Selma Blair accuses ex-Cranbrook dean of sexual assault in new book
Actress Selma Blair — a Hollywood darling of the late ’90s and early ’00s — is making headlines this week, talking about her new memoir “Mean Baby,” which reveals harrowing life details, including some growing up in Michigan.
Blair, who is turning 50 next month, chronicles bouts of alcoholism starting at 7 years old and lasting for decades, two suicide attempts and sexual assault incidents, including one which she said happened to her as a teenager at Cranbrook.
Blair accuses a Cranbrook Schools dean of kissing and touching her.
“We embraced. It felt too long and too still and too quiet,” she wrote, noting that it was during her freshman year. “His hand went to the small of my back, tracing the space just above my tailbone. His lips were on my mouth.”
She did not identify him by name.
The bombshell, published Wednesday by People magazine ahead of the book’s May 17 release, was previously unknown to the elite private prep school in Bloomfield Hills, Clay Matthews, the school’s director of communications, told the Free Press.
Matthews said the school reported what Blair wrote to local police.
The school also, Matthews said, has urged alumni, students and anyone else who might have experience or know instances of sexual misconduct, abuse and harassments to report them.
“The school did make us aware this article was coming out,” Bloomfield Hills Police Lt. Dustin Lockard said Thursday, adding that Blair has not filed a formal report and there is no investigation underway. “If the victim wants to come forward and file a complaint, she’s more than welcome to do so. But we don’t chase down everything we’ve heard in a book or article.”
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Still, even though her allegation is 35 years old and against someone who Cranbrook said Thursday no longer works at the school, it underscores how seriously society and schools are now taking sex abuse, harassment and rape.
In the past few years, there have been several accounts of sexual abuse and harassment experiences nationwide and in Michigan, including the #MeToo campaign, Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious U.S. Supreme Court nomination, scandals at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and an earlier accusation at Cranbrook.
Blair’s recollection also is potentially damaging to Cranbrook’s reputation, especially given that the school highlights Blair — who went on to study at Kalamazoo College and graduate from the University of Michigan — among its most notable alumni.
Cranbrook said Thursday morning that so far, Blair has not contact the school about the incident and is unaware whether she contacted a private firm that the school hired to look into an earlier allegation by another Cranbrook graduate.
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In April, Cranbrook sent a letter to institution stakeholders that it hired an attorney to investigate a recent report of sexual misconduct by a former — now dead — faculty member six decades ago.
That employee had worked at the school from 1946 to 1961.
The letter also acknowledged that sexual misconduct has “grown over the last decade,” said that “student safety and support” was the school’s “highest concern,” and urged additional reports to be made to the independent investigator.
Blair, a Southfiled native and 1990 Cranbrook graduate, is the youngest of four daughters and shortened her name from Selma Blair Beitner.
Before attending Cranbrook, she attended Hillel Day School in Farmington Hills.
Early in her career, she appeared in TV commercials but later starred in movies. Some of her best known roles were in “Cruel Intentions,” “Legally Blonde” and “The Sweetest Thing.”
More recently, she has publicly discussed living with multiple sclerosis, and was the subject of a 2021 documentary, “Introducing, Selma Blair,” which showed how the actress and mother has adapted to living with the disease.
This week, Blair appeared on NBC’s “Today” and talked to host Savannah Guthrie.
In her book, Blair called the Cranbrook dean a “mentor and friend” and recalled in vivid detail what she was wearing — dress-code-approved Ralph Lauren khakis tucked into a plaid shirt — the day she said she was touched.
“He didn’t rape me. He didn’t threaten me. But he broke me. Nothing ever happened again, but I never felt safe,” she wrote, adding her mother told her she “must not tell anybody.”
At the end of her senior year, Blair added, the dean congratulated her for winning an award, turned to her mother and said, “You must be so proud.” She replied to him: “I know what you did. Stay away from my daughter.”
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.