Harvey Weinstein: Full-Disclosure
We all know of him. He’s dominated the news for years now. He’s owned two successful production companies. He’s won Golden Globes, Tony Awards, and Academy Awards. He’s worth millions of dollars. He’s launched countless careers and changed the trajectory of many lives. And recently, he’s been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Harvey Weinstein has spent the last decade hiding from countless allegations of sexual harassment and assault. He has purposefully ended careers of employees and prospective actresses who refuse his sexual advances. And yet, he still describes the many allegations against him as “patently false.”
On October 5, 2017, the New York Times published an article presenting the decades of allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Harvey Weinstein. Among the women in the article who came forward are actresses Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan. The investigation continued and the New York Times discovered that the allegations spanned nearly three decades, put on the record by interviews with former employees, film industry workers, legal records, emails and internal documents from Weinstein’s two companies, Miramax and the Weinstein Company. However, the reason that Weinstein was able to maintain a stellar reputation was due to the many settlements he came to with women who experienced his disgusting actions. These settlements included an exchange between Weinstein and each of the women: he would offer each woman a large sum of money under the condition that she would sign a non-disclosure agreement. Zelda Perkins, Weinstein’s personal assistant in 1998, is one of at least eight women who have signed Weinstein’s non-disclosure agreements, feeling as though it was her best option. In 2017, Perkins publicly broke this agreement in an effort to expose the legal practice that silenced so many of those who Weinstein assaulted. Perkins shared that her non-disclosure agreement stated that if “any criminal legal process” including Harvey Weinstein were to occur, she would have to give 48 hours notice to Mark Mansell, a lawyer at Allen & Overy, before she was required to testify. It goes on to mandate that in her hypothetical testimony, “[she would] use all reasonable endeavors to limit the scope of the disclosure as far as possible.” Most non-disclosure agreements also state that the signatory woman can not discuss the harassment or assault that transpired with a therapist, her partner, her family, or her friends. This prevents her from receiving help, processing the traumatic event that occurred due to Weinstein, and directly hampers her healing.
Unfortunately, Harvey Weinstein is not the only big-named perpetrator who has used this type of legal document. Fox News founder Roger Ailes and former host Bill O’Reilly have used non-disclosure agreements to pay tens of millions of dollars in an effort to quiet several women who claim to have been sexually harassed by them. Comedian Bill Cosby and Don Hewitt, the creator of “60 Minutes,” also used non-disclosure agreements to settle sexual assault allegations.
In our world today, legal systems and government agencies often work in favor of sexual predators and harassers, not their victims, as it is more convenient to turn a blind eye to these crimes than it is to convict, especially when the predator is a person in power. Non-disclosure agreements make this even easier, as the secret negotiations of money in exchange for silence keep a predator hidden away from authorities, and, in turn, enable sexual assault and harassment to continue. Needless to say, this is a corrupt and terrifying system and to allow it to proceed would be disastrous.
This is why the ground-breaking work that Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey are doing is so vital. Kantor and Twohey are two investigative reporters with the New York Times who have dedicated their careers to uncovering the truth about high-profile sexual predators who are camouflaged by their money, power, and influence. They conducted the original investigation on Harvey Weinstein, which helped to spark the Me Too movement. The two women recently released their book, “She Said,” which is an expose on Weinstein and every crime he had been so easily able to cover up. Kantor and Twohey continue to question celebrities and authorities who enable sexual assault, making them my personal superheroes.
Additionally, on January 3, 2018, Senator Connie M. Levya introduced a bill to ban non-disclosure agreements in cases of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and sex discrimination. In September, outgoing California governor Jerry Brown signed this bill into law, and it went into effect on January 1, 2019. If this kind of action occurred everywhere, there would be a huge shift in the way we treat and view sexual assault and harassment. California has taken a significant step towards cultivating a safer future for women everywhere.
Despite the dark past that we have had in regards to high-profile sexual assault and harasment cases, the future is looking somewhat brighter. With Kantor and Twohey’s determination to bring the stories of sexual predators to light and the new legislation passed in California, the world is finally starting to take bigger steps in the walk towards justice.
By Rose Sanders