After years of publicly accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, the actor Rose McGowan has detailed the sexual assault she said occurred after first meeting the established male director more than 20 years ago.
In her memoir Brave, published on 30 January worldwide, McGowan recalled first seeing Weinstein, whom she refers to only as “the Monster”, at a screening of her film Going All the Way during the 1997 Sundance film festival.
Then 23 years old, McGowan wrote in Brave that, after the screening, Weinstein allegedly summoned her to a meeting at a restaurant, which was later relocated to his hotel suite. McGowan described being shown to his room for what she believed would be a meeting to “plot out the grand arc of my career”.
Instead, she alleged, after a half-hour discussion about her career, he held her down on the edge of a jacuzzi and raped her. Later he allegedly called her and described her as “a special friend”.
“I felt so dirty. 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 theater the night before it happened. Which made it – not my responsibility, exactly, but – like I had had a hand in tempting him,” she wrote. “Which made it even sicker and made me feel dirtier.”
