The Nate Parker Rape Scandal: How An Oscar Favorite Became Hollywood’s Problem Child

2016 was going to be Nate Parker’s big year. The up-and-coming star’s first directorial effort, The Birth of a Nation, dazzled audiences at Sundance and set off a bidding war amongst investors. In the end, Fox Searchlight, which has a history of shepherding indie films to Oscar gold, won the rights to the film. Parker stars in the film (which he co-wrote with long-time friend Jean Celestin) as Nat Turner, a brilliant black preacher who led a slave revolt in 1831.

However, Parker and his film’s box office and Oscar success appears to be in jeopardy. Here’s why: Parker and Celestin were both accused of rape when they were students at Penn State University in 1999 after the two young men had sex with an inebriated woman. Later they said she consented, while she said she most certainly did not. She even testified that she was unconscious during most of it. A third man was invited to have sex with her by Parker, but he testified that, “I didn’t believe that four people at one time was — you know, it didn’t seem right.” Trial transcripts are available online and many damning passages have resurfaced. [Click here for the victim’s testimony] [Click here for the defendants’ version of events]

Parker was eventually acquitted of the charges — mainly, it seems, because he and the victim had shared a consensual sexual encounter the night before — while Celestin was found guilty. Celestin later appealed the charges and was granted a new trial, but it was eventually dropped.

Parker has never tried to hide this dark chapter from his past. As he told Deadline in an interview last Friday: “I was sure it would come up,” Parker said. “It is there, on my Wikipedia page, the Virginia Pilot… I stand here, a 36-year-old man, 17 years removed from one of the most painful … [he wells up at the memory] moments in my life. And I can imagine it was painful, for everyone. I was cleared of everything, of all charges. I’ve done a lot of living, and raised a lot of children. I’ve got five daughters and a lovely wife. My mom lives here with me; I brought her here. I’ve got four younger sisters.”

Parker spends the rest of the interview recollecting (spinning?) about how he’s had time to reflect on that time. He said, “The fact we are making moves and taking action to protect women on campuses and off campuses, and educating men and persecuting them when things come up…I want women to stand up, to speak out when they feel violated, in every degree, as I prepare to take my own daughter to college.”

However, in the same interview, he says this: “I’m not try, trying to be mean, but, I felt like you put yourself in that situation, you know what I mean?” said Parker. “I really felt like I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Then Variety dropped another bombshell in the case yesterday: the unnamed victim hadn’t yet come forward to comment on the scandal because she had committed suicide in 2012.

Variety ran an interview with the victim’s brother, who asked to only go by his first name, Johnny, to protect her son’s identity. While the piece makes it clear that you can’t connect the rape directly to her death, Johnny said, “If I were to look back at her very short life and point to one moment where I think she changed as a person, it was obviously that point…the trial was pretty tough for her.”

The Variety piece points out that campus rape laws are stricter now and it’s possible Parker wouldn’t have been exonerated. It also hammers home that Parker and Celestin “stalked and harassed” the victim on campus after she pressed charges. “She was afraid for her life,” said her brother.

On the heels of all this, Jezebel’s Clover Hope wrote an insightful piece outlining why the Parker scandal is so tricky to navigate. The industry wants to root for a talented young black voice bringing an important story to the screen, but that same industry also wants to stop another Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, or Bill Cosby situation from spiraling out of control. Those three artists were already artistic titans when their sex scandals hit, whereas Parker is on the cusp of being accepted as a powerful voice. Hope wrote, “As much as we, Jezebel included, want to boost Parker’s work, we also feel the need to untangle past mistakes and be a voice in the internet-fueled cycle that champions accountability rather than ignores it.”

Last night, Parker himself issued a statement on his Facebook page that revealed that he had no idea the victim had committed suicide and that he was “devastated.”

The rest of the statement reiterates that he has looks back with more empathy: “All of this said, I also know there are wounds that neither time nor words can heal.” But is Parker’s punt for compassion already too late? Did he already lose the Oscar because of something that happened 17 years ago? Can audiences separate a man’s life from his art? The 2017 Oscar race already has its first scandal — and it’s a big messy one.

The Birth of a Nation is set for an October 7, 2016 debut.

[Photos: Getty Images, Fox Searchlight]