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| - Fact Check: Was Tom Hanks arrested in Australia for pedophilia?
A misleading post on social media claims that Hollywood actor Tom Hanks was arrested in Australia for paedophilia.
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India Today Fact Check
The pictures of Tom Hanks being circulated were taken recently in Los Angeles. There are no media reports of the actor being arrested in Australia for pedophilia.
Hollywood star Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson are now officially Greek citizens. On July 26, Greece Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made the announcement on his Instagram handle.
Amid this, a picture collage of the “Forrest Gump” star is being shared on social media with the claim that he was arrested in Australia for paedophilia. It is being said that the news of Hanks being Covid-positive and in quarantine was an attempt to cover up his time in custody.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be false. Hanks was not arrested in Australia for paedophilia.
The viral collage has four images one showing Hanks covering his face with a green bandana, another of the actor standing beside his car, and the other two focusing on the bottommost part of his trouser. Red circles are drawn around his right ankle.
The collage has been shared with the caption, “Look who has a new ankle bracelet! Tom Hanks. Some of you don’t know it but Mr Hanks was arrested in Australia for paedophilia. He went on national TV to say he had COVID-19 and he was quarantine himself. Not true. He was in custody for a time then house arrest is n his hotel. Now, he’s a flight risk.”
The archived version of the post can be seen here.
AFWA probe
We did a keyword search to find reports related to the alleged arrest of the Hollywood actor on charges of paedophilia but did not find any. Had he committed such a crime, it would have been given massive coverage by the media.
Next, we reverse searched the images in the collage. This led us to a “Daily Mail” report, published on May 21, about the actor being spotted in Los Angeles. Pictures used in the collage are the same ones as carried in the report.
In the report, the picture of Hanks standing beside his car carries the caption, “Once bitten: Despite having already beaten COVID-19, Tom Hanks wasn’t willing to take any chances on Wednesday, with the Forrest Gump star covering his face with a green bandana when he ventured out in Los Angeles”.
Coming to the part in the claim where it says he was wearing an ankle bracelet, we found it was merely his trousers rolled up. No ankle bracelet is visible in a couple of pictures in the collage upon close observation. Had he worn any such bracelet, it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by the media.
In many countries, paedophiles and others on surveillance are made to wear GPS ankle bracelets so that their movements can be tracked. We found a report related to this on “Daily Mail Australia”. However, Hanks isn’t one of them.
When Hanks tested Covid-positive
Hanks was shooting for the Elvis Presley biopic in Australia when he and his wife Rita tested positive for Covid-19. He had announced this on March 12 on Twitter.
In mid-April, there were reports of Hanks being released from the hospital. He had even expressed his feelings after recovering from Covid-19 in a virtual press conference.
He had said, “I have no idea when I will go back to work. Nobody has any idea of when they will go back to work. But the time will come. We just don't know when. Everything comes into play there are financial concerns, there are legal concerns, liabilities.”
Therefore, the claim that Tom Hanks was arrested in Australia for paedophilia and the story of his Covid-19 infection and quarantine was a cover-up to his time in custody is false. Fact-check website PolitiFact had earlier debunked the claim too.
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