UPDATE: Mo’Nique and Her Brother Gerald–It May Have Been About the Money

Gerald Imes (left) and his Academy Award-winning sister, Mo’Nique (right): Is this whole episode a shakedown? (Courtesy: N.Y. Post)

I was watching The View before I headed out to a visit to the chiropractor, when this disturbing update was revealed.

Barbara Walters said that she had also been asked whether she would interview Gerald Imes, brother of the Academy Award-winning actress Mo’Nique, regarding her claims that he had molested her when she was a girl of eight. Walters had interviewed Mo’Nique for her Oscar show, the one that she relinquished this year.

On The View this morning, Barbara Walters said that Gerald contacted her in February after Mo’Nique discussed the molestation on her Oscar special. Walters said she declined his request to interview him, sensing that Gerald’s desire to repair his relationship with Mo’Nique may have been financially motivated.

Walters went on to talk to other members of the family. Apparently, when Mo’Nique married her current husband Sidney Hicks, she had been helping to support the family. Eventually Hicks persuaded Mo’Nique, for all intents and purposes, that she should stop doing this, particularly with her history of abuse within the family. This decision has put a severe crimp in the family’s finances, despite appeals to Mo’Nique for help. So Gerald Imes decided to go on any talk show, not just Oprah’s, to admit to the abuse, hoping that that the spigot would be turned on once more, and they would be again one big, happy family.

I don’t think that’s going to happen:

[…] RadarOnline.com has learned that Mo’Nique is less than happy with how Oprah’s interview turned out and her relationship with both her brother and her parents, who also appeared on the episode, is now worse than ever.

The source added: “Oprah and Mo’Nique were never the best of friends… Mo’Nique was less than impressed with how the interview played out as she felt that her brother lied and that it was not sympathetic enough towards her.

“She was particularly upset that Gerald lied to Oprah that he molested her while she was sleeping because she was wide awake and scared of him.

“Also, she is angry that he did not get any help or enter a rehab and she does not trust him around children.

“Oprah asked her to appear on her show again for another interview but at this point she has declined the invitation.

If Radar Online’s account is in any way true, this is a mess.

I don’t blame Mo’Nique or Oprah. Oprah, as an incest survivor, probably thought that she was showing the other side of the story by helping Gerald come clean with the abuse. Mo’Nique, as I said before, needs counseling if she hasn’t gotten it yet. So does the family in tandem with Mo’Nique. But I do blame the family and that reprobate Gerald Imes. Do I think that Walters’ story is true? Yes. I don’t think that Walters’ explanation this morning was a bid to downgrade Oprah’s efforts or her show; and in fact, she congratulated Oprah on the scoop. But it’s reasonable to believe that the family held back from Oprah after spilling some of the beans with Walters. I think that Walters, despite some of my previous displeasure and dissatisfaction with her work, was right in this case not to interview Imes because the Smell Factor seemed pretty putrid as it would to any journalist worth their salt. Both Walters and Oprah are in the entertainment industry, but both started out as journalists. Verdict: if one or both stories from Radar and Walters are true, Oprah should have been more careful.

One more thing. Mo’Nique’s parents were middle-class. Her father was a drug counselor and her mother was an engineer. Mo’Nique was the youngest of four children. She did not have a poverty-stricken childhood.

Shaking down a relative in exchange for an admission of guilt?

SMDH.

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