The cultural highlight of my week “To catch and kill” – Part Three
By: Rosina Moran
Tags: Sexual Harassment, Harvey Weinstein, Sexual Assault, Journalism, Ronan Farrow

The cultural highlight of my week “To catch and kill” – Part Three

Episode Four

Rowena Chui’s clipped English accent sounds through this episode.

Towards the beginning of the episode Rowena and Rowan touch on how muted ‘other’ cultures are on sexual harassment and then they go onto discuss how the western legal establishments go on to silence victims of sexual harassment.

Rowena, young, ambitious, intelligent, Oxford graduate, passionate about theatres and the arts, fresh out of university can’t almost believe her luck when she finds herself working for Miramax.

Then on a trip to the Venice film festival, she finds herself almost marooned in an island with Harvey and her line manager and the other employees of Miramax, i.e. Harvey Weinstein.

Harvey gets increasingly more and more persistent and physical with her whilst rumours of his lecherous behaviour starts to take on another level.

As Rowena recounts her experience of finding herself in a hotel room with him late at night, how he works up to the main incident of assault from just initially taking his clothes off, to massages, to encouraging her to take her clothes off too, to actually putting his hands on her and forcing himself on, you can almost imagine it, you can feel the terror of what she must have gone through at that time. Of course, rapists do not walk around with the label tattooed on their forehead. It is all very calculated, very orchestrated, insidious and merciless.

Rowena describes a very sad scene of how she tells her line manager, Zelda Perkins, the following day of what happened, they both sit crying on the floor. Her line manager upset, angry and protective.

The harrowing account becomes the most chilling when Rowena and Zelda try to bring legal actions against Harvey.

Their prosecuting lawyers and his defence lawyers both pressurising them to take a settlement instead of seeing to it that he never behaves like this again. The men and women in suits, from excellent academic backgrounds which would have paved their way to becoming lawyers, the intelligence which must have been present and existed didn’t have the intellect to think whether their actions were bringing any actual justice to the situation.

The women were both in their early twenties at the time. How the dozen of lawyers must have used legal jargon to manipulate them into signing an NDA makes the systematic oppression of sexual assault victims incredibly stark.

These lawyers ‘muted’ them.

Rowena discusses the aftermath of signing the NDA and reluctantly accepting the settlement. The years that followed, the inability to sustain a meaningful career in the film industry, the depression, suicide attempts and secrecy. How she dreaded being connected with Harvey by journalists and the media. How she felt about watching the revelations on tv as women after women came forward with accusations. How they were treated by the media – the hounding, the sadness, the insinuated smears.

It’s a hard listen but a must.

Episode Five

If the previous episode made you lose your faith in humanity, this episode will somewhat restore it.

Where the legal system failed, the journalists did not – not the good guys that is.

Ronan Farrow wasn’t the first journalist who tried to report on this issue-there were others.

Kim Masters who worked for the Hollywood Reporter had via the Hollywood rumour-mill heard many stories and knew of the high-profile accusations against him too. She wanted to delve closer, wanted to report on a tangible truth but for various reasons she couldn’t quite put all the journalistic pieces in place to publish an actual piece. She had even met the man up close and personal. He had offered her a project, a book-deal – she was wise enough to see through what it meant.

Another journalist who wasn’t mesmerised by the Hollywood mogul and intimidated by what it meant to be on the wrong side of Harvey Weinstein was Ken Auletta.

Ken Auletta is a big deal himself. He worked for the New Yorker. He is a celebrated journalist and writer. During his lifetime he had covered his share of powerful people. He knew them up close and personal. He wasn’t one to be intimidated by Harvey.

He was smooth with Harvey. He made an offer to work in collaboration with Harvey for his profile piece on him.

Harvey agreed but then throughout the course of the research, background checks, rumours and gossip, he came to know not all accusations of this proportion can all be lies. So he coaxed out the closest thing to a confession. He saw evidence of the cheques made out to Rowena and Zelda. But Harvey’s story was still ‘it was consensual’.

Credible journalists have to have proof, evidence, people on the record to back up their story. They cannot simply publish a story without hard back-up.

Harvey and his henchmen of lawyers were always a powerful force to take on. So without evidence and victims going on the record all the research documentation surrounding the article on Harvey had to be cautiously closed. And here’s the thing all this happened over a decade ago.

Then came along Ronan Farrow with the recorded interaction between Harvey and Ambra Gutierrez and as Ronan forged his alliance with Richard McHugh and all the other people who were gutsy enough to take on the media Goliath … finally … FINALLY… Harvey was going to face justice.