Joan Rivers apparently has no sympathy for the women locked in Ariel Castro’s Ohio “house of horrors” for a decade before their rescue last year.
Rivers compared her daughter’s Malibu guestroom to the three women’s plight, saying, “Those women in the basement in Cleveland had more space.”
That was on the Today show, and she doubled down on the comment Wednesday with another inappropriate joke, calling the victims freeloaders.
“They got to live rent free for more than a decade,” the defiant Rivers, 80, told TMZ, and when asked for comment by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, said:
“I’m a comedienne. There is nothing to apologize for. I made a joke. It’s what I do. Calm down. Calm f–k down. I’m a comedienne. They’re free, so let’s move on."
For the women involved, the jokes didn’t go over well.
Attorneys for Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, two of the former captives freed May 6, called the “unfortunate comparison” both “shocking and disappointing."
They said the women have endured immense pain and this is "a new low" that warrants an apology, despite the fact that Rivers is an equal-opportunity offender.
She’s known for outspoken comments about people in the public eye … most recently joking about Lindsay Lohan’s miscarriage (see video below).
But did Joan Rivers cross a line this time?
Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and a third woman, Michelle Knight, escaped last year. Their kidnapper, Ariel Castro, hanged himself in prison in September.