The youngest of Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman's four children, Abe, who was raised in Berkeley, has been brought up on a criminal rape charge in New York, where he is attending college.

Bay Area authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman are now supporting their youngest son and youngest child as he faces criminal prosecution in New York City. As the New York Post first reported, 20-year-old Abraham Chabon was charged on June 12 with second-degree strangulation and first-degree rape, stemming from an incident that allegedly occurred in January 2024.

The younger Chabon, 21, who has at times gone by Abe Waldman, is accused of grabbing a woman by the neck and applying pressure to the point of strangulation. According to prosecutors, Chabon continued to choke the woman while carrying her to a bed, and then raped her while also striking her repeatedly in the face "causing stupor and loss of vision in one eye." According to statements in a police report, the woman experienced "pain, swelling and bruising to her neck and face."

The incident allegedly happened in a building on East 12th Street, according to the complaint.

In a statement to the New York Times, an attorney for Chabon, Priya Chaudhry, said that her client "is innocent and was as shocked by these false allegations as anyone." Chaudhry added that "Mr. Chabon has strong family support and a devoted partner who all believe in his innocence. We hope the prosecutor’s investigation reveals his innocence quickly."

Chabon is now out on bail, which was set last week at $45,000 cash or $150,000 bond.

Abe Chabon is the son whom Michael Chabon wrote about in a GQ piece in 2016, about a trip they took to Paris Men's Fashion Week that was a bar mitzvah present for then 13-year-old Abe. The boy was interested at the time in a possible career in men's fashion, and Chabon wrote, "Abe was just a kid who loved clothes. He loved talking about them, looking at them, and wearing them, and when it came to men's clothing, in particular the hipper precincts of streetwear, he knew his shit." And, "From the moment he became himself, what made Abe different—from his siblings, from classmates, from most of the children who have ever lived—was the degree of comfort he felt with being different."

Both mother and father have written about their experiences being parents, Waldman most notably in a 2005 essay that made her infamous on mommy blogs for saying that her love for her husband was more passionate, and of a different quality, than her love for her children. That infamy ultimately led to what she's described as a very uncomfortable Oprah appearance, and her 2009 memoir Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace, which became a bestseller.

As the Times notes, Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay has been adapted into an opera that has it's premiere at New York's Met this fall. Chabon's second-most-recent novel, 2012's Telegraph Avenue, is set in Oakland and Berkeley.

Top image: Novelists Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon attend the 20th Annual AFI Awards at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on January 03, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images for AFI)