One of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged victims of sexual harassment has broken her confidentiality agreement to show women they are not powerless after suffering the traumas of sexual harassment.
In a tell-all interview with the Financial Times, former assistant to the cinema powerhouse Zelda Perkins explained that such binding contracts only demonstrate the inequality of power between alleged victims and their abuser.
“I discovered that it had nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with money and power,” Perkins said.
Perkins’ non-disclosure agreement dates all the way back to 1998. She described to the Financial Times several disturbing encounters between Weinstein and herself, including the first instance of harassment when Weinstein requested she massage him while he wore only his underwear. She quickly discovered such incidents were commonplace.
“But this was his behavior on every occasion I was alone with him,” Perkins said. “I often had to wake him up in the hotel in the mornings and he would try to pull me into bed.”
“I came of age in the 60s and 70s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different,” Weinstein offers as reasoning for allegedly harassing women over a period of three decades.
According to data collected by Cosmopolitan, 1 in 3 women aged 18 to 34 have been sexually harassed at work and the number may in fact even be higher. Aside from underreporting, some victims may not even know they were harassed. Of the women who said “no” to being sexually harassed at work, 16 percent responded “yes” when asked if they ever experienced sexually explicit or sexist comments which Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 classifies as harassment.
Statistically, the odds are against the victim when it comes to sexual harassment. Among women who said they were harassed at work, only 29 percent reported the incident; of these women, just 15 percent said they thought the report was handled fairly.
According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), more than half of charges alleging sexual harassment were dropped because there was “no reasonable cause” found.
This bleak outlook extends beyond the workplace. According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), for every 1,000 instances of rape:
310 are reported to the authorities
57 perpetrators are arrested
11 cases reach the desk of a prosecutor
7 crimes result in a felony conviction
Of every 1,000 rapes, only six rapists end up incarcerated.
“No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in a statement.
Non-disclosure agreements illustrate the clear differences in power between abusers and their victims who are in relationships with a significant contrast in power, such as that of Weinstein and Perkins.
“I want to call into question the legitimacy of agreements where the inequality of power is so stark and relies on money rather than morality,” Perkins said to the Financial Times. “I want other women who have been sidelined and who aren’t being allowed to own their own history or their trauma to be able to discuss what they have suffered. I want them to see that the sky won’t fall in.”
“Harvey led me into a bedroom his bedroom and announced that he wanted to give me a massage,” Nyong’o writes in a New York Times op-ed.
In Perkins’ case, it wasn’t her own experiences that pushed her to take action. She described to the Financial Times the horror an unidentified colleague endured as the catalyst to seek justice.
“She was white as a sheet and shaking and in a very bad emotional state. She told me something terrible had happened. She was in shock and crying and finding it very hard to talk. I was furious, deeply upset and very shocked.”
Complicating matters was the fact that they were all in Venice at a film festival at the time.
“I said: ‘We need to go to the police,’ but she was too distressed,” Perkins explained. “Neither of us knew what to do in a foreign environment.”
The two women eventually came to a settlement for 250,000 pounds, which today would be the equivalent of just under $330,000 in U.S. currency.
Notably, the Financial Times reported that the agreement stated “if a complaint against Mr. Weinstein occurred within two years of the contract and it resulted in a settlement of either 35,000 or six months’ salary Miramax agreed to report the matter to Disney or to dismiss Mr. Weinstein.
“Although these and other obligations ended up in the contract it is not known whether Miramax fully abided by them.”
Weinstein has denied the allegations against him, despite an initial disjointed attempt at an apology not long after The New York Times first brought to light the initial alleged instances of sexual harassment.
Weinstein and his brother Bob founded Miramax in 1973. They left in 2005 to create the Weinstein Company. The duo’s cinematic endeavors left them a powerful pair. Miramax is responsible for producing films including “Pulp Fiction,” “Clerks,” “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and “Shakespeare in Love” for which Weinstein garnered an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. He also won the Academy Award for best picture for producing “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” Additionally, Weinstein produced the “Scream” franchise, four of the “Scary Movie” films and the television series “Project Runway.”
A 2015 Forbes estimate pegged each brother’s stake in their company at about $150 million. According to the Weinstein Company’s website, the brothers “have received 341 Oscar nominations and won 81 Academy Awards.”
Harvey and Bob Weinstein both served as co-chairmen until Harvey was fired earlier this month.
“Bill, you’re my boss!” a former Fox News producer said in a lawsuit she told Bill O’Reilly when he propositioned her for sex.
When it comes to people in positions of power, settlements can simply be the cost of doing business. Former Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly faced numerous accusations of sexual harassment that his ex-employer chose to pay off. But he served as a money-making machine for the company, which is why Fox didn’t let him go earlier, despite the mounting allegations against the network’s former top personality.
According to Kantar Media, O’Reilly’s former show, “The O’Reilly Factor,” garnered Fox $446 million in advertising between 2014 and 2016.
One settlement involving O’Reilly totaled an astonishing $32 million which Fox was completely aware of when they decided to renew their ex-star’s contract.
Reuters reported: “According to the Times, top executives of 21st Century Fox, including Rupert Murdoch and his two sons, Lachlan and James, decided in January to retain O’Reilly despite being made aware of the fresh complaints, the Times reported. The next month, the company gave O’Reilly a contract extension worth $25 million a year.”
Fox only dismissed O’Reilly in April, at which time advertisers had started pulling their support from O’Reilly’s show.
