Rose McGowan's autobiography Brave details 'rape' by Harvey Weinstein
'I had been so violated and I was sad to the core of my being'
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Your support makes all the difference.Rose McGowan has detailed how she was allegedly sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein.
Writing in her newly published autobiography Brave, the actor claims she was sexually assaulted – which she describes as ‘rape’ – by the disgraced producer while attending the Sundance Film Festival in 1997.
Referring to Weinstein only as “the Monster”, McGowan alleges the mogul invited her to a meeting at a restaurant before moving upstairs to discuss her career.
However, after a half-hour discussion, Weinstein allegedly pulled McGowan into a room with a Jacuzzi, removed his clothes, got into the tub, then performed oral sex on her while masturbating.
“I felt so dirty,” she writes. “I had been so violated and I was sad to the core of my being. I kept thinking about how he’d been sitting behind me in the theatre the night before it happened.
“Which made it – not my responsibility, exactly, but – like I had had a hand in tempting him. Which made it even sicker and made me feel dirtier.”
The then 23-year-old attended a photo-shoot for the Miramax movie Phantom the next day, allegedly confiding the incident to co-star, who has previously been identified as Ben Affleck. The actor has never responded to the allegations and reportedly replied: “Goddamnit. I told him to stop doing that.”
While the law does not see the incident as rape, McGowan claims the act was that: “Rape to me is any violation of my body. If you enter my body via tongue, fingers, penis, object without my consent, that to me is rape and I need no law telling me what I know to be true.”
Weinstein continues to deny any wrongdoing, a spokesperson saying: “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr Weinstein. Mr Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.
“Mr Weinstein obviously can’t speak to anonymous allegations, but with respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual.”
Brave reaches bookstores 31 January.
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