Magician David Copperfield is facing allegations of drugging women before sexual encounters, groping women during live performances, and behaving inappropriately with women who were significantly younger than him — including under 18 — in a new investigative piece in The Guardian.

The story contains allegations from 16 women, spanning four decades, from the 1980s to 2014. Over half of those women said they were under 18 at the time of the alleged incidents, with the two youngest victims claiming they were 15 at the time (though there was no evidence to suggest Copperfield was aware of their ages when they met).

One of those 15-year-olds, identified as Carla (not her real name), said Copperfield “groomed” her for more than two years after he gave her his phone number following a 1991 show. The magician allegedly called her at home often and sent her cards and gifts, including one, which Carla received when she was 16, that said: “In 2 years I will be back.”

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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      6 months ago

      And then - poof! - all the evidence disappears!

      I’m starting to wonder, do you have to be willing to rape women to become famous or does fame make you a rapist? It seems like half of the celebrity sphere has some form of allegation against them.

      • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        A lot of us have random thoughts of lust over people around, but many of us shake them off before they even form because they are inappropriate or just untimely. None becomes an obsession or anything, and we rarely even remeber them. But when you are a rockstar your ego is so boosted you start to act on them and many other impulses because you can and you are always right. That’s a feedback loop of doing something on a whim and feeling yourself even more powerful after facing no consequencies. Unless you have a strict moral compass, it’s easy to get corrupted into a human animal that enjoys it’s way to depravity.

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        My completely uncorroborated gut feeling is that it’s because each celebrity caught doing horrible shit causes a massive media frenzy, so even if (and I don’t know if this is true) the numbers of horrible people are proportional to the overall population, there’s a bias because each one is named and shamed unlike non-celebrities.

  • WamGams@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Didn’t he groom Fiona Apple in like 1995? I am surprised it has taken this long.

  • Squiddly@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I honestly don’t know who that is

    Edit: I’m 33 you plebs I never watched this crap because I knew how fake it was.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      I’m 33 as well and I know who he is, despite never seeing any of his performance.

      But you know, you could open the article where presumably it gives the context. It’s better than a comment that only serves to make you look like an idiot.

    • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Even if you didn’t watch his stuff, his name is such a part of the lexicon that it’s like saying “who the hell is oj?”

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            OJ Simpson was a famous football player and then was constantly on television news for years because he murdered two people and then ran from police. I wouldn’t even say Copperfield got 2% as much air time and I’m not sure why you’re arguing he did.

            No joke before I posted this I went back and double-checked I was right about his name, a mistake I would’ve never made with OJ Simpson.

    • BruceTwarzen@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      He was a famous magician. I think everyone above 35 or so knows him for making the statue of liberty disappear or airplanes and things like that. Probably more famous for dating Claudia schiffer at the end of the day. I think to everyone under 30 he’s super not relevant.

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        6 months ago

        I’m 33 spent most of my time watching cartoons like King of the Hill and Nickelodeon cartoons that didn’t suck. I know the name just didn’t know what he did. Funny how people bombard me with down votes for not knowing lol. All those magician shows seemed unreal to me so I never watched them. Mind Freak is a perfect example. Today, that dude (Criss Angel) just disappeared and we all forgot about him.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Funny how people bombard me with down votes for not knowing

          No, sometimes people downvote things they have no reason to care about

        • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          You get downvoted because “I’ve never heard of this person” is a pointless comment that doesn’t add anything to the conversation.

      • DdCno1@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        One of the most convincing tricks he pulled off was transporting two people from the stage to what looked like a believable beach. Totally fooled me (but I was a kid when I watched it).

        Edit: I started to figure out that something was amiss soon after, because every single one of the supposedly “random” people he invited on stage to do his tricks with (usually by throwing plastic balls into the audience) wore incredibly “inoffensive” and poorly fitted clothes. At some point, I was able to spot which people he would end up picking from a mile away even before he had done so.

      • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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        6 months ago

        I never understood those. It’s always camera trickery and mirrors. At least with the stage performances there are real people in the room with a full field of vision.

        • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          I saw a Penn Jillette interview a long time ago where he explained that quite a few other magicians fake their recorded stage performances. They’ll perform a simpler trick, get the audience reactions, and then use camera trickery to make the trick look far more impressive for TV. This was in the context of him claiming that he absolutely doesn’t do that.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          For what it’s worth, he claimed he never used camera tricks in his specials.

          Of course, he’s under no obligation to tell the truth.

          • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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            6 months ago

            When he says camera trickery he means that he doesn’t edit anything. when I say camera trickery I mean that the camera must be at a certain angle for the trick to work. If he has a mirror for example and the camera moves a step to the right, the mirror is suddenly not aligned properly to my field of view and the illusion doesn’t work.

            The hobbits in Lord of the Rings is an excellent example. Nothing is edited in the shots but it relies on a very specific focal length in the camera and carefully planned forced perspective. It’s impressive and a technical feat but it not “magic” like card tricks are magic.