by Lisa O'Carroll
October 31, 2017
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Sophie Morris: ‘I was very scared and was in a room with this powerful man and in this compromising situation.’ Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian
The Metropolitan police were made aware of alleged sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein at the Savoy hotel in London more than 25 years ago by a 19-year-old, it has been claimed.
However, it appears that no investigation took place because the woman dropped the complaint after Weinstein allegedly learned that she had reported it to the police.
Speaking for the first time in public about the incident, which took place in 1990 or 1991, Sophie Morris said she had “shut down” the incident in her mind ever since but had decided to go public because she wished to show the film producer’s victims were not only celebrities and would-be actors.
“My main point in speaking out is that I was never part of this world, I was never an aspiring actress looking for a part, I was a 19-year-old person doing admin, earning a bit of extra cash in my year out after my A-levels,” she said. “There could be others like me who want to speak out but haven’t. It is easier for actresses to speak out because they have Hollywood behind them.”
Her disclosures to the Guardian and BBC News came as the Metropolitan police announced they had widened the investigation into Weinstein, with seven alleged victims coming forward between 12 and 28 October this year.
Morris said she might raise her complaint with police again. “Part of me does want to re-report it, because we need to stack up these cases against him because he’s going to keep denying them. If they tell me I would need to re-report it, I would definitely pursue it,” said Morris.
Morris, 44, who works in events, was working as an intern at Miramax just after completing her A-levels when she was asked to go to the London hotel where Weinstein stayed when in the capital.
“I was in his lounge in his suite manning the phones and he called me to the bathroom,” she said. “The door was ajar and I could see him in the bath naked. He asked me to come in and I was standing there and not quite understanding the situation.
“I was 19 and was just covering for a friend for a few days in my year off work after school. I said no, and went back to the desk. The next thing, he called me again; this time he was in the bedroom and he was on the bed naked. I remember this disgusting rash all over his body and he kept telling me it was a medical condition and it was being sorted, as if I cared.”
She said that he asked her to massage him and told her that he would not ejaculate if she did so. “The next thing, I remember my top coming off,” she went on. “And I can’t remember if he asked me to take it off and I was doing it myself or if he was trying to do it. I was very scared and was in a room with this powerful man and in this compromising situation.
“Something must have clicked in me and I got out of the room and went back to the desk. I remember someone phoning and asked me was I alright. She must have sensed from my voice that I wasn’t and she told me to leave. I got out of the room. Then I saw he had put the do not disturb sign on his room. I really remember that,” she said.
Shaken by the experience, Morris returned home to Wandsworth, south London, where she told her boyfriend and younger sister but felt too ashamed to tell her parents at the time.
Her sister Tess, who was 13 or 14 and is now a screenwriter in Hollywood, said she remembered Sophie coming home that day and knew something had happened.
“I have a visual memory of her standing in the hallway in the family house and she was telling me she didn’t know what to do, and she felt ashamed and wanted to move on,” said Tess.
The next day, Sophie Morris returned to the Miramax office and told her bosses what had happened. When they asked if she wanted to report it to the police, she said yes but added that she did not want to attend a police station.
Coincidentally, her boss was going out with a policeman at the time, and she arranged for Sophie to report it in her flat in Finsbury Park, north London. “Even though it was in her flat, it was still official, because I got a case number, I remember that,” said Sophie.
However, within days Morris changed her mind about the police. “I remember I got a call from this woman who ran the office and who said that Harvey wanted to speak to me. I did not want to speak to him. I was scared. I was 19 and had no responsible adult to talk to about this. I hadn’t even told my mum or dad what had happened. I told her I didn’t want to speak to him. I assumed that they had told him I had gone to the police and I told her I would drop the case.
“I never heard anything again,” said Morris.
Scotland Yard said it could not say if it had a record of the incident, but said “anyone with allegations of sexual assault should report it to police”.
Rachel Adamson, a criminal lawyer with Slater Gordon, which handled many of the claims for victims of Jimmy Savile, said it would have been routine in the 1990s for police to drop cases if women dropped complaints.
“There has really been a political and social change since then because of the publicity around domestic violence and police do investigate to find out why complainants drop cases,” she said.
