intelexualmedia
EARLY ACCESS: I Love The 90s: Scandals
Published: February 27th 2025, 8:09:25 pm
Let's talk about scandals from the 1990s. I wanted this video to be longer, but because Im juggling video editing with my usual duties, I had to trim some fat (including the two segments listed below). I still hope you enjoy early access to this video, which won't become public until tomorrow afternoon!
1991: Chuck Robb's Massages
Former Virginia governor and then-Senator Chuck Robb had been married to Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter Lynda since 1967. A moderate democrat who had diversified the Virginia bureaucracy with women and minorities, Robb was also one of the few democrats to support Operation Desert Storm and confirm Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. In April 1991, he came out and said he shared champagne and received a massage from former Ms. Virginia Tai Collins. There were whispers that he had attended Virginia Beach parties where people did cocaine. He said, “I’ve clearly placed myself in circumstances a couple of times that I would describe as appropriate for a bachelor, inappropriate for a happily married man.”
Robb’s 1991 worsened when Governor Douglas Wilder, whom he had been in a feuding frenemyship with since the early 80s, accused him of having someone wiretap his phone calls. Three of Robb’s aides resigned. At least five men connected to Rob would be convicted of wiretapping and/or passing recorded calls to Robb’s aides.
Tai Collins stepped into the spotlight with ease, appearing on the October 1991 issue of Playboy, rejecting Robb’s polite massage story. She told the magazine, ”I’m 20 years old, the governor is taking me out – that’s exciting! I was just like, wow! I know I was not supposed to have an affair with a married man, but I’m human, too. I take responsibility for what I did. I’m a Christian, I go to church on Sunday. Whether God forgives me or I forgive myself – it’s not for the public to judge me.”
1992: Woody Allen
Director Woody Allen and the actress Mia Farrow started dating and collaborating in 1980, when Mia already had the four children from a previous relationship. In January of 1992, Mia discovered nude photos of her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, taken by Woody. The South Korean refugee was approximately 27 and Woody was 62. Because of Soon-Yi’s unfortunate childhood on the streets of Seoul her birthdate was unclear. Mia confronted him, and he claimed that Soon-Yi was 20-21 when the two first had sex, which was disputed. He groomed her from the 11th grade onward. Woody convinced Mia the “fling” with her daughter was over, and Mia continued to work together on their last film and kept seeing him.
Woody allegedly molested their 7-year-old adoptive daughter Dylan on August 4th. Allen claimed it was a revenge plot and that Dylan was coached by Mia. On August 13th 1992, Woody sued Mia for sole custody of the three children they adopted together. Four days later, Allen declared he was in love with Soon-Yi Previn, Mia’s adopted daughter. A 7-month investigation by Connecticut law enforcement and the Yale-New Haven Hospital, cleared Allen of sexual abuse in March 1993. A psychiatrist testified that the investigation by the hospital into abuse allegations had “developed questionable interpretations of many of Dylan's statements to them, inappropriately destroyed original notes of the meetings and leaped to unsubstantiated conclusions about people whom they had not even interviewed.” A state attorney declined to prosecute so that Dylan wouldn't be traumatized at trial but said he believed she had been molested. However, Allen was denied custody of the children shared with Mia.
One of Mia’s other sons said the allegations were fabricated, but Dylan maintained the abuse occurred, and corroborating evidence would be exposed in the decades to come. As for Soon-Yi, she accused her mother of abuse and they fell into a permanent estrangement. She said in an open statement through Allen’s publicist, “Please don't try and dramatize my relationship with Woody Allen. He was never any kind of father figure to me. I never had any dealings with him. He rarely came to our apartment before his own children were born.”
Five years later, Woody Allen married Soon-Yi Previn in Venice, Italy. The biggest part of this scandal was Allen’s continued career, as Hollywood producers and stars continued to work with him in a slew of films before the end of the decade.
Sources and Further Reading
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19910427&id=J1xPAAAAIBAJ&pg=6848,7497774&hl=en
https://www.redbookmag.com/life/g44269930/celebrity-scandals-from-the-90s-you-forgot-about/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/326294925/
https://www.jezebel.com/from-pamela-anderson-to-tonya-harding-the-decade-that-1846282676
https://www.chicagotribune.com/1997/04/17/april-1997-reynolds-guilty-of-fraud-counts/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/1996/11/08/reynolds-wife-indicted-on-us-fraud-charges/
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/23/us/congressman-convicted-of-sexual-assault.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/01/sports/tv-sports-after-decades-of-words-for-albert-silence.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/26/us/marv-albert-pleads-guilty-and-is-dismissed-by-nbc.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/01/opinion/corruption-in-the-dirty-30.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/1997/12/14/point-shaving-pays-off-in-shame-and-suffering/
https://archive.org/details/hillsdalegreektr00rapo/page/n9/mode/2up
https://www.salon.com/2000/01/19/hillsdale/
https://www.nationalreview.com/1999/11/horror-hillsdale-john-j-miller/
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/15/us/scandal-rocks-a-conservative-campus.html
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19970518&slug=2539829
https://www.eonline.com/news/34987/frank-gifford-s-mistress-exposed-in-playboy
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/14/home/airwoman-court-martial.html
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/14/home/052297airforce-pilot.html
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-22-mn-61313-story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/21/nyregion/vows-it-s-a-wedding-blitz-for-trump-and-maples.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/congress.htm
https://www.dailypress.com/1991/08/29/tai-bares-all-in-magazine-tells-of-robb-tryst/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/786243660/
https://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?page=hill/080507
https://www.newspapers.com/image/612848458/
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/1992/12/08/schotts-racism-not-marginal/62474171007/
https://people.com/archive/cover-story-the-game-of-love-vol-41-no-11/
https://www.nytimes.com/article/woody-allen-timeline.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/28/nyregion/yale-study-about-allen-flawed-expert-testifies.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/28/nyregion/yale-study-about-allen-flawed-expert-testifies.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woody-allen-defends-himself-on-60-minutes-in-92/
https://www.newsweek.com/soon-yi-speaks-lets-not-get-hysterical-197958
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-16-ca-4894-story.html
https://time.com/archive/6714303/music-two-scoops-of-vanilli/
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/city-college-of-new-york-stampede-harlem-1991/
https://www.legalrightsadvice.com/childs-v-city-university-of-new-york-stampede-at-city-college/
https://www.city-journal.org/article/spreading-the-blame-too-thin
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-may-29-me-54502-story.html
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-apr-09-me-37715-story.html
https://archives.starbulletin.com/2004/08/16/news/story2.html
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-12-03-sp-2069-story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/weekinreview/04schwartz.html?_r=1
https://web.archive.org/web/20110724132848/http://www.wtae.com/team4/1800419/detail.html
http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/News/9906/23/showbuzz/
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/1992/12/08/schotts-racism-not-marginal/62474171007/
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/20/arts/wages-of-silence-milli-vanilli-loses-a-grammy-award.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/29/sports/baseball-marge-schott-baseball-s-big-red-headache.html
https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/11/19/heaven-help-marge-schott-rick-reilly-si-60
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13892800/allen-v-farrow-is-the-most-damning-indictment-of-woody-allen-yet
https://www.newspapers.com/image/273874629/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1131842273/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/265843730/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1152462576/
https://utopiawa.org/forever-young-revisiting-the-life-death-of-shalimar-seiuli/
https://people.com/archive/double-trouble-vol-47-no-19/
https://people.com/archive/double-trouble-vol-47-no-19/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/91125953/
https://www.salon.com/2001/05/01/bjork/
https://www.dailypress.com/1994/03/12/robb-fallout-letter-sparks-wrath-raves/