He accused Covington of telling him, "God said there is something wrong in your life." If convicted, she faces up to two years in prison.įenner said he thought he was "going to die" while the church members beat and choked him.
She is the first of five church members to face trial in the case, the Associated Press reported. They pleaded not guilty.Īnd on Thursday, Fenner was the first person to testify in the trial of Brooke Covington, 58, the church minister accused of leading the alleged kidnapping and assault of Fenner on that day, more than four years ago. In December 2014, a minister and four members of the Rutherford County church were indicted on charges that they kidnapped, beat and strangled Fenner, then 21. After the episode, he left the fellowship.
That attacks took place "to break me free of the homosexual demons they so viciously despise," Fenner, who identifies as gay, told television station WSPA a year later. At one point, someone grabbed him by the throat and shook him, he said. Whatever a few trolls say in a fit of Brexit boredom, you probably can’t get much better than that.Matthew Fenner was leaving a Sunday prayer service in January 2013 when a group of church members surrounded him.Īs he told police, a church leader and more than 20 other members of the Word of Faith Fellowship - based in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Spindale, North Carolina - repeatedly punched, beat and knocked him down for about two hours. Since Monday another meme has surfaced – of Alexandra Grant smiling into the camera as if to say, “That’s right, bitches.” She has landed the man they call the nicest guy in the business. Pierce Brosnan has happily been with his journalist wife, Keely Shaye Smith, for 25 years, but it doesn’t stop some pockets of the internet wondering why he hasn’t yet traded “up”. The sad truth is that any celebrity couple who don’t fit the mould and bow to our ideals of beauty are so eye-poppingly different that some people experience a does-not-compute moment. That’s right, bitches: Alexandra Grant with Keanu Reeves at the weekend. Yes, the bar is seemingly set that low for Hollywood men: basic civility makes you a white knight. He has given millions of dollars to charity (and to crew members), and in one video that sent his fans to the fainting couch he was filmed giving his subway seat up to a woman. Yet it’s what we are used to, sadly: leading men are routinely up to 15 years older than their female costars and on-screen lovers.īut Keanu’s has always been an atypical celeb. Reeves’s choice to couple up with a 46-year-old, seemingly when he could have his pick of any woman in the world under 50, seems nearly radical. I’m not sure why we’re making a hero out of a man for seeing a beautiful woman nine years his junior. The comedian Sara Schaefer called it Keanu Reeves Isn’t Dating A 22 Year Old Bikini Model Day. Some people seem genuinely surprised that the actor hasn’t landed a trophy Tinker Bell – despite the fact that Grant is nearly a decade younger than Reeves. It says a lot about celebrity culture and how we view women. The kerfuffle about Reeves’s choice of partner is a bit depressing. Keanu Reeves to return to The Matrix as hero Neo in new film.Bill & Ted Face the Music: First trailer drops for cult comedy sequel.Keanu Reeves: ‘When we would go to dinner together, people were, like, Whoa! Dudes!’.A great meeting of minds, and no mistake. The two also founded a publishing house together in 2017. Stunning, tall and queenly, Grant has already collaborated professionally with Reeves, providing artwork for his volumes of poetry, Ode to Happiness, from 2011, and Shadows, from 2016.
On Saturday he was photographed publicly with Alexandra Grant, a 46-year-old artist and philanthropist.
For some strange reason, his new relationship isn’t what a few people thought it would look like. This week he appears to have done just that.
Reeves’s fans have assumed a sort of protective affection for the 55-year-old movie star, hoping he’d find his own happy ending after years of personal anguish. It led to Reeves’ living a rootless existence, at one point holing up at Chateau Marmont, the Hollywood hotel, for some years. Two years later Syme died in a car crash, at the age of 28. Yet there was nothing funny about his reported reasons for singledom: he and his partner, Jennifer Syme, were awaiting the arrival of a daughter, Ava, when the baby was stillborn, on Christmas Eve in 1999. Reportedly single for close to two decades, and fiercely mindful of his privacy, Reeves became instantly memeworthy when he was papped eating a sandwich disconsolately by himself. If poor Jennifer Aniston had a male equivalent it would probably be poor Keanu Reeves.