February 15th, 1990. On his namesake talk show program Geraldo Rivera brings us ‘Telephone Terror’; women who have been victimized and a man who used to make 25-50 calls to unknown females, per day.
“Does the drug addict who needs the fix, does he realize the harm he’s doing to himself? Does the alcoholic who reaches for that drink because he needs it to exist, does he realize that it’s hurting him?”
We review the cases of the women in studio before questioning the man on stage. He claims to have not realized the harm he was causing when making the calls, and this epiphany only came later. We hear the horrific cases and the fear involved for these women, one of whom was raped. Alarmingly in the majority of these cases there were few avenues to make the harassing telephone calls stop.
This day, Geraldo’s television history.