Mum's video of man under her car divides the internet
A mother has revealed how her 14-year-old son's chance interaction with a man in a large black truck left him feeling uncomfortable — and set off alarm bells for her.
The Texan woman shared a clip of a man 'hiding' under a black truck at a local park.
Footage showed the man on his stomach underneath his vehicle.
'PSA to my ladies: watch out for creeps at the park,' she wrote over the top of the clip, adding the man was watching her from underneath the car.
'See him moving on his belly?'
The video clocked up to 12 million views, and garnered a lot of comments that were divided on what was actually happening.
Some argued the man could have simply been fixing his car, while others said that was unlikely, given he was on his stomach. A few questioned why the woman didn't call the police.
'Tell me why I thought I was looking for Pennywise in the sewer,' one said, referencing Pennywise the Dancing Clown in Stephen King's horror novel, It.
One commented: 'Ngl I was terrified just hearing 'there's a man'.'
'He's def looking at something under his truck,' another defended.
One said; � 'Hello, call the cops?'
'Start yelling, 'Hey whose car is this, there is a man hiding under the car',' one social media user suggested.
'It's a Dodge … he's probably fixing something,' another said.
One commented: 'Man just looking at something on his truck being accused by women.'
'Oh my god — when I was a teenager my friend's dad said watch out getting in your car because kidnappers will cut your Achilles tendon and I never believed it,' another shared.
One person commented: 'I would totally make a scene. He might be planting an AirTag so he can find somebody later.'
'Men in the comments being like 'maybe he's working on his car' (despite being on his stomach) and 'it's not illegal' are INSANE. like what!!! if someone's up under a car, on their stomach, watching people – that is not okay. men wonder why there's a loneliness epidemic like damn maybe it's deserved,' one added.
In a follow-up video, the woman gave more context about what had unfolded. She said her son had run to her car to get her water bottle for her, when a man sitting in the next car along 'clocked' him.
'My son said he immediately started feeling uncomfortable, got a weird feeling, so I look over. As I am looking over the man is getting out of his car and crawling underneath it,' she said on TikTok.
'He just watches me the entire time.'
She said she told everyone around her what was happening — but didn't call the police as technically the man hadn't done anything wrong and police in her county are slow to respond at the best of times.
So, she called someone else she knew who could help in the situation. When they confronted the man, he allegedly didn't have 'a whole lot to say'.
The woman said she shared the video to social media — and her local neighbourhood app — to spread awareness.
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News.com.au
3 hours ago
- News.com.au
Sex workers expose ugly truth of living at notorious Moonlite Bunny Ranch
Two decades after the headline-hitting HBO docuseries brought prostitution into America's living rooms, sex workers who appeared on the show are accusing its producers of exploitation and misrepresentation. Cathouse, which began airing in June 2005, took a lighthearted look at the lives of employees at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel in Mound House, Nevada. An instant ratings smash, it ran for two seasons and spawned 10 specials. The prurient program portrayed the world's oldest profession as empowering and depicted the brothel as a makeshift sorority house where glamorous gal pals bonded by profiting off of horny, harmless, men. But the reality, exposed in the six-part special Secrets of the Bunny Ranch, premiering June 12 on A&E, was far more sinister. The documentary paints a picture of desperate women humiliated, intimidated and manipulated by the brothel's notorious owner, Dennis Hof, who was later accused of rape by a former employee. Several women who worked at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch claim Cathouse tacitly encouraged young female viewers to pursue a career in prostitution, buoyed by the show's fun and fizzy tone. 'It enticed these young girls and we did get a lot of them,' Cathouse star Shelly Dushell told The Post. 'As soon as they turned 18, [they] were trying to work there… I mean, the show really was good for recruiting.' 'I would say to HBO and Cathouse [producers] shame on you,' former Bunny Ranch employee Bekah Charleston declared in an interview with The Post. 'Shame on you for making something look glamorous and fun when that's not the reality. It wasn't glamorous and fun. It is disgusting and horrific work in the middle of nowhere.' HBO did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A powerful pimp Hof had a starring role on Cathouse. In the mid-2000s, at the time of the show's airing, he was portrayed in mainstream media as a pioneering entrepreneur getting rich in light of legalised prostitution. But far from being a benevolent boss, the Bunny Ranch was more like Hof's house of horrors, with employees saying they lived in fear of him. Dushell told The Post that Hof, who owned six other legal brothels, regularly pressured her into sex. 'Dennis wanted to sleep with me the first night that I got there,' she claimed. 'I didn't say no to him, so I wasn't raped, but I was put in a position where I felt like I could not say no to him…. So I just went along with it and I thought, 'OK, well, maybe he makes all the girls do this,' and I was right.' 'For the most part, he tried out most of the girls that would let him,' she added. 'And then he apparently he did it even when girls didn't want him to.' Per The Las Vegas Review Journal, Hof was accused of raping a prostitute at one of his brothels in 2005. He was also accused of sexually assaulting women in 2009 and 2011. Hof ran as a Republican candidate for the Nevada Assembly in 2018. He died of a heart attack in October of that year, but his name was left on the ballot at elections the following month. He was posthumously elected to the seat. 'If Dennis had lived, he probably would have ended up in prison because of all the accusations he had against him,' Dushell said of the pimp-turned-politician. Meanwhile, on Secrets of the Bunny Ranch, several employees claim that Hof financially exploited them. He allegedly underpaid numerous workers, stripping them of their agency and effectively keeping them confined to the remote brothel. Charleston, who worked briefly at the Bunny Ranch in the early 2000s, told The Post that some of the employees were trapped there 'for years at a time without leaving.' 'I was the only person at that time that I remember who actually had my own vehicle there,' she shockingly stated. As for Hof: 'He was just was a disgusting, vile human being that just profited off of other people's backs and bragged about it.' Moonlite Bunny Ranch has released a statement regarding the new A&E special, stating: 'As the documentary series Secrets of the Bunny Ranch has not yet aired, and we have not been provided with an advance copy, it would be premature for us to address any specific allegations without first reviewing the actual content and claims being made. That said, we note that allegations against Mr. Hof are not new.' 'During his lifetime, Mr. Hof publicly addressed and denied similar accusations through official statements and media responses, including detailed rebuttals available on his website,' the statement continued. 'We find it particularly concerning that these matters are being revisited now, when Mr. Hof is no longer alive to personally respond to or defend himself against any claims. The timing raises serious questions about fairness, as the accused party cannot provide their perspective or defence.' Empowerment or exploitation? Hof wasn't the only one making a pretty penny from the Moonlite Bunny Ranch. Cathouse quickly became a ratings smash for HBO, garnering millions of curious viewers. Dushell became one of the show's stars and was immediately recognized in public, but fame didn't come with a fortune. 'HBO wasn't much better than a pimp, because I was barely paid anything,' she claims in the Secrets of the Bunny Ranch documentary. 'I made between $300 and $350 per sex scene,' Dushell further explained to The Post. 'And that was all they paid me for.' 'I got actual pay stubs from HBO and W-2s mailed to me, and it was exciting to get an envelope that said 'HBO' on it with a paycheck, but the paycheck was just a few hundred dollars, so it was pretty embarrassing to be honest with you,' she said. 'They didn't pay me for just normal scenes, and it was just a ridiculously low amount of money. People seeing me on TV thought that I had gotten rich,' Dushell added. A different time Cathouse premiered a year after HBO aired the finale of Sex and the City — another envelope-pushing series in which women unabashedly discussed their sexual proclivities and activities. In the mid-2000s, pop culture seemingly promoted sex positivity at every turn, making it seem that women were profiting from their provocative pursuits, from Britney Spears in her raunchy video clips to Paris Hilton in her infamous sex tape. But in the wake of the #MeToo movement, many women are reassessing how much agency that era actually brought about. For posterity, the New York Post's 2002 review of the original Cathouse, which is referenced in Secrets of the Bunny Ranch, has aged far better. 'There hasn't been a portrayal of hookers this one-dimensional and phony since Pretty Woman,' our acid-tongued TV critic Linda Stasi savagely wrote. Cathouse is no longer available on HBO platforms. 'Even when we were filming it, I knew it wasn't a true representation,' Dushell admitted to The Post, saying the HBO show omitted the gritty reality of life at the brothel. 'They wanted to sell the show, they wanted to make money off the show, and they wanted to make money off the girls having a great time. They just didn't want to show the ugly side of it,' she further says in Secrets of the Bunny Ranch. Despite the veneer of glamour and empowerment that Cathouse presented, many of the employees were desperate women who had fallen on hard times. In the Secrets of the Bunny Ranch special, Dushell reveals that she was sexually abused as a child, saying: 'I probably would never have thought about working at the Bunny Ranch if I hadn't had an old man touching me when I was a little, bitty kid.' Charleston, meanwhile, told The Post that she was a teenage runaway when she got into prostitution. 'The vast majority of people that find themselves in prostitution are disenfranchised people that come from impoverished backgrounds, homelessness, the foster care system,' she said. 'I mean, I was a runaway kid living on the streets, vulnerable and hungry and so I think it's really important to keep that in mind.' Several years after leaving the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, Charleston was arrested for tax evasion and served 13 months in federal prison. It was later determined she had been a victim of sex trafficking and was granted a full pardon by President Trump in 2020. She has obtained both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree and is now a public speaker raising awareness about human trafficking. Both she and Dushell also want to raise awareness about not believing everything you see on TV. ' Cathouse did exploit the girls,' Dushell said. 'I really expected more from HBO. They came across with a great show, though. I mean, people loved it. It just wasn't real.'
ABC News
13 hours ago
- ABC News
Los Angeles is a bastion of social justice protest but this time is different
Los Angeles has a long history of protesting over racial justice issues, but what has happened on the city's streets over the past week is, so far, very different from the riots of the early 1990s. In the LA riots of 1992 the city erupted into what was almost a week of violence that would result in more than 50 people losing their lives. Scholars now describe that rioting as an "explosion of rage and frustration" that had been building. On March 3, 1991, a man named Rodney King led police on a high-speed chase before police officers caught up with him on a street in San Fernando Valley. From there, a scene played out that would set in motion the events that led to one of the biggest civil disruptions in modern US history. Because living nearby was a man who had a new video camera, and after being awoken by the noise outside, he pressed the red record button. He captured nine minutes of grainy vision that would become the first widely seen video of what many believed was obvious police brutality in the United States. In the vision, King, a black man, is laying face down on the ground as the white police officers surrounding him take turns to kick and beat him. The video was undeniable and, for many, it was the "smoking gun" confirming what they already knew about the conduct of officers from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) — an organisation that had a notorious reputation at that time. But a year later, at 3pm on a warm Wednesday, a jury acquitted those police officers of excessive force and that decision set Los Angeles alight. "People in LA did not take to the streets when that footage first saturated the airways. It wasn't just hooligans looking for any reason to go off," said Jody Armour, a professor of law at the University of Southern California. Professor Armour said when "that promise of equal justice seemed so flagrantly flouted" by the jury, "all hell broke loose in LA". The city's law enforcement ranks were overwhelmed and its mayor, as well as California's governor, made a call for help. National Guard troops were soon on the streets of Los Angeles. Right now, there are federalised National Guard troops and soon there will be US Marines — members of the United States military — on the ground in Los Angeles to patrol what is still a mostly peaceful protest. Local officials did not ask for those forces to be there. In fact, they have publicly and legally opposed their presence. In 1992 the National Guard was called in to help control widespread, destructive rioting, but right now those forces appear to be escalating the situation, and some experts are warning it is all in the name of "political theatre". There are some key differences between the situation playing out in Los Angeles right now and the 1992 riots. Most notably, the scale of the protests compared to the scale of the response. Professor Armour was in LA in 1992 and remembers very clearly the city on fire. "In 92, where I am now in View Park, … there were flames across the skyline. Three or four days in, there were smoke and flames at 12 or 13 different places across the skyline. I'm looking now, there are no flames anywhere," he said. "Traffic was shut down everywhere. I constantly heard helicopters humming overheard. Right now I'm not hearing helicopters. In 1992, after nearly a week of rioting, more than 50 people had lost their lives and more than 2,000 had sustained injuries. Thousands of people were arrested, it's estimated 1,100 buildings were affected and the total bill of property damage was more than $US1 billion (about $1.5 billion). The United States has seen several widespread racial justice protest movements and moments since then, including the birth of Black Lives Matter. In May 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin put his knee on the neck of George Floyd and kept it there for more than nine minutes. The police officer would eventually be found guilty of murder, with videos of the arrest pored over by the prosecution. The court heard that during the initial four minutes and 45 seconds of the available videos, Mr Floyd said, "I can't breathe," 27 times. Those were the last words uttered by Eric Garner, who was killed by New York City police officers in 2014 and became the rallying cry of the Black Lives Matter movement. On the day of Mr Floyd's death, protests broke out across multiple US cities, including in Los Angeles, where the National Guard was sent it to quell the demonstrations. At that time, Governor Gavin Newsom was the one to send in the troops and he had the support of the mayor to do it. Yale historian Elizabeth Hinton, who wrote a book about race-related uprisings and police violence, said the 2020 protests were characterised as violent, but, for the most part, were not like that in reality. That was even truer today, she said. This time, protests have been sparked by Donald Trump's immigration raids. They began on Friday after US Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents made dozens of arrests across the city over alleged immigration violations. Unlike the 1992 riots, protests have been mostly peaceful and have been confined to a roughly five-block stretch of downtown LA, a tiny patch in the sprawling city of nearly 4 million people. There has been vandalism and some cars set on fire, but no homes or buildings have burned. More than 190 people have been arrested over the past several days of protests, according to the most recent update from police. The vast majority of arrests were for failing to disperse, while a few others were for assault with a deadly weapon, looting, vandalism and attempted murder for tossing a Molotov cocktail. These protests aren't over and, as more break out in other cities across the country, authorities appear to be preparing for a large day of demonstrations on Saturday. But at this stage, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has said the LAPD can manage the protests in the city without the need for troops. Professor Armour warned circumstances could quickly change and said the federal troops brought "an air of menace". "It is more sporadic now, but that doesn't mean that it cannot gain momentum," he said. "In downtown and some other places, there are pockets of real resistance and conflict, but when we're talking about [the] George Floyd [protests] five years ago or 1992 even, it was more widespread. It's a very different scale." Professor Armour called the federal response "political theatre". On rare occasions, presidents have invoked an 18th-century wartime law called the Insurrection Act, which is the main legal mechanism that a president can use to activate the military or National Guard during times of rebellion or unrest. The last time it was used was in 1992 when troops were deployed to Los Angeles to help control the riots. Presidents have also relied on another federal law that allows them to federalise National Guard troops under certain circumstances, which is what Mr Trump did on Saturday. Mr Trump is said to be considering invoking the Insurrection Act to give troops on the ground in LA powers to participate in law enforcement activities. That's something that would be seen as a dramatic escalation and that Mr Newsom would take issue with. The back and forth between Mr Trump and the Californian governor, who is widely predicted to make his own run at the presidency in 2028, has been escalating since the weekend. Mr Trump has been defending his decision to intervene, saying: "You have violent people, and we're not gonna let them get away with it." Following those remarks, Mr Newsom hit back, saying: "Trump wants chaos and he's instigated violence." He asked Mr Trump to stand down the National Guard, calling it a "serious breach of state sovereignty". "This is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism that threatens the foundation of our republic," Mr Newsom said. On Monday, Mr Newsom announced California was suing Mr Trump. A hearing on the matter is due to happen on Thursday, local time. Donald Trump and his base love military might. Troops on the ground and images of the United States's strength are part of his political messaging. Professor Armour said he believed the decision to send troops to Los Angeles when they were not at all necessary was strategic. "Of the two pillars he was elected on, one big pillar was, 'I'm going to get aggressive on immigration, law enforcement. I'm going to be super aggressive,'" he said. "It doesn't translate well locally in Southern California and LA — we're very pro-immigrant, we're very concerned about looking out for immigrant rights — but that is a local attitude that's very different than the national one … at least according to Trump. "It's political theatre. This is his chance to say that, 'In LA you have a bastion, a pocket, of anti-enforcement of immigration laws, but I have a mandate from the people. I'm going to have to override this resistance.' "I think a lot of people in his base will eat that up." Trump has pledged to launch the "largest deportation operation in US history", but it's worth noting ICE records show the Biden administration deported more people from the United States than Mr Trump did during his first term. There are other examples where presidents have used National Guard troops to enforce federal decisions that are at odds with state or community norms, even if the values are very different. In 1957, US president Dwight Eisenhower signed an executive order that federalised the National Guard in Arkansas. Years earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled in the Brown V Board of Education legal case that racially segregated schools were "inherently unequal", but when the deadline for integration arrived, there was resistance in Little Rock, Arkansas. That forced the president to take control. "With Executive Order 10730, the President placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal control and sent 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to assist them in restoring order in Little Rock," US national archives read. In the iconic images from the so-called "Little Rock crisis" federal troops are seen escorting black students safely into a school building. A year later, the first black student graduated from Little Rock Central High School. There have been very few times in US modern history that the Insurrection Act has been invoked, but Donald Trump is a president who consistently breaks norms. His potential use of that mechanism to empower federal troops could escalate the situation in Los Angeles even further, but after a week of protests, local authorities still maintain there was never any need for them. ABC/AP
News.com.au
14 hours ago
- News.com.au
Rapper behind giant hit song sentenced to 30 years in prison
Rapper Silentó will spend 30 years in prison for shooting his cousin to death in 2021. Silentó, real name Ricky Hawk, is best known for his viral 2015 song Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae). Hawk, 27, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and concealing the death of another, The Sun reports. The Atlanta rapper was originally indicted on a felony charge of malice murder, but took a plea deal for lesser charges. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Hawk shot his cousin, Frederick Rooks III, dead early on the morning of January 21, 2021. Rooks, 34, was found with multiple gunshot wounds to his face and leg. It is still unclear what led up to the shooting. Home security camera footage from the scene caught several cars speeding away and captured at least one gunshot, cops said. Hawk admitted to the shooting in an interview with investigators several days after it occurred, according to the DeKalb district attorney. Bullet casings found at the scene also matched a gun Hawk had when he was arrested. At the sentencing on Wednesday, Rooks' siblings said Hawk's sentencing should have been harsher. 'We just want justice,' Rooks' brother told the judge, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. In 2021, Hawk's manager released a statement after his arrest asking fans for their support. 'Please send my client Silentó some positive vibrations,' the manager, Chanel Hudson, said at the time. 'Over the past several years, Ricky has been suffering immensely from a series of mental health illnesses. 'We will continue in his efforts of treatment, but we ask in the meantime the public uplift him and his family in immediate prayer and positive energy!! 'Ricky is a beautiful soul, and we hope that the same people who came up whipping' & nay nay-in with him, continue to support him and lifted in prayer!! God bless.' Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) was released when Hawk was just a junior in high school in Stone Mountain, Georgia, near Atlanta. The song charted globally and started a social media trend of people doing a dance associated with the song. Hawk's first full-length album came out in 2019. The next year, Hawk was arrested twice – once for driving 143 miles per hour on the highway and another time for breaking into a random home in Los Angeles with a hatchet. Hawk's sentence includes credit for the time he's served in DeKalb County Jail since February 1, 2021.
