Actress Rose McGowan cannot understand why criminal charges for sexual assault have yet to be brought against Harvey Weinstein, despite facing accusations from so many alleged victims.
The Grindhouse star has been a leading voice in the fight to end sexual misconduct in Hollywood after claiming she had been raped by the disgraced producer during a hotel room meeting at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah in 1997.
McGowan has detailed the reported attack for the first time in her new memoir, Brave, and on Tuesday (30Jan18), she admitted the lack of progress in the police investigations concerning Weinstein’s supposed behavior during previous alleged incidents in London, New York, and Los Angeles, is baffling.
“I wish there were charges because I find it very strange,” she stated on Good Morning America. “How many women does it take? We’re at over a hundred on the list (of alleged victims)… I would probably estimate there’s gotta be over like, 1,000, 2,000, because this is a lifelong career of rape for this man.”
Weinstein’s representative has repeatedly denied all allegations of non-consensual sex, but McGowan, who refuses to utter the movie mogul’s “ugly name” on TV or in her book, claims so many people around him have been, and continue to be, helping to cover up his alleged behavior as a serial sexual predator, branding them all part of the “complicity machine”.
“He’s a sick person, he’s a sick mind, but what about all the others?” she asked. “The machinery set up in every country he would go to, for the handlers to hand him the victims, starting with the agents and managers, and ending up (with him)…”
“Everybody knew. I know that, I was there,” she added.
McGowan even suggests her own manager at the time was also part of the problem: “My then-manager got a job with him for seven years after that,” she remarked. “You do the math.”
The actress was working with talent manager Jill Messick back in 1997, before the rep went on to work at Weinstein’s former film company, Miramax. She has yet to comment on the allegations.
