No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn’t even involved with.
No to me taking a shower with him.
No to letting him watch me take a shower.
No to letting him give me a massage.
No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage.
No to letting him give me oral sex.
No to my getting naked with another woman.
No, no, no, no, no …
And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage.
I don’t think he hated anything more than the word “no.” The absurdity of his demands went from getting a furious call in the middle of the night asking me to fire my agent for a fight he was having with him about a different movie with a different client to physically dragging me out of the opening gala of the Venice Film Festival, which was in honor of “Frida,” so I could hang out at his private party with him and some women I thought were models but I was told later were high-priced prostitutes.
The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”
When he was finally convinced that I was not going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had offered my role and my script with my years of research to another actress.
In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.
At that point, I had to resort to using lawyers, not by pursuing a sexual harassment case, but by claiming “bad faith,” as I had worked so hard on a movie that he was not intending to make or sell back to me. I tried to get it out of his company.....
But why do so many of us, as female artists, have to go to war to tell our stories when we have so much to offer? Why do we have to fight tooth and nail to maintain our dignity?
I think it is because we, as women, have been devalued artistically to an indecent state, to the point where the film industry stopped making an effort to find out what female audiences wanted to see and what stories we wanted to tell.
According to a recent study, between 2007 and 2016, only 4 percent of directors were female and 80 percent of those got the chance to make only one film. In 2016, another study found, only 27 percent of words spoken in the biggest movies were spoken by women. And people wonder why you didn’t hear our voices sooner. I think the statistics are self-explanatory — our voices are not welcome.
Until there is equality in our industry, with men and women having the same value in every aspect of it, our community will continue to be a fertile ground for predators.
I am grateful for everyone who is listening to our experiences. I hope that adding my voice to the chorus of those who are finally speaking out will shed light on why it is so difficult, and why so many of us have waited so long. Men sexually harassed because they could. Women are talking today because, in this new era, we finally can.
Portugal bogus sect members jailed for ritual sex abuse of boys
Reuters
LISBON (Reuters) - A Portuguese court has handed long prison sentences to six members of a bogus religious cult that sexually abused boys, including their own children, under the pretence of rituals on a farm just southeast of Lisbon.
Tuesday's verdict by the Setubal district court sentenced Rui Pedro, the 36-year-old leader of the self-proclaimed Celestial Truth sect, to 23 years after finding him guilty of rape, procuring prostitution, child pornography and other crimes, a court official said on Wednesday.
His wife and four other men were sentenced to prison terms of between 7 and 19 years. Two women were acquitted. The crimes were committed between 2011 and 2015, mostly on a farm rented by the group in 2014.
Prosecutors told the court that the cult was fake, and its rituals set up as a means to lure and scare the children.
The eight victims, including the leader's son and the son of another of the sentenced men, had been told that the sect's "Master" had supernatural powers and could perform "acts of purification" on them, which was the term for sexual abuse.
The boys, aged between 5 and 16 at the time of the crimes and mostly from the Setubal area, were kept in fear of his powers so they never disclosed what happened to anyone.
Their families had been led to believe the children played football or studied and received psychological counselling or religious guidance on the farm....
SILENT WITNESSES Jehovah’s Witness rape victims claim abuse was covered up because it would bring shame on the religion
Victims say the secretive organisation instructs members not to report crimes to the police
By Felix Allen 21st November 2017
CHILDREN who were raped and abused by Jehovah’s Witnesses were told by church elders not to report it because it would shame the religion, it is claimed.
Victims from across Britain have told the BBC how they were routinely abused – but it was hushed up by the secretive organisation.
One victim, Louise Palmer, said she was told reporting her rapist brother to police would “bring reproach on Jehovah”.
The 41-year-old, formerly of Halesowen, West Mids, was born into the organisation along with her brother Richard Davenport, who started raping her when she was four. He is now in jail.
She said of the moment she went to elders: “I asked, ‘what should I do? Do you report it to the police, do I report it to the police?’
“And their words were that they strongly advised me not to go to the police because it would bring reproach on Jehovah.”....
The BBC said it also spoke to male and female victims in Birmingham, Cheltenham, Leicester and Glasgow who told gave similar accounts.
They claim the religion’s organising body “self polices” sins but insists on two witnesses before a congregation will act on any alleged transgression.
But that is impossible in most cases of sexual abuse....
Victims also told the BBC church elders teach members to avoid interaction with outside authorities and not to take another member to court.
Breaking this rule could lead to expulsion from the religion, they say.
Child abuse lawyer Kathleen Hallisey believes there could be thousands of victims across the country who have not come forward because of the “two witness” rule....
The organisation described child abuse as a “heinous crime and sin” and said it did not “shield abusers from the authorities of the consequences of their actions”.
It said: “Any suggestion that Jehovah’s Witnesses covered up child abuse was absolutely false”....
'Every 45 minutes, I was sold for $120 to $350:' Former sex slave recalls brutal life in brothels
Tribune MARY MURPHY Dec 6th 2017
QUEENS (WPIX) — At 21, Shandra Woworunti was a financial analyst in her native Indonesia but in 1998, she lost her job in the Asian banking crisis. She had a baby daughter and needed to provide a future for her.
In 2001, at age 24, she answered an ad for a six-month seasonal job in the United States thinking she would work as a waitress in the hotel industry. She said a man named Johnny Wong picked her up at Kennedy Airport in Queens and delivered her to another man at the Sheraton Hotel near Main Street in Flushing.
"I saw the man hand a big envelope of money to Johnny Wong," Woworunti recalled.
Woworunti was entering the world of human trafficking.
She was turned over to other men and ended up at a house in Bayside, Queens, she said, where the owner put Woworunti and two other young women in the attic.
She said he ordered them to undress to make sure they didn't have a skin disease. Woworunti said that when she refused, the man put a gun to her forehead.
She remembered that pretty soon the man took her in a car to a new location and told a madame in the next house there was a new girl ready to work.
"I saw the security with a baseball bat," Woworunti told PIX11. "I saw a little girl, 12 or 13 years old, beaten by another bouncer."
Woworunti said she quickly realized she would have to comply with the wishes of her customers, who were "black, Asian and white."
"Every 45 minutes, I was sold for $120 to $350," Woworunti said.
"I was trafficked in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan. Up and down I-95. I used to get trafficked to Foxwoods Casinos."
When Woworunti heard she was getting sent to Boston for work, she had a bad feeling and made a plan to escape.
She was at a house in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and said she climbed up on the window ledge of a second-floor bathroom. She decided to jump.
"And one little girl, who was 15 years old, jumped with me," she recalled.
This was still 2001. The two managed to get a cab to Manhattan and landed at a hotel, where Woworunti said they checked in with some money they had stashed on the side....
Nobody saved us... I just wanted it to end': Lawyer describes how he was abused, tortured and brainwashed from the age of four at a North Carolina evangelical church 'cult'
Jamey Anderson, 29, describes his experiences growing up in the World of Faith Fellowship in North Carolina
He claims physical abuse was common for all members and he was frequently beaten and verbally abused
Anderson says he was once locked in isolation for a year watching videos of the church founder preaching
He left the church at age 18 and is speaking out now to help trapped children
By Associated Press 13 December 2017
....As part of an ongoing investigation into Word of Faith Fellowship, dozens of former congregants have told the AP that church members were regularly beaten in an effort to 'purify' sinners - even children. But despite allegations of abuse spanning two decades, authorities have done little to intervene.
As a child, Anderson said, he was questioned by social services investigators in church co-founder Jane Whaley's office, but was too afraid to tell the truth. In 2003, he said, the church forced him to sign an affidavit saying he had not been abused and that 'church discipline' was 'God's mercy on my life.'
Anderson was about four years old when his mother joined Word of Faith. He describes his childhood as nothing short of hell.
Throughout his adolescence, he was singled out as a rebel and suffered some of the most brutal treatment in the church, nearly two dozen former congregants told the AP. Among his transgressions: making a funny face at a classmate....
Anderson would be pulled from the classroom and brought to another room where he would be 'brutally paddled,' she said.
'You could hear the loud whacks through the wall,' she said. 'You just sat there, hoping you weren't next.'....
To understand what Anderson lived through, it is necessary to understand Word of Faith. Founded in 1979 by Whaley, a former math teacher, and her husband, Sam, the church has grown to a congregation of nearly 750 people in rural Spindale with hundreds more followers extending to Brazil, Ghana and other countries.
Jane Whaley is the unquestioned leader, presenting herself as a prophet. Over the years, she has decreed ever more stringent rules, dictating how followers dress, where they live, who they marry and even when they have sex. Birthday celebrations, television and music are strictly off-limits....
