Actress Rose McGowan says she was “blacklisted” after she was raped by Harvey Weinstein, according to comments she made in January and just recently obtained by The Guardian.
Last Thursday, McGowan claimed that Weinstein raped her in a series of tweets directed at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
McGowan never reported the rape to authorities, she says, on the advice of a criminal lawyer who told her “she was unlikely to win.”
“Also, I didn’t want his name next to mine in my obituary; his name doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as mine when I’m dead,” she said.
“They threatened [me] with being blacklisted. I was blacklisted after I was raped, because I got raped, because I said something … but only like internally, you know,” said McGowan. The Guardian does not specify who threatened or blacklisted McGowan.
Weinstein reached a settlement with McGowan, which the actress described as “very small,” in 1997; via The New York Times:
In 1997, Mr. Weinstein reached a previously undisclosed settlement with Rose McGowan, then a 23-year-old-actress, after an episode in a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival. The $100,000 settlement was “not to be construed as an admission” by Mr. Weinstein, but intended to “avoid litigation and buy peace,” according to the legal document, which was reviewed by The Times.
“I had three surgeries on my wrist and elbow,” said McGowan of medical treatment she needed after Weinstein allegedly raped her.
Victims of sexual assault and rape in the film industry are criticized by the perpetrators, said McGowan:
They blame the victim, they do all that shit. People are bred to be scared. They are bred to put fear into people and that’s what they do, they’re bred to put fear into the publishers and lawyers and they overreach it, and I’m going to do what I can and come out as hard as I can.
Allegations of rape and sexual assault against Bill Cosby, said McGowan, were covered up by a network of people.
“It was a whole cottage industry,” she said. “Everyone who worked with him are aiding and abetting a crime. Those are the f—ers that I’m going after.”
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