I always forget that Adam Horovitz – aka Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys – is actually from a wealthy family. He grew up on Park Avenue, and his father is the famous playwright Israel Horovitz. On Thursday, the New York Times published yet another devastating article about a powerful man who abused his power by harassing, assaulting and raping women. This time, the New York Times wrote about Israel Horovitz. Apparently, Israel Horovitz – who is currently 78-years-old – is being accused of raping and assaulting nine women, all of whom went on the record with the Times. You can read the NYT piece here.
Several of the women were just teenagers when a then-40/50-something Horovitz assaulted them, harassed them or raped them. One of those women was his son’s first girlfriend Jocelyn Meinhardt. The NY Times says that within the theater community, Israel Horovitz’s behavior has long been the subject of rumors and whispers, and back in 1993, the Boston Phoenix did a story about ten women accusing Horovitz of misconduct, assault and harassment. Israel Horovitz released a statement to the Times saying:
“[While I have] a different memory of some of these events, I apologize with all my heart to any woman who has ever felt compromised by my actions, and to my family and friends who have put their trust in me. To hear that I have caused pain is profoundly upsetting, as is the idea that I might have crossed a line with anyone who considered me a mentor.”
What’s interesting is that the Times also contacted Ad-Rock to see if he had any comment. He did. And wow, Ad-Rock is here for women. Adam told the Times: “I believe the allegations against my father are true, and I stand behind the women that made them.” Can I just say? I appreciate Ad-Rock’s statement so much. It must be devastating – as we’ve seen over and over again – for people to see their loved ones, their family members, their close friends and colleagues accused of these kinds of heinous acts. Many of those periphery loved ones don’t know what to do, so they go into denial, or attack the victims, or try to do damage control for the predators. But not Ad-Rock. He believes the women.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
He’s married to Kathleen Hanna and she.is.awesome. so i’m not surprised he’s here for women.
They are my favorite couple. He recently designed a shoe with all proceeds going to Planned Parenthood. Love him!
I’m so tired of the “I remember the events differently” excuse.
Bravo to Ad Rock.
@ BlueSky
There is an infamous study that was conducted on college-aged men, wherein a lot of them will admit to committing rape if the researchers called it anything but. What this tells us is that many people commit this kind of heinous crime and spin all kinds of justifications in their head to call themselves something other than “rapist”.
I fully believe these perpetrators remember things differently and that’s a huge problem. Everyone thinks they’re the good guy.
@ I Need a Nap:
not sure when the study was done, but I do recall an episode of LA Law (I know, I know) where this exact thing happened. Susan Dey’s character was defending a guy accused of rape and he was just completely confused as to how the accuser could call it rape. passed a lie detector, etc…but when Dey’s character was questioning him and letting him describe in exact detail what happened, she realized that he HAD raped the woman, but the guy didn’t see what had transpired as rape. like the details that both remembered were similar, but the victim felt like she was forced and the rapist felt like she was into it.
it was a great episode…Dey’s character really believed the guy was innocent until she heard him describe what he had done. he was clearly thinking the whole time he was describing it that he had engaged in consensual sex and you could see the realization her face when she realized that he TRULY believed that he hadn’t raped this woman when he actually had.
@whatWHAT?
That is exactly the problem. Most of these guys either don’t see what they’re doing as rape (particularly in the “she was drunk, but didn’t say no, didn’t say yes” stage), OR they don’t see the inherent power structure that is built against women and has been for centuries. Most would see nothing wrong with “flirting” (which can actually be problematic flirting OR is sexual harassment) with a subordinate woman at work……
……..most have no idea what it is to be a woman, period. I do not consider myself any kind of a victim, have never been harassed or grabbed, etc……but I am still scared to walk down the street after dark in my small town where everyone knows everyone. And I still move away from 99% of guys (unless they are super old) when I go for walks on the trail that leads into the woods behind my house……that isn’t something I was taught or started doing due to past experiences. That is what I do, period.
I love Ad-Rock and I adore him even more for this, but man, the bar is set so low that even one man saying “I believe the women” is huge. We have a long, long way to go.
Agreed, but I’ll give him more credit since he’s going against his own father by saying this.
I actually don’t think it is. I don’t know how close he is to his dad, but if they are close, it is a huge emotional thing to go against family. So major props to him.
Was just going to comment the same thing. He’s awesome and a true friend of woman.
I’m so glad. I love him. He’s always seemed like a solid feminist ally. Plus, he’s married to Kathleen Hanna.
I wish more male feminists responded this way.
As it should be. We have such a long way to go. The Franken debacle showed us how little “I believe women” means to so many so called feminists.
If a woman comes forward you believe her. End of story.
Really? That surprises me. Seems like everyone (at least on this site) believed his accuser right away.
I’ve seen a lot of liberals and feminists say they believe his accusers, but then launch straight from that into defending him anyway because he’s on the right side, because we need him, because it wasn’t as bad as Weinstein (getting real sick of that constant comparison, as if anything less than raping and assaulting hundreds of women is not that serious).
It’s deeply disappointing, but it doesn’t surprise me. Watching people tip-toe around Bill Clinton’s many issues for decades now has left me with no illusions as to the willingness of my side to take our predators and sleazebags to task.
Thats not true. So many people tried to poke holes into it. Trying to say she is a conservative wing nut and trying to discredit her.
And like Jussie said, a lot of the ones who believed the woman were like “Alright, but we’ll let this pass because we rather side with the white man”. You personally got called out for that, too.
Excuse me? I don’t recall getting “called out” by anyone. I also never said for one second that I didn’t believe his accuser. In fact I said what he did to her was disgusting and inexcusable. Seems like you’re confusing me with someone else but if I’m mistaken, please do feel free to revisit that thread and link to where I said otherwise.
Yes there were people here saying that it might be a hit job but I certainly wasn’t one of them.
I’ve been posting along side Kitten for years now.
I have never seen her excuse ANY man accused of assault, cheating or other general douchebag behavior.
QueenB: “Alright, but we’ll let this pass because we rather side with the white man.”
I have been posting here for over a decade and I guarantee you this has not been said, most especially not by Kitten. Not this week, not this year.
Thanks Nicole and Esmom ❤
I dont know if you will see this because it keeps getting deleted. Wohever is doing that: Kitten wanted to see the posts where she said it:
Look I am not going through all the Franken posts but you agreed with a poster that basically wrote that the first woman accusing Franken wasnt trustworthy because she is a republican and you also wrote:
“I got flamed on this thread yesterday but if I’m being honest with all of my C/B pals I have to admit that I’m really struggling with this.”
or
“OR we could let the investigation play out before we officially tank the career of a guy who has been a great asset for the Dem party and who up to this point, has never been accused of any improprieties.”
You could have also simply written that you believe that woman.
.
lol I love how you completely ignored this part of my comment:
Kitten says:
November 17, 2017 at 11:03 am
“She was on one of the morning talk shows (GMA I think?) and not that she has any obligation to “come off well” but FWIW, she did. Everything she said made sense to me. That picture Franken took was humiliating and disgusting. The shame and embarrassment and just….disgust she felt in her interactions with him is something no one deserves to go through.”
But yeah I took issue with the right wing talking point that Roy Moore’s nomination is legit because, Al Franken and I stand by that. And no, I don’t support binary thinking or false equivalencies because they’re toxic AF. I 100% believe Franken’s accuser but in no way do I think that’s the same as pedophilia and anyone who says otherwise is literally a puppet for RW propaganda, whether they’re aware of it or not. In short, take your personal attack elsewhere because I’m not here for it.
Claps for Kitten
Yeah that was sad.
She is a right wing conservative, so what? She is a human being first, and no one deserves to be assaulted.
If anyone thinks she deserved it or can excuse it, how are they different than a frat-bro MRA response?
I love him. Wouldn’t expect any less from him.
+1
Oh my god. The MRA types are not here for Adam believing women over his dad.
THIS. IS. HOW. YOU. ALLY. MEN. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
THIS. THIS. THIS.
Love him. Apparently he’s known for a long time that his dad is a rapist so the NYT story isn’t a shock to him, I’m sure.
I have a friend who dated the other Adam in the Beastie Boys back in the day. She always said Ad-Rock was an awesome guy. Glad to see him standing up for the victims.
Glad to hear it. The Beasties and The Roots were my first concert (without parental supervision) at age 15 so they’ll always have a special place in my heart.
But then this is different, isn’t it? He knew what his dad did, it wasn’t a shock to him. Major props to him for saying what he said, but his situation is different. I wonder if he would say the same thing if he was super close to his dad and had no idea what his dad did.
If your dad raped your girlfriend, I doubt you’d have no idea how your dad is or that you’d want to be very close to him after that. You can mend part of the relationship throughout the years, but you’d most likely never be close again.
That’s what meant. His situation is not the same as some other family members.
I am also sure he knows more about his father’s behavior than we do. And they may have different family dynamics. Plus. we don’t even know what kind of relationship they have. Hence his decision to publicly not support him.
and this is how its done.
Damn. Not even an “I’m shocked…” before he stated his belief. That’s admirable but very sad. That tells me he had and has no reason to doubt his father is awful. That’s a hell of a thing.
Ad-Rock is pretty kickass, honestly. He’s married to a feminist activist, and all three of the Beastie Boys have been active in causes important to them. Adam Yauch apologized for old lyrics that they wrote that he later deemed offensive. After his death a park was renamed Adam Yauch park – and because we can’t have nice things, people of course vandalized it with swastikas.
Adam Yauch was a favorite and passionate about peace and humanity. It wasn’t a quotation marks belief for him. He had profound feelings about bringing peace and justice to Muslims and as sad as it is to say I am glad he is not around to see what is happening in this country right now. It would break his heart I am sure. He is one the reasons my husband got into Buddhism. We were devastated when Go Trump and swastikas defaced his memorial park.
That’s so sad. He was my favorite as well. What’s wrong with people? Ugh.
I can’t stand the way these men start with ‘while i dont recall, or i have a different memory, or as far as i know it was consensual.’ SICKENING!
Yeah this “I have a different memory than X does of the events” is getting really old, really fast. It is sickening. Bravo to Adam.
Right? It always comes with weak-ass excuses.
It’s the “uh oh, I’m caught and need to make a statement, but don’t want to admit to any crimes” excuse.
Especially this one, where he has a different memory of SOME of the events. So he remembers some of them as rapes/assaults, but those others? Okay, dude…
Thank you, Adam.
Israel just resigned from the Gloucester Stage Company board instead of attending a meeting to answer the allegations. The Company canceled a production of his new play scheduled for next summer.
This is how you do it (looking at you Lena Dunham)!!!
What an ally!
Rock on Beastie. What a brain cleanse. Our wedding party danced into reception to Brass Monkey.
Brass Monkey! Love it. And Sabotage is still, imo, one of the best videos ever. My middle school years also revolved around Fight for Your Right To Party! BB were simply awesome, and their charitable work was/is something to be admired. I’m so happy to have Adam as an ally.
Awesome. I take a little pride in turning my kids’ high school athletic team onto the Beasties last year. I did an end of season slide show and included my favorite music and everyone was rocking out to Intergalactic, lol.
not gonna lie, i needed this. all these stories are triggering and difficult to hear. its nice to have one brief tiny moment of respite in the form of a man who stands in solidarity even when the perpetrator is his own father.
I’m guessing he was not blindsided by this news, but either way, bravo to him for firmly standing on the right side of this.
My first thought when I read his statement was “Wow, that’s amazing. I applaud him for standing with the victims.” My second thought was, “This was not a surprise to him. He has known his father was an awful human being for some time.” And I truly understand that. My father is an awful human being as well. If someone came up to me and said he had done something heinous I would believe them too. So bravo to him and also my sincere understanding and sympathy for having a garbage human as a parent.
Yeah, that’s the part of it that actually made me a little sad for him. I mean, clearly the majority of my sympathy is for his father’s victims, but I can’t imagine what he’s been subjected to in his family life that he wouldn’t hesitate to believe the claims.
I have always liked beastie boys. Thank you for your support for the victims, Ad Rock.
And this is why to this day he is KING AD ROCK. My crush on him since 7th grade is validated. Love him.
That’s what I came to say, he really is the King Ad-Rock! Love him, and I love that he spoke up for women even against his own father. But I’ve loved all the Beastie Boys since forever and I still miss MCA. Such good guys.
He is not from a wealthy family, and did not grow up on Park Avenue. He grew up downtown (Village) and went to NYC public schools. UMC, not wealthy.
No, the Horovitzes were wealthy. His dad made tons of money from those plays. Townhouses in Greenwich Village are some of the priciest real estate in NYC. Downtown does not equal cheap. (It’s true that at the time of purchase, the townhouse would have been more reasonable than currently.) They also had a house in Gloucester – also pricey.
Mike D was also wealthy. He grew up on Central Park West in a big apartment overlooking Central Park. His father was an art dealer. A few years ago, his mother sold off some of their artwork for over $100 million, and that was only a portion of their collection, which included a lot of Old Master paintings.
Adam Yauch is the only Beastie Boy who *maybe* could have been considered upper middle class. His father was an architect and he grew up in a townhouse in Brooklyn Heights. These days, that would be wealthy, but in the 60s and 70s, you could still call that UMC.
Agree with everything re: Mike D and MCA. But I always thought that Ad-Rock’s parents divorced, he lived with his mom in basically rent stabilized or rent controlled artists’ housing. And you’d be surprised at the number of playwrights who can barely eek out a living! I know he didn’t go to private school, which is what most wealthy NYCers do, esp back then. I think his mom died young of liver disease. Anyway, I wish that MCA were still alive, I miss everything about the Beastie Boys.
No, Israel Horovitz’s plays are produced regularly all over the world. (In France, his plays have been produced more than any other playwright’s ever.) And some of them have been made into movies and been on Broadway. He’s got serious money.
Adam bounced around to various schools, some public and some private. I think that’s because he was a poor student. By comparison, his little brother went to Harvard and caddied for rich people during the summers. His younger siblings have both had their BS art projects produced because of nepotism. I would put the Horovitzes at precisely the same socio-economic level as Lena Dunham’s family.
Adam’s mother and father divorced when he was just a baby – so mid-1960’s. If she was living rent-controlled, I would say that’s probably because she got a crappy divorce deal and because Israel had yet to achieve the bulk of his success.
Thank you for the info Fanny! What you are saying makes sense. Nice chatting with you.
I’m so tired of these men and their “I remember it differently” statements.
Of course you remember it differently! You were not the person who was assaulted. You were not the person who was vulnerable. You were not the person who was scared and subjected to abuse.
Stop with the “I remember it differently.” You remember it differently, because you were not the victim.
He’s also hiding behind the fact that some of the accusations are from the 80’s and 90’s. His memory should have been pretty good back in 1993 when detailed information about his assaults on 10 women were published in the Boston Herald. (The writer of the original articles has reproduced them online – they can be found via Google News.)
The pig who ran the Gloucester Stage Company at the time said nothing legally qualified as sexual harassment, that the women were “tightly wound” and that they were “throwing around accusations like manhole covers” because they were upset that a friend of theirs, a female, had been fired from a leadership position at GTC. Disgusting.
And because nobody did anything in 1993, Horovitz was allowed to continue doing this for another 24 years.
This is what happens when men marry cool women. Kathleen Hanna matches Adam Horovitz, and she will always be one of the most important voices of the Riot Grrrl movement. 3rd wave feminists and I love the music still.
Wow. He is awesome. The Beastie Boys are so phenomenal still because the band transcended their personal characters. And boy, he Adam has a strong character. No wiggling around, no yes, but this is not the person I know crap most relatives, friends and colleagues go for when someone they know is accused of sex crimes. It does not take much time to learn that people are complex beings and being a good person to some does not mean you may not become a monster aroud others.
I hope that as a society we start to understand the rape culture that is embedded in this society we live in. One that makes men rape and not even know they were doing so. One were men have never realized that their actions have caused violation and suffering. There needs to be a massive wakeup in our world around how we teach males to be sexually dominant and what consent means and looks like for everyone.
I once saw a thread on reddit about something like “have you ever raped anyone?” and there were just so many stories from guys who had no idea they were raping someone. And reading their detailed stories, the rape aspect seemed so obvious to me. There was one where the guy said it wasn’t until he was finishing and looked at the girl’s face for the first time that he realized she was terrified, and didn’t want to be having sex with him. That was so revealing. Like really? You didn’t once look at her face until you were done? That whole thread was a sad, rage inducing, disheartening read that really drove home how deeply entrenched rape culture is, and how damaging it is that we don’t call it that.
So he believes women and believes his dad is a rapist but what’s his relationship with his dad? Does it bother him he’s a rapist? That’s what I want to know (especially if his own girlfriend was among the victims, geez).
I’m very curious about that too. I think he’s always been close to his dad and he and Kathleen posed for photos with him at an event honoring him and they all looked happy and close. That was in the mid-2000’s But the original accusations were published in 1993 and that probably did not escape the attention of the Horovitz family.
We’ll probably never know. I only found out that he and Kathleen had a son when the kid was already a toddler and that’s still all I know about it.
They had a son? Where did you read that? I can’t find any information about it!
I was struck by the photo of them together, before I even read the article. At first brush, it’s a photo of a father with his arm around his son — BUT! The father’s arm is pulled tight toward his son’s neck, and his hand is in a fist. Tension and playing alpha to a high degree. If this is how my date interacted with me, there would be no future date.
Ozogirl, a couple of years ago there were some photos somebody posted on Facebook of Adam pushing a toddler in a stroller. The person said it looked like it was his own kid. When Adam was out promoting his role in the Noah Baumbach movie, one of the articles state t hat he and Kathleen now have a son, but there is literally zero other information I have been able to find.
@Infjay, if you google image them, there’s a lot of pictures with the same posing in different instances. Israel with the fist, Adam with his hand like that. I wonder if it’s some signature or inner joke or something?
Adrock is an example of someone who can change with age, open mindedness and a willingness to grow. Just think of how he (along with Mike and MCA) acted in the 80’s and early 90’s and how much he changed in the late 90’s and beyond. I just love them and I still miss MCA!!!
It’s refreshing how blunt Adam’s statement is. So many people offer support in a grudging way; they qualify it. Many do the same with apologies. It’s almost shocking to read something so straightforward, so unequivocal.
I briefly met him and his brother Matt many, many years ago and they seemed like stand up guys. I don’t know about his current relationship with his father but he always talked a lot about his mother in interviews. She raised him and died when he was a teenager, I think.
I doubt this news was sprung on him. I’m sure the woman who was his high school girlfriend spoke to him. Prior to that he probably knew his father was a womanising creep but not the extent of his behaviour. I can’t judge him for that. It’s really hard to cut the cord with family members, even when they’re shitty – I speak from experience.
Also BRYAN SINGER may finally be in real trouble. They’ve shut down production on the Queen biopic because he went missing. Now his reps are saying it’s a health matter, which is BS.
A big story must be coming. I don’t think his team are going to bribe and bully their way out of a reckoning this time.
I thought that as well, but then I learned that he’s pulled the same stunt in other movies, including X-Men Apocalypse and Superman Returns. So while there surely is a story on him coming, apparently the guy tends to disappear for days from his sets, arrives late, etc. He probably has a “health” issue (I bet it starts with a and ends in ddiction).
He used to go awol (he did this in Australia on Superman Returns, back in the day) but it’s different this time. Public statements are being made, studio exercising force majeure on people’s contracts … they aren’t covering for him like they used to.
His scummy publicist Simon Halls, Matt Bomer’s husband, is gone. Halls did the same thing to his other client Brett Ratner recently. Lawyer Marty Singer seems to be the only one left.
I agree he has a drug problem and he’s gone on a bender again. But I think it’s because Spacey has gone down, Goddard has gone down, and he knows a big story is dropping soon.
Love love love Adam H.
Also: I miss the Beastie Boys so much it hurts, and one of my biggest regrets is being too young to go to Woodstock 99 with my brother and sister to see them perform.