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It’s the level of details in Harvey Weinstein’s victim’s accounts that make most of us feel even more uncomfortable. Whether it be the repetitive attempts to coerce a woman to massage him, the threats of killing her career should she dare try to leave the room or, in the most recent reveal, the exact sum of money Weinstein’s inner circle attempted to use to silence the women.
Earlier this month, Rose McGowan – after keeping quiet for years – revealed Weinstein did indeed rape her in a hotel room in 1997. The actress was just 24-years-old at the time and received AUD $130 000 to remain quiet. In September 2016, 19 years after the abuse, Weinstein – who had obviously clued in that the media were about to expose him – again offered McGowan hush money: AUD $1.3 million dollars in exchange for signing a nondisclosure agreement. It became apparent to McGowan only at this point that the first agreement had never included a confidentiality clause.
“I had all these people I’m paying telling me to take it so that I could fund my art,” Ms. McGowan told the New York Times. The actress, now 44 and savvy AF, told her lawyer to go back and demand AUD $7.82 million and to do so within the same 24-hour period before the New York Times published their outing of the film mogul. “I figured I could probably have gotten him up to three [U.S. million],” she said. “But I was like — ew, gross, you’re disgusting, I don’t want your money, that would make me feel disgusting.”
Speaking at the Women’s Convention in Detroit across the weekend, the Charmed and Scream actress spoke to a room of hundreds as she declared “the scarlet letter is theirs; it is not ours”. Watch her powerful speech here.
