Scott Savol’s Past Revealed – But Will It Matter?

Time and time again, we have found out that our American Idol contestants have things in their past that they are not exactly proud of. Yesterday, The Smoking Gun dug up information once again – this time on current contestant Scott Savol. However, somebody claiming to be a relative has already sprung to his defense.

The information presented by The Smoking Gun, which includes a Shaker Heights, Ohio, police investigative report, an offense/incident report, and a temporary protection order. From these documents, we see that in February 2001, Scott and his then-fiancé got into an argument after they decided to split up and Scott was moving out. The argument escalated and Scott grabbed his fiancé’s hand to remove the engagement ring. He also said, according to the reports, that he was going to take their three-week-old son.

Scott allegedly grabbed the baby and his fiancé said she would call 911 unless he relented. According to the report, Scott grabbed the phone and pushed his fiancé and then threw it at her, hitting her in the chest and breaking the phone. Scott then left.

The police arrived and Scott’s fiancé indicated that she didn’t want to press charges, though she claimed he had made earlier threats to her and told her to “watch her back.” According to the documents and The Smoking Gun, Scott’s fiancé then got the order of protection from him and the next day agreed to sign off on a warrant for his arrest.

Scott was arrested and later agreed to plea to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. He was fined $500, sentenced to a 20-day suspended jail term, put on probation for a year, ordered to complete a program for anger management or domestic violence, and had the temporary protection order extended through July 2002.

In addition, The Smoking Gun pointed out that Scott had pled “no contest” to a misdemeanor charge of trespass in 1995 after he had been warned to stay out of Shaker Heights High School and entered the building anyway.

As soon as this information became public, people began wondering if American Idol producers knew about Scott’s background or if we would have another Corey Clark situation on our hands.

Presumably, Idol has gotten better about background checks, and there is no reason they would have missed this. Idol contestants have also presumably gotten smart and know better than to try to hide things from their past. The reality here is that Scott was apparently guilty of two misdemeanors, one from ten years ago and one from four. We’re not talking mass murder here.

In addition, as soon as the information was revealed, a woman who says she is Scott’s aunt and has been posting throughout the season under the name of “Aunt Janet” on the official Idol message board posted her own account of the events at issue. She said, “First and foremost, American Idol was and is fully aware of this incident. Scott was very up front with any information regarding his past – American Idol asked and Scott bared his entire past, keeping nothing hidden from them.” (Emphasis in original.)

From there, she went on to say that the police report was wrong about several things. For one, the phone hit the wall, not his fiancé’s chest (which would better explain why it broke). She also said that Scott’s fiancé definitely did not want to prosecute Scott and that police went ahead without her. One reason the charges were reduced, according to “Aunt Janet,” is that his fiancé wrote a letter to the court on Scott’s behalf.

Furthermore, “Aunt Janet” notes that Scott put these events behind him and became a “State Certified Corrections Officer” in April 2002, and then was hired by a security company in June 2004.

Some viewers and people who posted to the Idol message board have said that American Idol does not just provide us with a singing star, but with, well, an Idol. Therefore, they say, a family show like AI should not keep a man on it who has a history of violence. Others have noted that many people have made mistakes in life, and these were merely two misdemeanors. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me if the same people saying Scott should be booted for his past were also those saying Fantasia did not deserve to be the Idol last year because she had an out-of-wedlock child. We saw how far they got with that.

“Aunt Janet” ended her message with a succinct summary: “Scott made a mistake, paid his dues, changed his life for the better and moved on.” Now the question is whether Scott’s fans will use this to spark even more votes in his favor, if the naysayers will win out and people will abandon Scott, or if viewers will simply make their choices based on his performances.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of Foxes On Idol, and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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