When William Hurt died on March 13, the 71-year-old actor left behind Oscar-winning roles in films such as Broadcast News, The Big Chill and Kiss of the Spider Woman. He also left a legacy of abuse charges.
The mother of one of his children and his ex-girlfriend Sandra Jennings testified in court that Hurt subjected her to “severe physical and verbal” abuse, including punching her in the face while holding their young son. Hurt’s other ex-girlfriend, actor Marley Matlin, accused Hurt of abusing their two-year relationship, which began when she was only 19 and he was 35, including physical abuse, psychological abuse, and rape.
While both women have faced denial and scorn over the years, and fans refuse to believe that Hurt can be violent towards women — and the actor has had no career repercussions — allegations of abuse by a deaf Matlin lift the veil. Over an Ignored Epidemic: Abuse of Disabled Women.
Related: In the furious HBO series Phoenix Rising, Evan Rachel Wood shows how her abuse was portrayed as a rock romance.
According to the American Psychological Association, disabled women are 40% more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence than non-disabled women. In just one year, 27% of domestic violence crimes were committed against women with disabilities.
Persons with disabilities are also three times more likely to be sexually assaulted than those without disabilities, according to the Department of Justice.
Women with disabilities experience violence more often than women without disabilities for a variety of reasons. As a semi-deaf person, I lack spatial perception. I can’t tell where the sound is coming from and it’s very easy to sneak up on me. My disability also angered strangers who found they couldn’t communicate with me. Disabled partners were frustrated by my inability to follow or understand their conversations.
Before the pandemic, people with disabilities were more likely to be isolated, especially those of us who didn’t have a disability community or people we could connect with easily. But since the pandemic, immunocompromised, high-risk and disabled people have been more confined to their homes, unable to safely reach out or get help. Domestic violence has increased across the board since the pandemic as more victims are trapped at home with their abusers. Women with disabilities may experience abuse from caregivers, including family members, intimate partners and people who live with them.
Because women with disabilities are sometimes denied access to the outside world, their abuse can take many forms that are not always familiar to non-disabled women. This may include refusing food, refusing or destroying devices such as hearing aids or wheelchairs, refusing or forcing medication, or forcing a person with a disability to stay in dirty clothes or sheets.
In the case of Matlin, who almost completely lost her hearing when she was a toddler, she claimed that Hurt emotionally abused her the night she won an Oscar for her film Children of a Lesser God, for which he was also nominated and did not won. After the ceremony, she claims he scolded her, “Do you really think you deserve this?” She said that she was afraid of winning for this reason, fearing a violent reaction from him. They met on the set of this film when Matlin was still a teenager (and a fan of his work). Matlin claimed that in addition to the beatings, Hurt also raped her when he was drunk. Hurt has been treated for drug addiction several times.
Matlin made these allegations in her memoir I’ll Scream Later, published in 2009. But decades earlier, documents from a court case involving ex-girlfriend Hurt Jennings had filed allegations of abuse by Matlyn. As the Chicago Tribune reported at the time, “Jennings says she found out about it. [abuse] from her son, who pointed out to her that he saw Hurt kick Matlin during his visits with his father.
Jennings is said to have had two abortions during her relationship with Hurt – the second, people reported, because Hurt “beat her so badly.”
Why didn’t anyone do anything? In Children of a Lesser God, bruises are clearly visible on Matlin’s leg, bruises that have nothing to do with the character or story but were likely inflicted on the actor in real life. Although Matlin says the emotional abuse continued on set, she wrote that the film’s director “came to the conclusion that it was all just part of Bill’s process, that he needed conflict.”
It’s nothing new that talented men get permission to use violence. Neither is blaming the victim. The People’s report on the allegations against Hurt is called Crimes of the Heart. Publisher Matlin described their relationship in her memoirs as “passionate and tempestuous”. When Matlin spoke on CNN, interviewer Joy Behar asked the actor, “Was it love? Was it lust? and raised “showy” sex with Hurt.
(In the two-part HBO documentary Phoenix Rising, Evan Rachel Wood also notes how headlines celebrated her relationship with Marilyn Manson, who was 18 years her senior, as a rock star romance “the other woman”.)
Following Hurt’s death, a Washington Post flashback that did not mention the allegations was captioned: “William Hurt was a serious actor with all the baggage this term entails.”
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Even when your offender is not a famous, rich and beloved actor, it is very difficult to leave. The rapist can cut off the victim both financially and emotionally; isolating the victim from support is a big part of abuse. Someone in an abusive situation may not have access to their own money, telephone, or transportation. They may have nowhere to go or the means to get there. Friends and family often do not believe the victims. Psychological abuse, including gaslighting, causes victims to doubt even their own reality. And not all insults leave visible bruises.
Forcing the victim into dependence on the abuser is a form of manipulative control. But for disabled women, care is even more fraught. Disabled women may need a wheelchair, an accessible van, or other assistive devices to get away. Due to high unemployment, underemployment and low incomes, people with disabilities are also much more likely to live in poverty without the resources to escape.
In an interview with CNN, Behar bluntly asked Matlin why she didn’t leave. Matlin replied that she didn’t know how: “I didn’t have any friends in New York. I didn’t know you could ask for help. I didn’t know you could call 911.” Behar presses her, asking why she would then “be nice” to Hurt in the book, Behar may not understand the reality of a disabled woman facing off against a much older and more powerful man. “How else am I going to live?” Matlin answered. “How else am I going to live?”
This was in 2009.
On the day of Hurt’s death, Entertainment Tonight asked Matlin about him on the red carpet of the Critics’ Choice Awards. Her restrained response, “We’ve lost a great actor… He taught me a lot as an actor,” was taken as positive by many news outlets. “Marley Matlin Pays Tribute to Former William Hurt,” read the headline.
This was in 2022.
We seem to have learned little about the dances that women sometimes have to perform in order to stay alive in order to work. 13 years ago, when Matlin’s memoirs came out, we believed women even less than now. But a disabled woman talking about her experience is still the truth, too uncomfortable for most people, especially those who are capable. Julia Metro, disabled journalist, wrote: “We need to think about what happens when violence is a footnote.” Disabled women die when no one listens to them.
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