ILLUZZI: JEENAH MOON/GETTY IMAGES. WALKER: RON SMITS/LONDON ENT/SPLASHNEWS/NEWSCOM. ROTUNNO: ANGELA WEISS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES.MCGOWAN: LAURENT VITEUR/WIREIMAGE. SCIORRA: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. GUTIERREZ: JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY IMAGES.5 YEARS TO 29 YEARS
The sentencing range that Weinstein
will face for his conviction on third-
degree rape and criminal sex act charges
when he returns to court March 11.7,
Number of inmates at Rikers Island
in New York, where the former mogul
will be imprisoned.AFTER THE VERDICT
blame despite having owned
Weinstein’s studio Miramax
from 1993 to 2005. But in August,
Weinstein accuser Paz de la
Huerta added Disney, then-CEO
Bob Iger and ex-chairman Michael
Eisner as parties in her sexual-
assault lawsuit against Weinstein
(the suit was moved to federal
court and remanded back to L.A.
Superior Court). In response,
Disney said in a statement, “Thepayoff to an actress. The exec
expects that detail and similar
transgressions to come out dur-
ing discovery in the de la Huerta
suit. De la Huerta claims that
Eisner and Iger “made a series of
decisions that allowed a range
of actions by Harvey Weinstein
that unacceptably harmed certain
employees of Miramax.”
But the web of Weinstein’s
influence extended well beyondon activists like Melissa Silverstein,
founder of Women and Hollywood.
“I hope people will finally under-
stand that this entire industry was
complicit in the terrorization of
women over decades. It is a reck-
oning for everyone,” she says.
That sentiment is echoed by
producer James Schamus, who
worked opposite Weinstein in
the New York indie film scene for
decades. “Harvey Weinstein is the
one going to jail, but the entire
film business — all of us who have
sustained and benefited from the
hierarchies of power that allowed
his crimes to continue and his
victims to multiply — it is we who
were found guilty today,” he says
in a statement.
When it comes to culpability,
Disney has largely skirted anyI
’m sitting on my bed and I have my arm
around my puppy Pearl Kali, a Havanese from
Cuba named after the warrior goddess Kali.
A therapist told me that I needed a puppy for
chronic PTSD, and so, here we are. I’m looking at
her while staring at a horizon that I haven’t seen
since I was raped in 1997. I haven’t had a free
moment from this man since then.
God bless the women who testified: Annabella
Sciorra, Miriam Haley, Jessica Mann, Dawn
Dunning, Tarale Wulff and Lauren Yo u n g. I
can imagine what it felt like for them to be on
that stand because essentially, it’s like stand-
ing there naked in front of the world, allowing
people to put tiny pinpricks in you as they try
to pull the skin off. Death by a thousand cuts
during a trial that was reality versus gaslighting.
It’s brutal and harrowing, but they were brave.
Donna Rotunno, Harvey’s lawyer, came at them
with this kind of wink to the incel movement and
by using the same trigger words as the alt-right
dudes. These women had to literally look at the
belly of the beast while the beast that hurt them
is standing behind the beast. It was a herculean
effort, and there aren’t enough words to
describe how I feel for them or what I feel
for them.
Justice is a privilege, and that’s a
really twisted thing to say. Justice
should be the norm, not a 2 percent con-
viction rate on rape cases. Most women,
men, boys, girls or anybody who has
ever been hurt — myself included
— will never have that momentif somebody were to ask, “Is Rose more angry
with Harvey or the complicity machine?” I would
definitely say the complicity machine because I
do believe there’s something deeply wrong with
him that he’ll never fix in his head.
Hopefully now this will be the first day of
the rest of my life as I attempt to see what life
would have been like without someone try-
ing to kill me or paint me as an insane person.
I had an entire career before. I do a fuck-ton
of creative things besides talk about stupid
Harvey Weinstein. That’s what I find exciting
about this moment. I understand that people
are terrified of me out there, and I don’t know
what to do about them. I can’t hold on to that
because while I had to help take down their cult
leader, it’s OK to not be in a cult, you know? I
should know, I was in one. It’s actually OK to
say, “This is fucked up and I don’t need some-
one like him in my life.” What if it’s time for
someone else to just come in and make amazing
movies? I just feel, energywise, that the planet
would be better off if he weren’t on it. That’s my
hippie answer.
What I do know is that tonight, a predator
is off the streets. Recently, I’ve been watching
new TV shows and movies and I’ll see an actress
and say to myself, “Wow, he would have raped
her. That’s totally his type.” Now, I get to hope
to God that these women will get to live their
lives, have careers and do everything they want
to do and achieve what they want to achieve.
And I get to be centered and free. That’s
my gift. — AS TOLD TO CHRIS GARDNERArtist, activist and filmmaker Rose McGowan was one of the first ‘silence breakers’ to share her story, attesting that Harvey Weinstein
sexually assaulted her in a Park City hotel room in 1997. After his conviction, she ended Feb. 24 on the phone with THR crying tears of joy‘I Can Breathe for the First Time in Years’
where they can sit across from the person who
hurt them and point at them and say, “That was
the person who hurt me.” That’s a sick privilege
to have. I wonder how long it would have taken
if we’d all been black or Latina? I have so many
thoughts about the cultural aspect of it all, but
there’s also a personal aspect. It’s two separate
things for me, and I haven’t had as much oppor-
tunity to process the personal of it until now,
until tonight, when I feel like I have the weight of
a thousand boots off my back.
I can breathe now. Obviously, I breathe a
minimal amount to stay alive, but I’ve gotten
used to living with such a weight on me. Now
I feel that I can breathe for the first time in
years. And the weirdest part is I feel connected
to the girl who walked in that hotel room that
morning for a meeting. And I have not felt her
for a long, long time. I mean, I know her because
she’s frozen in time in a few of the movies I
made, but when I see pictures of myself from
around that time, I’m like, “Damn, she was a
baby.” Now, it feels like she and I are high-
fiving. (Pauses and starts crying.) These are
happy tears. I’m crying tears of relief for the
first time.
It can be an extremely hard push
as an activist or global re-educator,
whatever you want to call it, trying to
unwire millennia of tradition and yet
being a trauma survivor myself who
has to do the work that triggers an
act of trauma. Gee, no wonder I
short-circuit sometimes? ButRose
McGowan1 2Weinsteins operated and man-
aged their business with virtual
autonomy. There is absolutely
no legal basis for claims against
the company and we will defend
against them vigorously.”
One former Miramax executive
says Disney lawyers were fully
aware of Weinstein’s predatory
behavior and even flew to New
York on a private jet to advise
while he was entangled in a