that “scapegoating” was a heavily used tactic in this crisis case. Church officials placed the blame on everyone but themselves, bribing and threatening the victims with money to keep quiet in private while publicly stating their obliviousness to the attacks. Dunne firmly states that this is a poor example of a crisis PR tactic. She claims that if the Church was proactive in their apologizes and committed to helping the victims, the Church’s reputation would not have been completely