Family Life and Controversy
Hendra married Judith Christmas in 1964. The couple had two daughters, the younger of whom is Jessica Hendra. Tony and Judith Hendra underwent an acrimonious divorce in 1985. Hendra subsequently remarried; he and his second wife, Carla Hendra, live in New York and have three children together.
In 2004, at the time that Father Joe was achieving best-seller status, Jessica Hendra contacted the New York Times, requesting that the newspaper publish an op-ed piece she had written in which she alleged that her father had sexually abused her as a young child. The newspaper declined to publish the op-ed piece, but they did assign a reporter to investigate her charges. On 1 July 2004, the Times published an article on the front page of the Arts section about Jessica Hendra's allegations. The story, by reporter N.R. Kleinfield, included details about the alleged acts of molestation, along with Tony Hendra's denial: "I can only just categorically deny this. It's not a new allegation. It's simply not true, I'm afraid."
After the Times was criticised for publishing the story in the absence of proof, the paper's ombudsman, Daniel Okrent, wrote an article examining the newspaper's decision. Okrent quoted an email exchange with Kleinfield in which the latter wrote that, based on his reporting, he had concluded that Jessica Hendra had indeed been molested. At the same time, Okrent expressed concern about the possibility that Jessica Hendra's charges were false, citing in particular the damage that could be caused to Hendra's young children who were 11, 12 and 14 at the time. "As an editor," Okrent concluded, "the verities of the profession might have led me to publish this article. But as a reader, I wish The Times hadn't."
Jessica Hendra subsequently published a memoir, How to Cook Your Daughter, that repeated the abuse allegations. The book was published by Judith Regan of ReganBooks.
Read more about this topic: Tony Hendra
Famous quotes containing the words family, life and/or controversy:
“Like plowing, housework makes the ground ready for the germination of family life. The kids will not invite a teacher home if beer cans litter the living room. The family isn’t likely to have breakfast together if somebody didn’t remember to buy eggs, milk, or muffins. Housework maintains an orderly setting in which family life can flourish.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)