Altruistic World Online Library

by **admin** » Thu Nov 02, 2017 4:23 am

Harvey Weinstein and I at The Hotel Du Cap
by Zoe Brock
October 7, 2017

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

UPDATE: October 15th. This article was written in haste on October 8th, the day after I was sent a link to the NYT article that first exposed Weinstein’s abuse. Before I went to bed I heard that he was denying the accusations and threatening to sue the NYT. I woke up in a rage and hastily blurted out this story. The story is TRUE, however I have made some errors.

Even though I Googled the crap out of the Cannes Film Festival trying to figure out which year I was there, now that I have turned up a box full of old journals it appears I was there in 1998, not 1997.

On Oct 11th I added the name of Fabrizio Lombardo to the story. He is the man who helped fix this meeting for HW and made me feel safe and secure. I believe he was a fixer for HW and is responsible for helping procure women. I believe he was a friend of my agent. I saw Fabrizio later that week and he claimed to have no idea and was very apologetic and kind to me about what happened. He had a really lovely girlfriend called Claudia Gerini and they both invited me to visit them in Rome a couple of weeks later. I arrived late in the day and discovered they had only had one bed. When I made it clear I was not going to be their third wheel I slept on a sofa and had to endure the sounds of them having really loud sex. It was too late to train back out, I was too broke to get a hotel and too scared to sleep on the streets.

I originally and erroneously named and shamed the wrong person as Harvey Weinstein’s assistant and for that I am ashamed, horrified, deeply sorry and very humbled. The correct name is Rick Schwartz as you can see by the Majestic Hotel business card he wrote his name on in the aftermath of the assault. The business card was found on the other side of the world in an old Filofax I have not used in years. This was updated on Oct 12th. I am mortified that I made this mistake and know it will be used against me to refute my claims and undermine my credibility but I will persevere. I knew that the last name was of Jewish origin and started with S, and I confused the guilty party with another man I met in passing years ago in Hollywood. I won’t bring his name back into the discussion. It is Schwartz who needs the attention, not he.

On Oct 13th I added a screenshot of Rufus Sewell’s Tweet validating and corroborating my story.

On Oct 15th I added a photo of the note HW sent me with roses the next day. He was inviting me out again as if nothing had happened. This note is what caused me to make my agent, Vittorio Zeviani, promise that I would never have to see HW again.

These updates and errors are being highlighted to have full transparency. This story only becomes bigger, scarier and more serious as more survivors come forward. I am not a reporter and yet I still should have waited and done proper diligence to the story. As this story progresses and more truth is brought into the light it is clear that I am very. very lucky to have escaped unharmed. I believe Harvey Weinstein is a serial predator and that there is no clinic in the world that can cure him. He belongs behind bars for the rest of his life. This story is the tip of an enormous iceberg.

I was only 23 when I was ‘Harveyed’. It was 1997. I was a street smart kid with a tougher skin than most, and I came out of my experience with Weinstein physically unscathed, but that doesn’t make the story less shocking or emotionally jarring.

Twenty year old business card from the night in question. Rick Schwartz’s handwriting.

As a model I was used to predatory men and had become adept at brushing off unwanted advances and putting creepy perverts in their place. I had protected other, younger models from flashers and gropers, and had even scared away a knife wielding attacker on the Paris Metro by laughing in his face. He didn’t know it was a nervous reaction and probably thought I was crazier than he. But, all in all, I was still a naive girl from New Zealand, and no matter how tough I thought I was, I was completely out of my depth and very trusting.

I met Harvey Weinstein in Cannes at the Film Festival. We were seated next to each other at a fancy dinner. I didn’t catch his name and assumed I was talking to another hungry producer trying to sell a little movie to the big wigs. Feeling sorry for him, I went out of my way to be entertaining and nice. It wasn’t until later in the meal that I asked the name of his production company.

“Miramax.”

I laughed and told Harvey that we had a friend in common. Miramax had recently released the Oscar winning film ‘The Piano’ made by a family friend, Jane Campion. I told Harvey that Jane felt like a pseudo god-mother to me and related a story of how, when I was an angry teenager in a fight with my mom, she had given me a note that read “If you ever need to run away…” and made me feel like I had an ally.

With a dear mutual friend in common I felt safe with Harvey. The night was young and so was I. After dinner our large group, which included my Italian modelling agent, Vittorio Zeviani, a few rich douchebags, some decorative models, and Harvey’s entourage, rolled out into the Cannes night. Black town cars and gleaming limos took us to various parties where we glittered and shone like everyone else.

Harvey and his assistant, Rick Schwartz, never left my side.

It was fun. The last time I’d been in the South of France was in 1990. I had watched helplessly as Helena Christensen vomited all over the bathroom at Jimmy’s after doing too much blow with Michael Hutchence and Jacques Chirac, who was in between his various Presidencies of France. In 1990 I was 16. Now, at 23 I was pretty jaded. Celebrities and their antics were old news. I could hold my own.

Around midnight we ended up at a beautiful outdoor event at a mansion somewhere in a residential part of Cannes. Everyone was there, and everyone was fabulous. I saw Bono across the room. He yelled “Dolphin Girl!” and waved. I explained to Harvey that this wasn’t a nickname that had anything to do with the popular sex toy, but a name I earned after a particularly weird night in Sydney, and a 3am skinny dipping adventure that scared the crap out of U2's bodyguards.

In retrospect I was putting on a tempting show. I didn’t intend to titillate Mr Weinstein - I had no intention of leading him on. I felt safe in his company to be myself, and at no time in the evening did I feel anything but platonic energy from him.

Shortly after midnight my crew made moves to leave. We were staying on a large yacht moored in the bay and required water taxis to get us back out to it. Harvey and Rick offered us their cars and herded us towards the exit. My group was ushered into one car and I was somehow separated from them and told to get into another car with Harvey and his two friends. Stupidly, I obliged. I was told we were all going to the same place.

To this day I do not know if Vittorio was in on the ruse. My instincts tell me he was.

We started driving. The 5 minute drive to the waterfront was taking longer and I asked where we were headed.

“Change of plans! We’re all meeting at the Du Cap for one more drink.”

It’s a 30 minute drive to the Du Cap and it was close to 1am when we got there. We headed upstairs to Harvey’s room and opened another bottle of champagne while we waited for the gang to arrive.

But the gang never arrived.

After a few minutes a couple of the guys made motions to leave temporarily to make calls. The energy shifted and I became very uncomfortable. I turned to Rick and asked him to please get in touch with my friends immediately and find out where they were. Rick said he would go downstairs and see if they were having trouble getting up to the room, and left.

And suddenly I was alone in a remote hotel suite with Harvey fucking Weinstein.

My body went into high alert. I was drunk, young, miles from home, without cash to get a cab, and no cell phone. The water taxis were about to stop running for the night. It was time to sober up, and fast.

Harvey left the room, but not for long. He re-emerged naked a couple of minutes later and asked if I would give him a massage. Panicking, in shock, I remember weighing up the options and wondering how much I needed to placate him to keep myself safe. He asked if I would like a massage instead, and for a second I thought this might be a way to give him an inch without him taking a mile.

I told him I was uncomfortable and that I was angry that I had been tricked into this position. He pleaded with me to let him massage me and I let him put his hands on my shoulders while my mind raced.

How could I make it to the door? Who would help me? Would anyone hear me if I screamed?

I took note of the thick walls. I remembered the way the staff had simpered and ingratiated themselves to the film titan when we came in. I took stock of the other men who had enabled this situation, lying to my face to lure me here. The realization sunk in. I had no friends at the Du Cap. I had visions of my lifeless body being thrown onto the rocks below.

I was terrified.

I’m fortunate, however, to have a gene that makes me really angry and focused when I’m scared. It’s gotten me out of more than one scrape and it wasn’t going to fail me now. I shrugged Harvey’s hands off me, ran into the bathroom and locked the door. Harvey chased me, dick, balls and all, and banged on the door with his fists, pleading with me to come out.

There was no bathroom phone. Dammit! I looked around. Nothing but little bottles of fancy toiletries and a hair dryer. I was going to have to talk myself out of this one.

I felt outside of my body as I assessed my situation and heard myself, a 23 year old girl from New Zealand, reprimand this grown man as if he was a small child.

“This is unacceptable. Put your clothes on you naughty, naughty boy.”

Harvey, contrite, promised to cover himself and leave me alone. I came out of the bathroom and found him sitting on his bed, wearing a bathrobe, crying.

“You don’t like me because I’m fat.” He whimpered.

“Are you serious?” I yelled. “I’m fucking furious at you. You chased me around naked and scared me. You acted like a friend and then tricked me. This is no way to behave. Shame on you.”

“I’m sorry.” He cried. “How can I make it up to you?”

“Get me home. Now.”

Harvey dressed and made a call. Rick arrived looking ashen and uncomfortable. He couldn’t meet my eye. I had really liked him too. I felt so betrayed and used.

The three of us went downstairs to where the town car was waiting. We got into the back. Harvey sat in the middle. I was silent. Rick and I stared straight ahead. The ride was bizarre. Harvey, clearly wanting to show some kind of remorse, or win back my affections, began to speak some nonsense about making me a star. At one point he said “I want to be your Rock of Gibraltar”.

I still don’t know what that means.

The water taxis weren’t running and I was stranded on the shore, but Harvey kept the penthouse suite at the Majestic Hotel for ‘emergencies’ and we headed there. While he went to the front desk to tell them I would be staying Rick took the opportunity to apologize to me.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I want you to know that of all the girls he does this to you are the one I really felt bad about. You deserve better.”

This comment made me nauseous. It was an admission of his sycophantic enabling. I could see the guy felt truly remorseful. He was near tears. But I could also tell that he had no idea how messed up this ‘apology’ was. How many girls were there? Did this shit happen every day?

Harvey returned. The two men accompanied me up to the suite and Harvey told me I could help myself to anything and that he would arrange transport back to my boat for me in the morning.

We bid each other a terse farewell and I triple locked the door.

It was 3:30am.

I looked around. The lover in me of great stories was amused now that I was safe. I called my mother in Australia and woke her up to tell her the story. I helped myself to the mini bar and had a drink. I remembered a new actor acquaintance I had met that week who was staying in the hotel and called reception. I was put through to his room and woke him up.

“Rufus? It’s Zoe. Sorry to wake you but…”

“Don’t tell me. You’ve been Weinsteined?”

“How the f… ?”

“I was trying to warn you all night.” He said. “He does this to everyone. How do you think girls get parts in his movies?”

He went on to list a slew of female actresses who he had heard had slept with Weinstein to get roles. He told me that everyone in Hollywood knew and no one did anything to stop it. Clearly the victim-shaming rumor mill had already been working overtime.

“I missed it. I’m so stupid.”

“Do not go to sleep,” he warned. “Harvey doesn’t sleep. He will be back.”

I hung up.

Rufus Sewell is my hero.

At 6am the water taxis began running and I was already waiting on the dock. The air was warm and the sleeping town of Cannes looked peaceful as it dwindled into the distance. Dressed in yesterday’s evening wear, with what was left of yesterday’s make up, I did not make a pretty picture.

I boarded our yacht and spent some time leaning over the railings, feeling the breeze in my hair, looking back at the town and the last of its streetlights flickering in the distance. I took stock of the night and felt grateful for my assertiveness. Finally, exhausted, I slunk down to my cabin.

A couple of hours later, over breakfast, the smirks and knowing winks that passed between my group made me feel unsupported, disbelieved, whorish and cheap. No one believed my story. They all thought I had slept with Weinstein. My indignant denials were further invalidated when 13 red roses were delivered by water taxi out to the yacht, with a note that thanked me for last night.

Travel scrapbook from 1997–1998 includes the note HW sent with roses and, on another page, a sentence that reads ‘Every victim is a survivor who doesn’t know it yet’ and another ‘Being brave doesn’t mean being unafraid. It often means being afraid and doing it anyway’.

No thank you, you sociopathic freak.

Humiliated, I told my agent I never wanted see Weinstein again and demanded that we did not attend any events with him for the rest of the festival. Vittorio promised me we would not see Harvey again.

Comforted, I spent the day catching up on sleep.

That afternoon I was told we would spend the evening seeing a premiere of John Turturro’s new movie. We dined on the boat and readied for another night on the town. Cars collected us from the dock and took us to a small theatre.

Inside, it was empty.

There was no one there.

The theatre was just for us.

Vittorio, giddy with excitement, informed us that the theatre had been rented for our small party as a gift.

We sat down to watch the movie. As the lights dimmed a large, heavy set man entered the cinema and took the seat directly behind me. I knew who it was.

The opening credits began to roll and the Miramax Films sequence glittered onto the screen.

In the twenty years that have passed since this story took place I have told it many times. Every time I tell it I’m enraged anew at the culture of misogyny and abuse that is rife with powerful men in every industry. Every time I tell it I’m disgusted, all over again, at the insidious ‘bro-codes’ that many men subscribe to. A code that says it’s okay to enable your friends and employers to intimidate, threaten and manipulate women into sexual situations against their will. A culture that sees women as prey.

But most of all I remember the statement Weinstein made as he cried on his bed.

“You don’t like me because I’m fat”.

That says it all. Hearing those words the first time I saw, in an instant, an unattractive, overweight kid who never got the girl in high school, and went on to become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world so he could take revenge on the girls who rebuffed him when he was young.

I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

Later in the week I would discover from Rufus Sewell that he did in fact see Harvey in the Majestic Hotel elevator shortly after 7am that morning, heading up to the suite.

I like to imagine his face when he found it empty.

I saw Weinstein years later in Los Angeles when I was working as a hostess at Ago Ristorante. I was trying to be an actress and could really have used a ‘Rock of Gibraltar’. He looked at me and I turned away.

Nothing was worth the price I would have to pay.

I wish I had spoken up sooner. I wish I hadn’t thought this type of behavior was normal at the time. I wish I had thought there was something, anything, I could do to stop him from hurting women all these years. I wish this type of man was not so prevalent. And I wish I had learned from this experience and not ended up in a relationship with a man just like him. There is not a woman I know who hasn’t been emotionally or physically tormented, threatened, intimidated, abused and terrified at the hands of bullies like Weinstein and Donald Trump (another creep I met in the late 1990’s). Society condones it. Women forgive it. Men enable it. I’d like to thank the New York Times for exposing this beast and giving me the courage and impetus to tell my story, Ronan Farrow for his expose, and Sharon Waxman for endeavoring to rip the lid off this horror story in 2004.

by **admin** » Thu Nov 02, 2017 5:13 am

Claire Forlani on Harvey Weinstein Encounters: "I Escaped Five Times"
by Ashley Lee
10:48 AM PDT 10/12/2017

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Getty Images
Claire Forlani

Claire Forlani has shared her experience of meeting with Harvey Weinstein, and said that she "escaped five times."

The actress — who starred in Meet Joe Black and has been featured on Hawaii Five-0, NCIS: Los Angeles and CSI: NY — was among the cast of the Miramax-distributed 2000 film Boys and Girls. She took to Twitter to recount how she "ducked, dived and ultimately got out of" her meetings with the Hollywood producer. She said she was previously approached by Ronan Farrow to participate in his New Yorker exposé, but decided against it and ultimately regrets doing so.

"[Farrow] didn’t mention that it was about Harvey but when I received the email I instinctively knew it was going to be. I told some close men around me and they all advised me not to speak. I had already told Ronan I would speak with him but from the advice around me, interestingly the male advice around me, I didn’t make the call," she said. "Today I sit here feeling some shame, like I’m not a woman supporting other women. I just read Mira Sorvino’s article in Time and she writes of how scared she was to speak out and participate. I take little solace in that.

"You see, nothing happened to me with Harvey — by that I mean, I escaped 5 times," she recalled. "I had two Peninsula Hotel meetings in the evening with Harvey and all I remember was I ducked, dived and ultimately got out of there without getting slobbered over, well just a bit. Yes, massage was suggested. The three dinners with Harvey I don’t really remember the time period, I was 25. I remember him telling me all the actresses who had slept with him and what he had done for them. I wasn’t drinking the cool aid [sic], I knew Harvey was a master manipulator. He also announced to me at the last dinner I had with him at Dominic’s that his pilot knew to be on standby because he could never get me to sleep with him, to which I did what I always did, make light of the situation, a joke here or there and moved on. You see, I always thought I was a pro at handling these guys, I’d had a fair amount of experience. Sometimes I got angry, really angry. I wondered why I had Prey stamped on my forehead but this I kept to myself.

"This sort of thing was something my generation dealt with, all the time," the actress explained. "For me it started at age 14, my parents had two male friends who I trusted and adored and they were deeply inappropriate. It happened all the time when I modeled and it happened all through my twenties in the film business. For us it was something you weren’t supposed to make a big deal out of; it was sadly our normal."

Forlani then commended the women who have spoken up, about Weinstein and others over the years. "I remember when Thandie Newton spoke out about a director that I had also had a disgusting experience with and I felt scared even reading what she said publicly about him, thinking, ‘Damn, she’s gonna get crucified for that,’" she said. "Yet I was in awe for her bravery and balls, she was a female crusader, modern suffragette and I loved her for it. But I also knew I didn’t have those balls, too scared of the repercussions. This was because when you did react or tell a man to shove it, there were always repercussions. I was punished when I was brave. So I learned to let it go and carry on.

"I am feeling very moved that these brave women who came forward are creating alchemy of all bad, brutal ugliness. That maybe now a safe and respectful work environment for the generation coming up will happen. I feel excited, I really do, that this could be a thing of the past, that these men will now not feel they have carte blanche to intimidate, sexualize, bully and ultimately hurt women or girls. I’m not naïve enough to believe it can be eradicated but it can be a different time and that after all this pain, suffering and fear, it can be a new time in this business. I am proud of my community. I love what I do. There are so many beautiful people in this business. So may the bad seeds please leave the stage?”

Weinstein's decades of alleged sexual harassment claims were first detailed in last week's New York Times report and further explored in the New Yorker's exposé, which includes three claims of rape. He has since been fired from The Weinstein Co. and suspended by BAFTA, and USC's School of Cinematic Arts has rejected his $5 million endowment to grant scholarships to women directors. His producing credit has since been pulled from TWC's television shows, with Amazon reviewing its buzzy pair of upcoming shows from the company. A criminal investigation has been opened by the New York Police Department.

by **admin** » Thu Nov 02, 2017 5:31 am

French Actress Florence Darel Says Harvey Weinstein Propositioned Her While His Wife Was Next Door
by Peter Mikelbank @PMIKELBANK
October 12, 2017 AT 11:51AM EDT

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Another actress has come forward accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. French star Florence Darel says the movie mogul relentlessly pursued her in the mid ’90s and then propositioned her in a hotel room while his wife at the time, Eve Chilton, was in the room next door.

“I was in shock. I was in shock,” Darel, 49, tells PEOPLE about the alleged incident. “I was astonished. When you have someone so physically disgusting in front of you, continuing and continuing as though this was all perfectly normal… What happened to me may not be illegal but it was inappropriate. Very inappropriate.”

The actress’ career was on the rise when she says she met Weinstein. At the time of the alleged encounter, Darel was 26, fresh off a César nomination for Most Promising Actress for her performance alongside Gerard Depardieu in Uranus.

Weinstein, meanwhile, had just bought a small film she starred in: 1993’s Fausto. At the time, the producer was married to Chilton, his spouse from 1987–2004.

Florence Darel and Harvey Weinstein
PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/GETTY; ALEXANDER KOERNER/GETTY

As Darel claimed to Le Parisien Thursday, after meeting Weinstein at the film’s New York City launch in 1994, he began pursuing her — calling her repeatedly and asking to meet him. Suspecting his intentions, Darel said she pretended to be dating her costar to get him to back off.

That didn’t stop Weinstein though, Darel alleged. In 1995, she said she received a call from the producer at her parents house in France. He asked her to meet him at his suite at The Ritz in Paris, she claimed. Darel told Le Parisien that her agent pressured her into going, telling her, “You can’t afford not to go.”

Their encounter started off formal, said Darel, with Weinstein urging the actress to collaborate on a film.

Things quickly took a turn though, according to Darel. After yelling there was no jacuzzi in his room, Darel claimed Weinstein began to make moves on her — seemingly unbothered by the fact that his wife was next door.

“He started to tell me that he found me very attractive and wanted to have relations with me,” Darel told Le Parisien. “I told him I was very in love with my companion. He replied that didn’t bother him at all and offered to have me be his mistress a few days a year. That way we could continue to work together. Basically, it was ‘If you want to continue in America, you have to go through me.’ ”

Darel said she quickly left, telling Weinstein, “I’m sorry, I have to leave.”

Reflecting back on the incident, Darel tells PEOPLE she opened up to a few people around her about what had allegedly happened — including her agent and boyfriend — but mostly stayed quiet.

“What could I do? Could I go to the police and say, ‘This disgusting man made me an indecent proposal in his hotel room at The Ritz?’ They would have laughed at me. Even when you are raped it is difficult to prove and society in many cases, puts the burden of proof on women,” she says.

While Darel says Weinstein never made additional advances on her, she notes the alleged incident never left her mind.

“I couldn’t forget this story,” she tells PEOPLE. “Every time I saw Harvey Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival, it came back to me. I couldn’t avoid this and I would see him and he would treat me as though it hadn’t happened. As though he had moved on and put me aside.”

Florence Darel
BERTRAND RINDOFF PETROFF/GETTY

“What makes me angry is that this is only coming out now,” she adds. “Why? Why if everyone knew it, is it only coming out now?,” Darel said. “People can’t be silent. It is difficult for victims to talk, but they have to speak out or this will not stop.”

“This is not about me really. It’s more a general problem across society,” the actress says. “It is about powerful men who assume that their power can attain them anything. This is a product of many centuries, where men thought that for a woman to get what she wants, she must pay. It’s a societal problem which has to be changed.

“I’m not the point. This is behavior which men have to stop in themselves and not just in the movie business.”

Léa Seydoux
DOMINIQUE CHARRIAU/WIREIMAGE

Darel joins a chorus of women who have detailed similar accounts about the movie executive including Cara Delevingne, Ashley Judd, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, and fellow French actress Léa Seydoux (of Inglourious Basterds fame), who wrote a piece in The Guardian Wednesday detailing an alleged hotel room encounter with Weinstein.

In a bombshell New York Times report last week, eight women spoke out against Weinstein, accusing him of inappropriate behavior. The paper also reported that Weinstein reached private settlements with eight women, including actress Rose McGowan.

Following the initial report, Weinstein said in a statement that he was working with therapists and planned to “deal with this issue head-on.” He has since been fired from his powerhouse studio, The Weinstein Company, and his wife, Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman, has announced she’s leaving him.

“My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions. I have chosen to leave my husband. Caring for my young children is my first priority and I ask the media for privacy at this time,” Chapman said in a statement to PEOPLE.

Harvey Weinstein and Georgina Chapman
GISELA SCHOBER/GETTY

On Tuesday, Paltrow and Jolie added their own accounts of alleged mistreatment. Paltrow told the NYT that Weinstein sexually harassed her in a hotel room when she was 22. The encounter allegedly ended with Weinstein placing his hands on her and suggesting a massage.

Jolie also told the outlet that she had a “bad experience” with Weinstein in a hotel room during the release of Playing by Heart in the late ’90s.

Also on Tuesday, the The New Yorker revealed — among 13 different women’s accounts of alleged sexual harassment, assault or rape — that the mogul allegedly forcibly performed oral sex on Italian actress Asia Argento two decades ago. Actresses Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette also claimed that after rejecting Weinstein’s unwanted advances, they were removed from or kept from being hired for projects.

In response to the lengthy allegations made against Weinstein in the New Yorker piece, a spokesperson for Weinstein said, “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein.”

Weinstein spoke to cameras on Wednesday while leaving his daughter’s Los Angeles house, saying he was “not doing okay” and hoping for a “second chance” after amid the allegations.

A source confirmed to PEOPLE that the 65-year-old had flown out of Los Angeles to enter a residential treatment facility.

With reporting by Dave Quinn

by **admin** » Thu Nov 02, 2017 10:25 pm

Capitol Hill’s sexual harassment policy ‘toothless,’ ‘a joke’: 'Congress has been a breeding ground for a hostile work environment for far too long,' says one lawmaker aiming to overhaul its procedures.
by Rachel Bade and Elana Schor
10/27/2017 12:07 AM EDT

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

“There’s no accountability whatsoever,” Rep. Jackie Speier said Thursday.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Two female lawmakers and several congressional staffers are calling for an overhaul of Capitol Hill’s policies on sexual harassment, citing a culture of tolerance in a workplace long known as a boys’ club.

The sexual harassment scandals involving major Hollywood and media figures are focusing new attention on Congress’ procedures, which critics say are woefully inadequate for deterring bad behavior in an institution filled with powerful men and young aides trying to advance their careers. Each congressional office operates as its own small, tightly controlled fiefdom with its own rules and procedures, which makes it that much harder to come forward.

Lawmakers and congressional aides are not required to undergo sexual harassment training — a shortcoming even the office that handles complaints says should be changed. And victims must submit to as long as three months of mandated “counseling" and “mediation,” as well as what one lawyer involved in such cases called a "cooling off period," before filing a complaint against an alleged perpetrator.

That's assuming they're even aware of how to lodge a grievance.

One former staffer who said she was sexually harassed by a colleague years ago told POLITICO she didn’t know where to turn at the time. She’d never heard of the Office of Compliance, or OOC, the entity that exists to handle harassment complaints and enforce workplace protection laws for the legislative branch. When she called a congressional committee that deals with administrative issues to inquire about filing a complaint, she said, she was turned away without any guidance.

“I didn’t even know it existed as a resource,” the ex-staffer said of the compliance office. “You don’t have an HR Department on the Hill. There’s no one place that you go. Nobody on the Hill has any idea how you report and deal with sexual harassment.”

Some officials are trying to change that. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) next week will introduce legislation calling for an overhaul of the compliance office, which she said is “constructed to protect the institution — and to impede the victim from getting justice.” On Friday, she will release a video recounting her experience years ago as a congressional staffer, when the office's chief of staff "held my face, kissed me and stuck his tongue in my mouth," she said.

“Many of us in Congress know what it’s like, because Congress has been a breeding ground for a hostile work environment for far too long,” Speier continued. “It’s time to throw back the curtain on the repulsive behavior that has thrived in the dark without consequences.”

In an interview Thursday, Speier called the OOC “toothless” and “a joke.” She said “it encumbers the victim in ways that are indefensible.”

“There’s no accountability whatsoever,” she said. “It’s rigged in favor of the institution and the members, and we can’t tolerate that.”

The call to overhaul the OOC comes as 40 percent of female congressional staffers say there’s a sexual harassment problem on Capitol Hill, according to a July survey conducted by Roll Call. The survey found that one in six female aides said they’d personally been sexually harassed in their offices, and only 10 percent were aware of structures that existed to report misconduct.

OOC Deputy Executive Director Paula Sumberg defended her office. "Any current staffer who has not heard of the Office of Compliance has somehow missed our emailed Annual Notification of Rights, our quarterly eNewsletters, and information about us on” the House intranet, Sumberg said in an email.

But even the OOC appears to acknowledge flaws in the system. In recent years, it has recommended that Congress make sexual harassment training mandatory. And the OOC recently urged Congress to raise its profile, noting that some training seminars for staffers don't mention the office as a resource for workplace disputes.

Multiple staffers, including some who’ve worked on Capitol Hill for years, said there is a dearth of information about the OOC. So it's not readily apparent where to turn when a colleague’s — or even a boss’ — actions become inappropriate.

That was the case for former staffers in former Rep. Tim Murphy’s office. Aides who called POLITICO to detail a hostile work environment — slammed doors, cursing, timed bathroom breaks and verbal abuse — said they were either unaware of the OOC or told it was pointless to complain. Others feared retaliation.

Even some lawmakers aren’t apparently aware of, or at least inclined to rely on, the OOC.

In 2014, a group of female staffers accused Kenny West, the chief of staff to Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), of making inappropriate comments toward them. But Meadows turned to his friend, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), for help. Meadows asked Gowdy’s chief of staff, a woman, to interview his aides to determine whether West had acted inappropriately, according to an Office of Congressional Ethics report.

Gowdy’s staffer recommended Meadows fire the staffer, though Meadows kept him on payroll for months after that, the report said.

A similar situation played out in the office of Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) in 2010, after he was accused of making unwanted advances toward a junior male staffer. A more senior aide in the office brought the matter to Rep. Steny Hoyer’s office, which instructed the aide to report the matter to the Ethics Committee.

A House Administration Committee spokesman said Thursday that harassment on the Hill is "a serious issue" and that the panel is "currently evaluating what additional resources might be made available" to further help lawmakers and aides. She also argued that the Office of House Employment Counsel provides training, including sexual harassment awareness training, as does the Office of the House Chief Administrative Officer.

President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, painted a harsh picture of the reality facing women on Capitol Hill after a video emerged last year of Trump bragging about his sexual advances on women.

"I would talk to some of the members of Congress there when I was younger and prettier, them rubbing against girls, sticking their tongues down women's throats who were uninvited, didn't like it," Conway told MSNBC in October 2016.

The comment was meant to defend Trump from lawmakers aghast by the “Access Hollywood” video. Conway's spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on which members she was talking about.

Speier and Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.) are looking to pre-empt such situations with legislation that would mandate sexual harassment training for every congressional office. Executive branch employees must undergo such training, but it is optional for congressional workers.

Speier has introduced her bill every year since 2014, to no avail. One year, she came close to getting it passed when House appropriators agreed to tuck her bill into an appropriations measure — only to see it stripped from a Senate spending package.

Lawrence, who used to investigate harassment issues for the federal government, said she always checked whether training had been provided. "This is a first step, and I know this is one that can make a difference," she said.

When Speier introduces her bill again this year, the legislation will go beyond sexual harassment training and seek to overhaul the lengthy process Hill victims must go through before filing a complaint.

As it stands now, after an incident but before filing a complaint, victims are required to go through 30 days of “counseling” with an OOC employee. Following that process, they have 15 days to decide whether they want to pursue the next step: 30 days of mandated “mediation.”

After mediation, victims must wait another 30 days to file a complaint. The OOC allows anyone filing a complaint to ask to shorten the counseling period and doesn’t require them to be in the same room as the accused during mediation, but Speier put little stock in those measures.

“Can you imagine a victim who’s been sexually harassed who attempts to file a complaint and then is told they’ve got to go through three months of biting their tongue and continuing to work in that kind of environment?” she asked. “You’ve just been sexually harassed and you’re told you have to be ‘counseled’ for 30 days. Are you kidding me?”

Les Alderman, an attorney who has represented multiple congressional employees in harassment and discrimination cases, said that OOC officials “do their best to do exactly what the law says they should.” But he warned that the law that created the office “has major downfalls.”

For one, Alderman said, the 30-day counseling period a harassment victim must undergo before pursuing a complaint is confidential.

Alexis Ronickher, an employment rights lawyer at Katz, Marshall & Banks who’s worked with sexual harassment victims in congressional offices, said that means victims can be sanctioned and their cases jeopardized if they say publicly that they’re filing a complaint against a lawmaker or fellow staffer.

“It’s the strap of silence in my opinion that helps foster a broken system. The fact that you can’t tell anyone that you filed a request for counseling or that you’re in mediation, that everything that goes on there has to be confidential,” she said. “It creates an environment in which people don’t talk about what’s happening and women who are being sexually harassed can’t come together and say, ‘I’m coming forward; you should come forward.’”

Ronickher said it's not the Office of Compliance's fault as much as the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, which governs how the office operates and the rules governing complaints.

The GOP-controlled Congress created the OOC in 1995 amid the scandal involving then-Sen. Bob Packwood's rampant sexual harassment. Ten women told The Washington Post about the Oregon Republican’s lewd behavior. The furor grew as Senate Republicans — including then-Ethics Committee chairman and now-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — resisted holding hearings.

Former Nevada Sen. Richard Bryan, then the ethics panel's top Democrat, recalled a “drumbeat of complaints” that eventually forced committee Republicans to join his call to act against Packwood.

“This wasn’t just one woman … there was a pattern,” Bryan said in an interview.

OOC fielded 49 requests for counseling during fiscal 2016, according to its most recent annual report, including six in the House and two in the Senate. Of those requests, 15 dealt with harassment or a hostile work environment.

Despite the waiting periods, Sumberg said the OOC’s process for dispute resolution is faster than that of other federal agencies. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which polices harassment cases for those agencies, can take as long as 180 days to act on a discrimination charge, according to its website.

“We probably have the fastest administrative process for bringing a sexual harassment complaint in the entire federal government,” Sumberg said by email.

Alderman, the attorney who works with harassment and discrimination victims, noted another key difference between the OOC’s process and the EEOC’s work in other federal agencies. After an accuser has successfully navigated the system and won a complaint, the EEOC requires the posting of information about the perpetrators of discriminatory behavior, so that “hopefully public notice and shame occurs.”

No such publicizing of a perpetrator’s past record is required in Congress. It’s a system, Alderman said, that “helps repeat offenders keep on repeating.”

POLITICO is taking a deeper look at Capitol Hill's sexual harassment policy. To share your stories confidentially with a reporter, please contact [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also anonymous share information with our reporting team using these tools.

by **admin** » Thu Nov 02, 2017 11:34 pm

We could have made Weinstein powerless
by Jessica Barth
Updated 9:54 PM ET, Fri October 20, 2017

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Editor's Note: Jessica Barth is an actress, writer and producer. Follow her on Twitter @_jessicabarth_ and on Instagram @iamjessicabarth.The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) It has taken me a few days to process the sudden explosion of allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault made against Harvey Weinstein. Each woman who steps forward leaves me with a mixture of emotions. On the one hand, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief and pride when I see women joining together to share their stories. On the other, I experience a sense of horror over the staggering number of accusers. Women stripped of their power, silenced and shamed.

I was one of them and recounted my own experience publicly last week.

Jessica Barth

In my own experiences with sexual harassment and assault, I have been made to feel as if I had to compromise my own convictions for the advancement of my career. I was made to believe that my talent and experience should take a back seat to my physical appearance. I was manipulated into believing I had "asked for it." And I was made to feel that if I spoke out or fought back, the repercussions would make me regret it.

So, what now? Now, women -- and men -- must get to work finding solutions. With women standing together en masse, and the media shining a spotlight on just how rampant behavior like that alleged of Harvey Weinstein has become within the entertainment industry, we have gained unprecedented power. Together, we have toppled a Hollywood titan.

The days of turning a blind eye must end. An air of confusion seems to have settled over Hollywood. A common question from people who were long aware of the accusations leveled at Harvey Weinstein has been, "What were we supposed to do?" The answer was simple. If everyone who knew about Weinstein's allegedly predatory behavior had refused to work with him, he would have been rendered powerless, incapable of inflicting pain for 30 years.

I've heard people dismiss allegations against Weinstein because they believe the victims are confusing sexual harassment with compliments. This type of ignorance is common and dangerous, and can only be cured through proper education and awareness. We must get better at educating both men and women about what constitutes sexual harassment and assault. This type of education should be provided in schools, corporations, and every institution in between.

We must implement zero-tolerance policies for sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. According to TMZ, Weinstein's company reached an employment contract with him that said if he got sued for sexual harassment or misconduct, all he had to do was pay a fine and he could keep his job. Bob Weinstein has refused to comment on what the company knew about his brother's settlements with women when that contract was negotiated and renewed in 2015.

When harassers and abusers have positions of power, is it any wonder that victims are afraid to come forward when they seemingly have nothing to gain and everything to lose?

For me, a recognition of the financial and emotional drains that would result from my coming forward and taking legal recourse gave me significant pause. The fact that I felt completely alone in my shame made keeping quiet seem like the only option. And worries about negative effects on my career didn't necessarily make me want to shout it out from the rooftops.

My career did take a sudden and unexpected slowdown after I spurned the advances of Harvey Weinstein and others, but to me, the question for victims isn't what sort of damage coming forward may cause to your career. It's what your silence may do to your soul.

These past few days have given me the sense of empowerment I have craved for years. My goal now is to make sure that no other woman goes through what far too many of us have endured already. My heart simultaneously swells and breaks with each #metoo post that I read.

I am working on setting up a foundation that will provide funding for legal fees for victims of sexual harassment and assault. I want to help alleviate the financial pressures that some women face in taking their harasser or assaulter to court. I hope that in the future, organizations and politicians who benefited from Harvey Weinstein's donations might want to contribute to this cause.

Sexual predators exploit the hopes and dreams of their victims. When I allow myself to sit with that, it hurts my heart. I have cried myself to sleep wondering if the dream that had grown in my heart since I was a child was worth breaking it.

And this is where my desire to fight on lies. It lies with every little girl accepting a hairbrush as her Academy Award in the bathroom mirror, and the hope that she may never know the horror of these monsters. The hope that she will be free to pursue her dream without worrying whether she is in danger of being raped during a "business meeting."

These are the little girls that I am fighting for; the ones who are out there right now, the ones who are still living in our hearts and mostly, for the ones I am raising at home. And, I will tell you this: It makes me want to start a revolution that doesn't end until the mightiest of these monsters fall.

It begins now.

by **admin** » Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:05 am

Paz De La Huerta: Harvey Weinstein Raped Me Twice: NYPD Opens Investigation
by tmz
11/2/2017 6:04 PM PDT

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Harvey Weinstein forced himself on "Boardwalk Empire" star Paz de la Huerta twice in her home ... according to the actress, whose allegation has launched a new NYPD investigation.

Paz told CBS News the first alleged rape happened in October 2010 ... when Weinstein offered to give her a ride to her NYC apartment following a party they both attended. She claims he insisted on having drinks at her place, and when they did ... "He pushed me on the bed ... and it happened all very suddenly."

She claims the second assault happened a couple of months later when he showed up in her lobby. Somehow they ended up inside her apartment again, and Paz alleges he raped her again. She also says she was drinking and in no condition to consent to sex.

Weinstein has previously denied the non-consensual sex allegations from dozens of women. We've reached out to his camp regarding Paz's accusations.

The D.A.'s Office says a sex crimes prosecutor is on the case, along with NYPD.

by **admin** » Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:11 am

Harvey Weinstein Finally Gonna Burn In Giant London Effigy
by tmz
11/1/2017 2:22 PM PDT

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Final Cut - Scene #4

A 36-foot-tall effigy of Harvey Weinstein will go up in smoke, flames ... and then down in ashes as part of a British tradition.

The Edenbridge Bonfire Society unveiled the giant figure Wednesday in preparation for Saturday's annual Bonfire Night celebration in London. It's an yearly tradition for Brits in memory of Guy Fawkes' 1605 failed plot to blow up the Parliament.

So, why fry Harvey? The simple answer is the Society always chooses a well-known figure in pop culture who they believe deserves a good torching. Weinstein's facing a mountain of sexual assault allegations in Britain alone, sooo ...

Got a match?

by **admin** » Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:32 am

New Accuser Says Harvey Weinstein Hugged Her in His Underwear and Said He Loved Her
by Taryn Nobil @tarynnobil
Variety
October 11, 2017

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Sarah Ann Masse
CREDIT: PHOTO BY JULIA K. SHERMAN PHOTOGRAPHY

Another woman, Sarah Ann Masse, has come forward to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. Masse, an actress, comedian, and writer, shared her story with Variety amidst the aftermath of a New Yorker article on Tuesday that alleged that Weinstein had sexually assaulted multiple women, following the New York Times exposé that detailed “dozens” of alleged occurrences of sexual harassment by the former mogul.

Masse’s experience with Weinstein occurred in 2008, she told Variety. At the time, she worked as a nanny to support herself as she pursued an acting career in New York City. She said that her agency notified her of a job to babysit Weinstein’s three children (from his first marriage to his former assistant Eve Chilton) when he had them for the week (by this time, he had divorced Chilton and gotten remarried to soon-to-be-ex-wife Georgina Chapman).

“I first had a few pre-interviews with his assistants, who were nice young women,” Masse said. “It was on my resume that I was an actor. I was open about that from the beginning. But I also told them that I don’t use my nanny work as an opportunity to try to advance my acting career. I keep them separate.”

After about a month of pre-interviews, Masse said she was informed that Weinstein wanted to meet her. “They arranged for me to go to his house in Connecticut, so I drove out there.” When she arrived, she said, “Harvey Weinstein opened the door in his boxer shorts and an undershirt. My first thought was, ‘Oh, this is weird. Maybe he forgot this interview is happening. Maybe he thought I was the mailman. I’m sure he’ll be embarrassed and excuse himself and get changed.’ But he didn’t.”

She said that Weinstein had her sit down in his living room and conducted the rest of the interview in his underwear. As a young actress, meeting Weinstein already intimidated Masse, she explained, but his behavior made her feel particularly strange. “I tried to tell myself it was just an odd quirk, that it was fine, and to keep going with the interview.”

As Weinstein continued to ask Masse standard interview questions, she said that two of his children ran into the room, curious to see who was visiting. “No one else was home, except for the kids,” she said. “He screamed at them to get out of the room and told them to not come back into the room until I had left, which I thought was really weird because I’ve interviewed for a lot of nanny jobs and [the parents] were always eager for me to meet the children and see how I interacted with them. He had this big burst of anger. I knew he had a reputation for being tough and intimidating, but I still thought it was odd.”

Masse said that eventually, Weinstein asked, “So, I know you’re an actor. How do you think that works with being a nanny? Do you think it’s a conflict?” She responded no, explaining that while she wants to be honest about pursuing acting down the line, she would never conduct herself during a nanny job in any way to try to advance my career. “Then he said, ‘Okay,’ smiled at me, and said, ‘You would never flirt with my friends or anyone to get ahead?’ And I said absolutely not, I would never feel comfortable with that.”

After asking a few more basic questions, the interview ended. When she got up to go, expecting a handshake, Masse said Weinstein instead grabbed her and “gave me this really tight, close hug that lasted for quite a long period of time. He was still in his underwear. Then he told me he loved me. I left right after that.” Masse said she left feeling uncomfortable, but since it was her first time meeting someone so powerful in the industry, she didn’t know how executives in the entertainment business typically conducted themselves. “I thought, ‘Gosh, maybe this is just how they treat everyone… Maybe it’s just that Hollywood schmooze thing.’ But I just didn’t feel right about it.”

A couple days later, Weinstein’s assistant got back to Masse, who remembers hearing, “Harvey’s not going to hire you because you’re an actor.” She responded, “‘Oh, that’s fine, I just think that’s weird because I was honest with you guys from the beginning that I was an actor.’ And [Weinstein’s assistant] was like, ‘Yeah, I know, but he just changed his mind.'” From then on, Masse said, “It felt like I dodged a bullet.”

Weinstein’s camp has not yet responded to Variety‘s request for comment.

Masse said she felt empowered to share her story after other women came forward with their encounters with him. She added that an incident on Tuesday, when she was physically assaulted by a man in Europe, gave her the final push to contact Variety and add her story to the narrative.

A few months before the Harvey Weinstein incident, Masse said she was raped by an actor. “I haven’t publicly outed him for the same reason. We work in the same industry and I see time and time again when women speak out and nobody believes them. Then they start dragging your name to the mud and trying to destroy your character and reputation. It’s a fine line to walk of wanting to be honest and wanting to warn other women about the predators that are out there, but not having to go through the trauma of reliving your experiences and having people call you a liar.”

by **admin** » Fri Nov 03, 2017 3:02 am

Brett Ratner Rape Allegation Detailed by Ex-Endeavor Employee
by Gene Maddaus @GeneMaddaus Gene Maddaus
November 2, 2017

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

CREDIT: DAN STEINBERG/INVISION/AP/REX/SH

A former employee of the Endeavor Talent Agency detailed a rape accusation against producer Brett Ratner in a Facebook post obtained by Variety. The allegation is the subject of a libel suit Ratner leveled against the woman, Melanie Kohler, on Wednesday.

Ratner was accused Wednesday of sexual harassment by six other women in a report in the Los Angeles Times.

According to the suit, which quotes short excerpts from the Oct. 20 post, she alleged that Ratner “preyed” on her when she was drunk at a club. The lawsuit calls the rape allegation “deliberately false and malicious.” The post was quickly deleted following a threat of litigation from Ratner’s lawyer.

In the post, Kohler says Ratner took her back to the home of producer Robert Evans and forced himself on her, even after she repeatedly said “no.” Ratner was living at Evans’ home at the time, according to his attorney, Marty Singer.

She wrote that Ratner is not a “public monster” and may treat the “somebodies” of the world with respect. But she said she was writing so that “he can be accountable for the way he’s treated the nobodies of the world or at least the way he treated me.” As alleged in the lawsuit, she wrote that Ratner “was a predator and a rapist on at least one night in Hollywood about 12 years ago.”

According to Kohler, she never told anyone what happened, not even her closest friends at the time of the incident. She said she decided to speak out in the wake of the Weinstein revelations in hopes of changing the culture of America and of Hollywood.

“I’m embarrassed, humiliated, ashamed, and wish I could go back to forgetting it ever happened,” she wrote. “But if I do that, if we all do that, then it keeps happening. We have to come forward. I can’t be an advocate for women speaking out if I don’t speak out, too. … Brett Ratner raped me. I’m saying his name, I’m saying it publicly. Now at least I can look at myself in the mirror and not feel like part of me is a coward or a hypocrite. I’m standing up and saying this happened to me and it was not ok. Come what may, it is the right thing to do.”

Singer, Ratner’s attorney, told Variety on Tuesday that he intended to sue Kohler.

“He did not rape this girl,” Singer said. “It’s completely fabricated. … The story doesn’t make any sense.”

The suit, filed in Hawaii federal court, came on the same day the L.A. Times reported that six other women accused Ratner of various forms of sexual misconduct. Natasha Henstridge alleged that Ratner cornered her in his home in the early 1990s and forced her to perform oral sex. Actress Olivia Munn said Ratner masturbated in front of her on a film set.

On Tuesday, Singer told Variety Kohler had detailed a different version of events than the one related in the Facebook post.

Kohler lives in Hawaii, where she and her husband operate a scuba school. She has recently retained attorney Roberta Kaplan, who argued the landmark gay rights case United States v. Windsor at the Supreme Court. She has also hired SKDKnickerbocker to handle communications.

Singer said shortly after the post went up, he contacted her and advised her that it defamed Ratner.

“I didn’t threaten her,” he said. “I said she can be sued if she didn’t take it down.”

Kohler quickly took down the post, though screenshots of it have circulated around Hollywood since then. She later posted an explanation: “Today was explained to me in five words: Lawyer up or shut up.”

The lawsuit alleges that Kohler’s post caused Ratner to suffer “emotional distress, worry, anger, and anxiety,” and had damaged his personal and professional reputation.

On Wednesday, following the L.A. Times report, Warner Bros. severed ties with Ratner, who is CEO of RatPac Entertainment.

by **admin** » Fri Nov 03, 2017 3:09 am

‘Genius’ Producer Accuses Dustin Hoffman of Sexually Harassing Her in 1991
by Daniel Holloway @gdanielholloway
November 1, 2017

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Wendy Riss Gatsiounis was a struggling playwright working a temp job in New York City in 1991 when she got what she hoped would be her big break. Her play “A Darker Purpose” had been given a staged reading at the Public Theater, and she had scheduled a meeting with Dustin Hoffman and “Tootsie” screenwriter Murray Schisgal to discuss adapting it into a feature film for Hoffman to star in. “It was a huge thing,” she told Variety.

But, Riss Gatsiounis said, the two meetings that took place at the Rockefeller Center office of Hoffman’s Punch Productions led to confusion and self-doubt after Hoffman allegedly propositioned her and attempted to persuade her to leave the office and accompany him to a store in a nearby hotel. Riss Gatsiounis was in her 20s; Hoffman was 53.

A spokesperson for Hoffman declined to comment. Schisgal told Variety in a statement: “Dustin Hoffman and I took many meetings with writers and playwrights over many years. I have no recollection of this meeting or of any of the behavior or actions described.”

According to Riss Gatsiounis, the first meeting began with Schisgal asking whether she had a boyfriend or husband. Hoffman cut Schisgal off. “Dustin Hoffman was playfully like, ‘Murray, shut up. Don’t you know you can’t talk to women that way anymore? Times are changing,'” Riss Gatsiounis said.

The tenor of the meeting became more professional. Hoffman and Schisgal asked if Riss Gatsiounis would be willing to rework her pitch for a movie version of “A Darker Purpose” with Hoffman in mind. The play — and Riss Gatsiounis’ original movie pitch — featured a protagonist in his 20s. Riss Gatsiounis agreed and spent the next three weeks on the rewrite.

She then had a second meeting with Hoffman and Schisgal to give them the revised pitch. But she never got to discuss the new idea with them.

“I go in, and this time it’s, like, Dustin Hoffman’s really different,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “He says, ‘Before you start, let me ask you one question, Wendy — have you ever been intimate with a man over 40?'” Flustered, Riss Gatsiounis attempted to laugh off the comment. But Hoffman persisted.

“I’ll never forget — he moves back, he opens his arms, and he says, ‘It would be a whole new body to explore,'” she said. “I’m trying to go back to my pitch, and I’m trying to talk about my play. Then Dustin Hoffman gets up and he says he has to do some clothing shopping at a nearby hotel, and did I want to come along? He’s like, ‘Come on, come to this nearby hotel.'”

Riss Gatsiounis added that Schisgal, who was also present, encouraged her to go with Hoffman.

“I’m just completely flustered,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “I don’t know what to make of this whole thing. And Murray’s like, ‘You can go! It’s okay, go! Go!'”

But Riss Gatsiounis repeatedly declined to go with Hoffman.

“And Dustin Hoffman finally leaves, because I’m saying I don’t want to go to the hotel,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “And then Murray Schisgal says, ‘Look, we’re not really interested in your play, because it’s too film noir-ish.’ And that was it.”

Punch Productions at the time carried a staff of 10-12 people in an office at 75 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. The late ’80s and early ’90s were a prolific time in Hoffman’s career, in which he appeared in several large studio films including “Rain Man,” “Billy Bathgate,” and “Hook.” In addition, Punch — where Schisgal served as a creative executive — developed several projects in which Hoffman starred, including “Tootsie,” “Death of a Salesman,” “American Buffalo,” and “Moonlight Mile.”

Riss Gatsiounis said that she left the meeting and, “close to tears,” called her agent Mary Meagher from a payphone and recounted the meeting to her. “She said that she didn’t want me to think that it was something I had done,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “She had heard rumors about him for years.”

Meagher died in 2006. Variety spoke with two other writers that Riss Gatsiounis was friends with at the time, both of whom said that Riss Gatsiounis described the second meeting with Hoffman and Schisgal to them shortly after it happened and verified her account of it.

“The whole thing was just a source of torment for me,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “I was just this writer and he had been my hero, and it stayed with me for a long time.” She recalled the self-doubt that she experienced in the “months and months and months” that followed, as she wondered whether she had blown an opportunity to advance her career by rebuffing Hoffman: “It was one voice in my head saying, ‘I was such an idiot. I should have just gone.’ And the other voice in my head saying, ‘Well, clearly he just wasn’t interested [in the play]. Why don’t you just realize he just wasn’t interested?'”

“A Darker Purpose” was staged later that year by the New York theater company Naked Angels in a production starring Fisher Stevens. Riss Gatsiounis went on to write the film adaptation, titled “The Winner,” which was directed by Alex Cox and starred Vincent D’Onofrio. She has since found success as a TV writer, working on A&E’s “The Killing” and the CW’s “Reign.” She is currently a co-executive producer on Season 2 of National Geographic’s “Genius,” which tells the life story of Pablo Picasso.

Riss Gatsiounis said that she chose to speak now about her experience with Hoffman and Schisgal in light of the recent allegations to surface against disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein and others in the entertainment industry, including Hoffman, and to support other alleged victims who have spoken out.

On Wednesday, Anna Graham Hunter, a production assistant on “Death of a Salesman” in 1985, claimed in a guest column in the Hollywood Reporter that Hoffman harassed and assaulted her on set when she was 17 years old.

Hoffman has become the most recent industry heavyweight to be accused of sexual harassment after the New York Times and the New Yorker published exhaustive stories last month detailing decades of abusive behavior by Weinstein — who was subsequently fired from the production company he co-founded, the Weinstein Company.

Since then, Amazon Studios has parted ways with former president Roy Price following a harassment claim against him by a producer on “The Man in the High Castle”; directors James Toback and Brett Ratner have been accused of harassment or misconduct by multiple women; and on Tuesday, Netflix shut down production of “House of Cards” Season 6 after actor Anthony Rapp accused star Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him when the “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Rent” star was 14 years old.

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