She Said

Christine Blasey Ford is a Stanford neuroscientist who accused Brett Kavanaugh, a 2018 nominee to the United States Supreme Court, of sexually assaulting her at a Maryland house party in the mid-1980s. Ford lived a quiet, unassuming life in California and was not especially politically active. However, the assault had haunted her for years, and she had shared the story with her husband, a marriage counselor, and a few other close friends prior to publicly accusing the judge. When then President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to serve on the country’s highest court, Ford felt compelled to come forward but did not strategize well, fearing violations of her privacy and any backlash that might occur.

In She Said, Blasey Ford appears as a sympathetic and credible figure who had nothing to gain but much to lose if she took her claims public. As the book concludes, Ford is recovering from the trauma of reliving her assault on live television, which resulted in backlash that included extensive verbal abuse and threats to her life. Her story underscores the severe and dangerous repercussions that victims face when they come forward to report or talk about their experiences.

Ashley Judd is an actor and feminist activist who was harassed by Harvey Weinstein early in her Hollywood career. Judd’s experience resembled other victims’ stories: Weinstein lured her to a hotel room, appeared in a bathrobe, and repeatedly pressured her for sexual favors in exchange for career advancement. She spoke on the record with the Times in October 2017, serving as another witness to the producer’s pattern of predatory behavior.

Jodi Kantor is co-author of She Said and an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Throughout her career she has reported on workplace issues and gender discrimination. She was the first reporter to contact and successfully interview actor Rose McGowan after she tweeted about her rape, thus launching the investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s abuses. Together with fellow Times journalist Megan Twohey, Kantor uncovered Weinstein’s pattern of abuse, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and publishing She Said.

Brett Kavanaugh is a Supreme Court justice whom Donald Trump nominated to the Court in 2018. Shortly after, Christine Blasey Ford came forward to accuse Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in the 1980s. Kavanaugh denied the allegations and gave fiery public testimony in which he claimed he was the one being victimized. The allegations against Kavanaugh raised new questions about whether society should judge individuals on acts committed when they were minors and whether those transgressions should influence the trajectory of their careers.

Laura Madden is a former Miramax employee who worked in the company’s London office. Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Madden continued to work for the company for several years after the assault, avoiding Weinstein as much as possible. She never received a settlement, and years after leaving Miramax spoke off the record with Kantor. The lack of settlement agreement meant that Madden was free to share her story with the public, but she was hesitant to do so given the shame that she felt about her assault. She eventually consented to speak on the record, and Kantor and Twohey included her story in their October 2017 articles on Weinstein. Her courage contributed to Weinstein’s prosecution, and she is one of many women representative of the #MeToo movement.

Gwyneth Paltrow is an actor and entrepreneur. She starred in numerous films that Harvey Weinstein produced and won an Oscar for her role in 1998’s Shakespeare in Love. Though she was once considered the “First Lady of Miramax (38),” she did not escape Weinstein’s predatory eye. In the mid-1990s Weinstein harassed her at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, requesting that she massage him in a hotel suite’s bedroom. Though Paltrow managed to extricate herself from the room, Weinstein threatened to derail her career after her boyfriend, actor Brad Pitt, confronted the producer. Paltrow was thus bullied into silence. Unbeknownst to Paltrow, Weinstein implied to later victims that she had given in to his sexual aggression, suggesting that this was the reason for her career success and using the lie to force others into submission. Using her Hollywood contacts, Paltrow was able to refer Kantor and Twohey to other sources, and she ultimately spoke on the record with the Times, providing yet more powerful firsthand evidence against Weinstein.

Megan Twohey is an investigative reporter employed by The New York Times and the co-author of She Said. She was partnered with Jodi Kantor to investigate allegations of assault and harassment against Harvey Weinstein because of her successful history of reporting on women’s issues—especially her work on the allegations of harassment and assault against Donald Trump. Together she and Kantor exposed Weinstein’s long history of sexual harassment and assault.

Rose McGowan is an actor and feminist activist whom Harvey Weinstein raped in a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival in the mid-1990s. McGowan consulted a lawyer after the assault, reached a settlement agreement with Weinstein, and then donated the money to a women’s advocacy organization. McGowan was the first woman to publicly allude to Weinstein’s assault in a tweet that referenced him only as a known Hollywood producer. She was also the first actor to speak with Jodi Kantor off the record about Weinstein, and she subsequently provided corroborating evidence that supported her accusation. Her voice launched the investigation into Weinstein’s years of abusive actions.

Irwin Reiter is a former senior executive accountant at the Weinstein Company. He began working with the Weinstein brothers in 1989 and thus served as the institutional memory for their companies. He also had a tense relationship with Harvey Weinstein and knew about some of his misbehavior. Reiter spoke with Jodi Kantor about what he knew, serving as an important source from inside the movie producer’s company. It was Reiter who leaked Lauren O’Conner’s memo to Kantor, providing written evidence of Weinstein’s misdeeds and supporting other witness accounts. Reiter served as an important male ally who assisted the Times investigation, in contrast to virtually all the other men employed by Weinstein whom Kantor and Twohey interviewed.