Did Rob Lowe have sex with 16-year-old girl? '9-1-1: Lone Star' actor calls infamous sex tape 'embarrassing'
Rob Lowe is one beautiful man. There are no doubts about it. He has seen the highs and lows of television, films and the glamor industry and has lived to tell his tale. Lowe entered the limelight as a teen idol and member of the Brat Pack with roles in films like 'The Outsiders' (1983), 'Class' (1983), 'The Hotel New Hampshire' (1984). His blue eyes and dimpled smile were enough to send women melting but according to reports, not everything is white and rosy about the actor. Now, despite him having spent more than three decades in the entertainment, many people might not know that Lowe was involved in a sex scandal.
In 1988, Rob Lowe taped himself having sex with two women, one of who was a 16-year-old girl. It was a piece of news that shocked everyone. Lowe was working on one of his oldest known works titled 'Bad Influence', but the brouhaha caused at the time turned him into a Hollywood pariah. “There’s no way that you can know how embarrassing it was,” he said in an interview with People in 1990. “No matter what adjective I choose, it would be trivializing it.”
What happened that night?
It the night before the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia July 1988. At the time, Lowe was campaigning for Michael Dukakis. At a gathering, he met the then-16-year-old Jan Parsons, who was working as an assistant at a Marietta, Ga., salon. Parsons was accompanied by Tara Siebert, a 22-year-old receptionist, who was reportedly her "lover".
“I was introduced to Jan, and she introduced me to her friend Tara. They both seemed like nice enough people to me," Lowe had recalled in an interview. The three returned to his suite at the Atlanta Hilton & Towers. The furore that was caused was not just because of the age of consent but the wild sex tape. As the age of consent in Georgia was 14 at the time - it was raised to 16 in 1995 - both were of legal age to engage in sexual activity. But 18 was the legal age to be involved in such a recording.
Did Lowe have sex with a 16-year-old?
Lowe denies going to bed with Parsons. According to reports, "He doesn’t dispute the fact that he videotaped his guests in bed or that they knew the proceedings were being recorded for posterity". "There was never any question," Lowe had said.
Later on, Lowe found out that he was robbed. Off on a bathroom break, Tara and Jan disappeared along with some cash and the minicassette from his video camera.
In May 1989, Athens, Ga, attorney J Hue Henry sent a letter to Lowe informing him that Parsons had the incriminating video and planned legal action. On May 12 that year Henry filed a personal injury suit accusing Lowe of using “his celebrity status as an inducement to females to engage in sexual intercourse, sodomy and multiple-partner sexual activity for his immediate sexual gratification, and for the purposes of making pornographic films of these activities.”
It was reported that in November 1989, Lowe's lawyers closed matters after paying an undisclosed sum to Jan Parsons, the young girl and the actor got 20 hours of community service at prisons and halfway houses in Dayton, Ohio. Eventually, his career rebounded and Lowe mocked his own behavior during two post-scandal appearances as host of 'Saturday Night Live'. But it was not an easy time to live through - the scandal especially, as tabloids dragged him down. "The whole thing sped up the aging process," Lowe had said. "I now have a few lines around the eyes to prove it."
Lowe will be next seen in '9-1-1: Lone Star' as Capt Owen Strand. The show is set to premiere on January 18, 2021, at 9-10 pm ET/PT on Fox.