A former Miramax employee, Rowena Chiu, accused Harvey Weinstein on The Today Show this morning of trying to rape her in 1998. She had waited until now because of an NDA, which she says she was finally ready to break.

Although this is the first time she's spoken out about it publicly, journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor talk about her experiences in their upcoming book, "She Said."

Via HuffPost:

Chiu’s story first appeared in journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s upcoming book, “She Said,” which tracks the reporting that led up to the Me Too reckoning in the fall of 2017. “She Said” hits stores this week.

In the book, Chiu describes struggling with depression and a suicide attempt in the 20 years since the assault. She told “Today” that she decided to break the non-disclosure agreement now because she simply hadn’t been ready to speak up about her experience earlier.

“The NDA asked us to keep a secret about something that happened to me while I was working for 20 years, and that in itself was a very difficult thing to do,” she said. ”...When this story broke in the press about two years ago, I wasn’t ready. ... I felt intimidated. I felt terrified. I didn’t know what the repercussions would be both legally and personally, and so it really has taken all of two years to square some of those things away both in terms of my own personal life, in terms of coming forward and speaking to my parents, speaking to my husband, speaking to my closest friends.”

In the clip below, she describes a horrifying scene between her and the pig, and says, "He tried to rape me."

"Harvey [Weinstein] is very persistent.

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In a characteristically brilliant essay, historian, activist and writer Rebecca Solnit connects the dots between the sexual abuses of Jeffrey Epstein, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Brett Kavanaugh, Harvey Weinstein, and the unnamed 16-year-old boy whose admitted rape was excused because the judge said that This young man comes from a good family who put him into an excellent school where he was doing extremely well: in each case, there was an elaborate scheme to silence and discredit the survivors of sexual violence, abetted by networks of (mostly) men who treat the disclosure of sexual assaults as a worse offense than committing the assaults themselves. Read the rest

Promised royalties from the movie ‘Wind River’ never made it to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.

Hollywood mogul and widely-accused rapist, bully and blackmailer Harvey Weinstein was charged today with predatory sexual assault on a third victim. Read the rest

In an effort to save its members from being exploited, sexually assaulted or be otherwise forced to spend time with human turds in a private setting, the Screen Actors Guild has put the kibosh on holding meetings in "high-risk" locations.

According to The Guardian, the Screen Actor's Guild, which functions as a labor union for actors who appear on TV and in movies, has laid down the law, declaring that it's no longer cool for movie executives to set up meetings with actors in private locales such as hotel rooms or at someone's home address. Moving forward, if you want to yap with a member of SAG, it's gotta be in a workplace setting. The new measure comes as a result of handsy pricks like Harvey Weinstein and other high-powered executives in the entertainment business taking advantage of their position and the protection that Hollywood's elite formerly afforded them when it came to their sexual transgressions.

According to The Guardian, since accusations were first leveled against Weinstein this past October, SAG representatives have been hearing an average of five reports of sexual misconduct from its members, per day.

As a tech journalist, I'm sometimes brought to a hotel room by PR types from small to mid-sized firms to see a new product that they're representing. It usually happens during a trade show as the larger meeting rooms at convention centers and hotels are typically spoken for by large companies. I can't recall a single time that I've ever entered a hotel room, for work, where there weren't at least three or four people in the room with me. Read the rest

Harvey Weinstein was at a restaurant in Arizona with his sober coach when a customer from another table walked up to him and quickly slapped him twice with the back of his hand. He then proceeded to tell Weinstein that he was "a piece of shit" for what he did to those women, referring, of course, to the dozens of women who have recently accused him of sexual misconduct and rape.

The sober coach tries to block the camera with his hand, while the customer has more choice words to say to Weinstein, such as "You're a fuckin' piece of shit, Weinstein." The coach and Weinstein skedaddle, heading straight for the exit.

The video, obtained and released by TMZ, was taken by the customer's friend.

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The crackdown on "influencers" engaging in undisclosed paid endorsement roiled Instagram last year, but now the crackdown on sexual misconduct on influencers is affecting readership at Mic, Upworthy, GOOD, and Slate, who quietly paid influencers like George Takei to promote their articles on their personal accounts. Read the rest

If you thought Harvey Weinstein couldn't possibly be any more hideously sickening than you already knew, Ronan Farrow's new piece in the New Yorker reveals he's even worse than you could imagine. Weinstein hired spies to get dirt on actresses he allegedely sexuallty assaulted and on journalists looking into the allegations. In other words, Weinstein had setup an entire shadow organization of lawyers, spies and "former employees from his film enterprises" working for him to suppress the avalanche of sexually abuse allegations against him.

Two private investigators from Black Cube, using false identities, met with the actress Rose McGowan, who eventually publicly accused Weinstein of rape, to extract information from her. One of the investigators pretended to be a women’s-rights advocate and secretly recorded at least four meetings with McGowan. The same operative, using a different false identity and implying that she had an allegation against Weinstein, met twice with a journalist to find out which women were talking to the press. In other cases, journalists directed by Weinstein or the private investigators interviewed women and reported back the details.

The explicit goal of the investigations, laid out in one contract with Black Cube, signed in July, was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker. Over the course of a year, Weinstein had the agencies “target,” or collect information on, dozens of individuals, and compile psychological profiles that sometimes focussed on their personal or sexual histories.

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The spreadsheet contains 36 names: 2 Cabinet ministers identified as engaging in inappropriate behaviour towards women; 18 ministers who are said to have engaged in sexual misconduct; 12 MPs accused of sexually harassing female researchers and 4 MPs accused of harassing male researchers. Read the rest

South Park yucks it up with some Harvey-poop potty humor this week. When Catman and his pals, dressed as "superheroes," are accused by an ex-Instagram follower that that they "victimize innocent people and poop in little girls’ mouths," Catman responds, "That's not true. We're 'Coon and Friends, not Harvey Weinstein." Read the rest

Here is Gwyneth Paltrow talking to David Letterman about Miramax's Harvey Weinstein in 1998. She smiles nervously as they chat about how she's lucky to do her films for Miramax, and then goes on to say how Weinstein will "coerce you to do a thing or two." Hmm, and what would that thing or two be? Read the rest

The New Yorker released a tape today from 2015, between then 22-year-old model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez and Harvey Weinstein.

This was taped as part of an undercover operation with the New York Police Department the day after Weinstein had sexually abused Gutierrez in his office, "groping her breasts and putting his hand up her skirt," according to The Guardian. Wearing a wire, Gutierrez is standing in the hallway of his hotel room as he tries to get her inside.

This audio shows how forceful, disrespectful and egotistical Weinstein is. Some lines between the two from the tape:

G: Yesterday was kind of aggressive for me.

W: Don't embarrass me in the hotel. I'm here all the time.

G: But I don't want to.

W: Come here. Listen to me... You'll never see me again after this... I'm a famous guy. Please come in now.

G: Why yesterday you touched my breast?

W: Oh, please, I’m sorry, just come on in. I’m used to that. Come on. Please.

G: You’re used to that?

W: Yes. Come in... I won’t do it again, come on, sit here. Sit here for a minute, please?... Don’t ruin your friendship with me for five minutes. Read the rest

After five days of silence, Hillary Clinton finally weighs in on the Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein sex scandal. Through her spokesperson Nick Merrill, she said:

"I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein. The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior."

Weinstein, who has donated heavily to the Democratic Party, has had ties with the Clintons since Bill Clinton's presidency. According to CNN:

Weinstein is a longtime associate of the Clintons and a major Democratic Party donor who bundled funds for their political campaigns.

Many Democratic office holders quickly repudiated Weinstein, with some going so far as to send donations given by Weinstein to charity. But Clinton's statement makes no mention of Weinstein's sizable donations to her own war chest...

In 2015, the Clintons rented a home next to Weinstein in the Hamptons, and Weinstein served as a connector between Hollywood stars and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.

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