Speaker 1: Today we hear from Sarah Anne Massey, who, like many others,
Speaker 1: was assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. The full circle moment is
Speaker 1: that Sarah Anne had a role in the film She
Speaker 1: said about the investigation on Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment, assault
Speaker 1: and abuse of numerous women. What happens when speaking out
Speaker 1: means giving up dreams, aspirations, and a lifetime of work.
Speaker 1: Sarah Anne takes us through what her experience of trauma
Speaker 1: survivorship looks like. This podcast should not be used as
Speaker 1: a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are
Speaker 1: advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy
Speaker 1: from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition,
Speaker 1: mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on
Speaker 1: this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering
Speaker 1: to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely
Speaker 1: those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: or their employees. Sarah and Massey. Welcome to Navigating Narcissism.
Speaker 1: It is such a pleasure and honor to have you on.
Speaker 1: You're doing some really amazing and important things in the industry.
Speaker 1: And before we get to all of that, I would
Speaker 1: like to start with your backstory, which in this year,
Speaker 1: when the films She Said Just came out, you were
Speaker 1: assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, and from there some really extraordinary
Speaker 1: things happened in your story and in your career. So
Speaker 1: I'd like to start at the beginning, Sarah Ann, and
Speaker 1: I'd like to ask you how did you become acquainted
Speaker 1: with Harvey Weinstein. I had just moved to New York.
Speaker 1: I was a young theater actor, and I had started
Speaker 1: my own theater company, and you know, I was sort
Speaker 1: of trying to do that thing I'd been dreaming of
Speaker 1: since I was a little girl. And I was a
Speaker 1: nanny as my day job. You know, all my friends
Speaker 1: were waiters and bartenders, but I loved kids. And after
Speaker 1: living in New York for a little while, I realized
Speaker 1: my one part time nannying job was not enough to
Speaker 1: cover all of my bills. So I looked for a
Speaker 1: second job. And I found a nanning agency and they
Speaker 1: sort of catered to like, you know, higher net worth clientele,
Speaker 1: and I thought it would be good. I could get
Speaker 1: a part time job and make some more money and
Speaker 1: continue to support my acting. So they contacted me and said,
Speaker 1: we have a client who we think would be really
Speaker 1: good for you. They work in the entertainment industry, and
Speaker 1: we know that you've worked with clients so we're in
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry before, and would you be interested in
Speaker 1: meeting with them? And I said, yeah, sure, and they said, okay,
Speaker 1: it's a producer named Harvey Weinstein, and I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I know who that is, you know, biggest
Speaker 1: producer in the country. And I didn't really think twice
Speaker 1: about it. I'm not someone who gets star struck or uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and I'm used to being around folks who work in
Speaker 1: the industry, and I thought it would be good because
Speaker 1: I understood the world that he was coming from. And
Speaker 1: I've always made it very clear that, like I draw
Speaker 1: a very fine line between or not a fine line,
Speaker 1: a very bright line between my acting work and my
Speaker 1: nanning work, so there was never any concern about, you know,
Speaker 1: having it be like a conflict of interest or anything.
Speaker 1: So they thought I should go out on the interview,
Speaker 1: and prior to meeting with Harvey, I actually had a
Speaker 1: few interviews with two of his female assistants in New York,
Speaker 1: and they took me out to breakfast and they sort
Speaker 1: of explained how the job would work, and at the
Speaker 1: time I didn't think anything of it, but they kept
Speaker 1: mentioning how discretion was very important, and I thought, well, sure,
Speaker 1: he'll have famous people around, and they don't want me
Speaker 1: selling photographs off my phone to the paparazzie. I get it.
Speaker 1: Totally makes sense, I understand. And they explained to me
Speaker 1: that I would have to go to Connecticut for the interview,
Speaker 1: go to his home in Connecticut, and that I would
Speaker 1: be meeting with him and his children at his home,
Speaker 1: which is when I used to with Nanning. Almost always
Speaker 1: go to the person's home and you meet with them
Speaker 1: in the family, and so I felt comfortable. I felt confident.
Speaker 1: They had mentioned a few times that they wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that me being an actor wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be a problem, and I said to them what I
Speaker 1: said to you, I would never utilize my position as
Speaker 1: a nanny to try to advance my career. I keep
Speaker 1: a very clear delineation between those two worlds, and they
Speaker 1: seemed really comfortable with that. So I grew up in
Speaker 1: Connecticut So I went to my parents' house in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and I was preparing for the interview, and the night
Speaker 1: before I got contacted by one of the assistants and said,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to be there, sorry,
Speaker 1: but let me know how it goes. So I was
Speaker 1: expecting this assistant to be there, and again I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: it'll be fine. I'm not worried about it. I've been
Speaker 1: on a million of these interviews before. And then I
Speaker 1: walked into to essentially what had been a trap that
Speaker 1: would set for me at his home, and he just
Speaker 1: was the furthest thing from professional. He opened the door
Speaker 1: in his underwear. And at this point, I'm parked in
Speaker 1: this driveway that's a mile from the street, behind a
Speaker 1: huge locked gate, And I thought he probably forgot about
Speaker 1: the interview, and it was a weekend and he was
Speaker 1: relaxing in his house and would be embarrassed and would
Speaker 1: excuse himself to change before we did the interview. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm young, and I'm naive, and I am trusting and
Speaker 1: not assuming anything nefarious is happening. But he did not.
Speaker 1: He condicted the entire interview in his underwear. He asked
Speaker 1: me about my acting, which I was one of the
Speaker 1: first things I felt uncomfortable about. He wanted to see
Speaker 1: my resume and headshot, and because I always carried the
Speaker 1: same bag with me to auditions sort of interviews, I
Speaker 1: had them, and so I gave them to him, and
Speaker 1: he was asking me a lot about that, and I
Speaker 1: kept trying to redirect, and at one point I thought
Speaker 1: we were completely alone, and I started feeling more and
Speaker 1: more uncomfortable. Again. I had no real way to get out.
Speaker 1: And at one point two if his children ran in,
Speaker 1: and I felt relief. I thought, Okay, okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get back on track. It's going to be fine. And
Speaker 1: the second they came into the room, he turned like
Speaker 1: night and day. He went from I think he was
Speaker 1: attempting to be charming to being this roaring monster, screaming
Speaker 1: at his children to leave the room, to leave us alone,
Speaker 1: to not come back, and until I had left, that
Speaker 1: we must be left alone. And that's when I knew
Speaker 1: I was in definitive danger. When they left, he shifted
Speaker 1: right back right here, this flipped anger switch, going from
Speaker 1: an attempt to be charming or flirtatious too rageful. Sarah
Speaker 1: Ann amazingly picked up on it and recognize she was
Speaker 1: in danger. But it is remarkable how often this flip
Speaker 1: is missed or justified. Well regulated people keep things even keeled.
Speaker 1: But if a person is attempting to dominate a situation
Speaker 1: and are interrupted in that, well, that's precisely the kind
Speaker 1: of situation that will flip the switch of an antagonistic person.
Speaker 1: And he started sexually harassing me. He started asking me
Speaker 1: if I would ever use sex to get ahead in
Speaker 1: my acting career. He started asking me if I would
Speaker 1: ever flirt with or sleep with his friends to get
Speaker 1: ahead in my acting career. Both times I answered definitively no.
Speaker 1: I was clearly offended by the question, and he kept
Speaker 1: asking me questions and I was sort of at this
Speaker 1: point really having this trauma response of freezing and panicking
Speaker 1: and just trying to stay calm. And he stood up,
Speaker 1: and I thought, Okay, either he's going to let me
Speaker 1: go or he's going to attack me. Hopefully this is
Speaker 1: the end of the interview. And I get out and
Speaker 1: he approached me, and I thought he was going to
Speaker 1: shake my hand, and he grabbed me and he pulled
Speaker 1: me in and he pressed his genitals against me and
Speaker 1: he held me really tight and really long, and I
Speaker 1: was just completely frozen. And I don't know how long
Speaker 1: it lasted. It felt like it lasted hours. It was
Speaker 1: probably seconds or minutes. And he whispered that he loved me,
Speaker 1: and then he let me go and he let me
Speaker 1: out the door. And I really don't know how to
Speaker 1: explain the level of fear that I was experiencing, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm young, I'm alone, I'm locked behind
Speaker 1: this gain on this compound. Nobody could hear me, nobody
Speaker 1: could help me. And I think the thing that really
Speaker 1: sticks out to me is I remember driving there very clearly,
Speaker 1: because like I said, I grew up there. I knew
Speaker 1: the roads, I knew exactly where I was going once
Speaker 1: I saw the address, and when I left, the last
Speaker 1: thing I remember is looking down at my feet on
Speaker 1: the driveway. I don't remember driving home. I don't remember
Speaker 1: how I got back to my parents' house. I clearly
Speaker 1: was just completely shutting down. And the next thing I
Speaker 1: remember is like being mid sentenced talking to my mom.
Speaker 1: She had clearly asked me how things went and saw
Speaker 1: that I looked upset, and yeah, it was like, I mean,
Speaker 1: even now, it's such a long time later, just retelling
Speaker 1: this story, I'm so activated and I have to try
Speaker 1: to remind my brain that I'm not in that place anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm safe now. But it was really terrifying, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's not the first I had been abused by a man,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't the last time. And I think some
Speaker 1: people when they hear about trauma or abuse, they sort
Speaker 1: of rank it in their minds and they go, well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't rape, so you lucked out. And I even
Speaker 1: had that idea in my head, like, oh, it could
Speaker 1: have been worse. But two months prior to this, I
Speaker 1: was raped, And I have to say the level of
Speaker 1: trauma is very similar, and the long term impacts with
Speaker 1: what Harvey did to me are very extreme. It had
Speaker 1: a really intense impact on my career, on my health.
Speaker 1: I developed chronic illnesses, on my mental health, I lost
Speaker 1: a lot of time in my career and face economic harm.
Speaker 1: And I think people need to sort of be more
Speaker 1: aware of the fact that the power dynamics at play
Speaker 1: can have a really big impact and having no expectation
Speaker 1: of that going in, there was no preparation that I
Speaker 1: might be in danger, that somebody might try to sexualize
Speaker 1: me and sexually assault me. So I think that really
Speaker 1: means that for me, I was so unprepared that it
Speaker 1: came as such a shock and such a terrifying experience
Speaker 1: that it really impacted me for very time. Your nervous
Speaker 1: system was already living into the next thing that could
Speaker 1: conceivably happen. What we forget is that the brain is
Speaker 1: always saying, Okay, this terrible thing is about to happen,
Speaker 1: and the reaction, the cascade that happens in our body
Speaker 1: is as though it does happen. So when in that moment,
Speaker 1: you didn't know how bad it was going to get.
Speaker 1: So the terror you experienced was the terror of trauma,
Speaker 1: which is so linked into uncertainty, What's going to happen next?
Speaker 1: Am I going to die? Which is often the question
Speaker 1: people ask themselves. You also then bring up the next
Speaker 1: piece of trauma we don't talk about enough, which is
Speaker 1: we often think of trauma as an episode, a thing
Speaker 1: that happens, an episode that happens, and as you describe it,
Speaker 1: the impact of this episode lasted for years and years
Speaker 1: and years. And when people say, well, that was a day,
Speaker 1: it was an afternoon, it was an hour, really could
Speaker 1: it be affecting you ten fifteen years later, to which
Speaker 1: it is a resounding yes. And not only did it
Speaker 1: affect you structurally, We're going to get to how this
Speaker 1: affected your career because of how the entertainment industry is set.
Speaker 1: It affected you physically, It affected your mental health. That
Speaker 1: episode that other people would say it was just an
Speaker 1: hour time doesn't follow the usual rules when it comes
Speaker 1: to mental health, and that hour became something that would
Speaker 1: echo through your life. So I really appreciate you talking
Speaker 1: about not just the moment, but how far that reaches
Speaker 1: and in any relationship, when somebody has that kind of betrayal,
Speaker 1: and that was a betrayal you went in there with trust,
Speaker 1: It's very, very impactful. I want to ask you, in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of that, it sounds like you went home
Speaker 1: and talk to your mother. Did you share with your
Speaker 1: mother what happened? I did, and she is one of
Speaker 1: the only people I actually told. And it was really
Speaker 1: interesting watching her as I spoke, because you know, I
Speaker 1: think she could tell something was off, but I think
Speaker 1: she also knew that he had a reputation being kind
Speaker 1: of like a tough boss, so I think maybe she
Speaker 1: was thinking more along those lines. And as I told
Speaker 1: her what happened, beat by beat, I saw her face
Speaker 1: fall and I saw it hit her. And it was
Speaker 1: validating actually to see that, because the praying does a
Speaker 1: lot of funny things in the aftermath of trauma. And
Speaker 1: I've learned a lot about the neurobiology of trauma over
Speaker 1: the years, and you try to make sense of what
Speaker 1: happened to you, and you try to make it okay
Speaker 1: and make yourself feel safe again. And so seeing her
Speaker 1: react and hearing her react as though this was not okay,
Speaker 1: not normal, that he had done something wrong, validated for
Speaker 1: me all of those feelings that I had, And I
Speaker 1: think that's really important. You know, not all of us
Speaker 1: get that when we disclosed for the first time. We
Speaker 1: don't always get support and belief, and so I feel
Speaker 1: very grateful that I had that. But having said that,
Speaker 1: you know, she didn't say anything about and I didn't
Speaker 1: think about going to the police or even reporting it
Speaker 1: to the nannying agency. I didn't even know how to begin,
Speaker 1: how to talk about it. And I was instantly afraid
Speaker 1: of the impact it would have on my life if
Speaker 1: I told people my life, my career, all of it.
Speaker 1: That was such a huge fear for me for such
Speaker 1: a long time that I did just keep it quiet,
Speaker 1: and a few people who are very close to me knew.
Speaker 1: And that was it when this happened to you. And
Speaker 1: you again, when I go back to what you said,
Speaker 1: is that many people go through something like this and
Speaker 1: they have nowhere to take it right. I shuddered to
Speaker 1: think how much unreported trauma, unshared stories of abuse, not
Speaker 1: just in the entertainment industry and all industries, workplaces, in
Speaker 1: life in general. How much has been unsaid and how
Speaker 1: much people carry this pain within them throughout their lives.
Speaker 1: Having that place, like you said, it was important, it's
Speaker 1: not enough. And then on top of that, you had
Speaker 1: to make these calculations in your head, these decisions of
Speaker 1: if I talk about this more, then these other things
Speaker 1: can happen. You're a young person, and that's all very
Speaker 1: real people say, Oh, may just being anxious. You don't
Speaker 1: being anxious, You're being realistic. When this happened to you,
Speaker 1: Sarah Ann, At this time, though none of this story
Speaker 1: had broken, so all we knew was I guess some
Speaker 1: people knew that Harvey Weinstein was just an angry dude
Speaker 1: and had a lot of bluster, as a boss. That
Speaker 1: seemed to be the talk you know, around the industry,
Speaker 1: but none of the rest of this had come out.
Speaker 1: You didn't have a context to places him, And am
Speaker 1: I right about that? That's completely right. I do think
Speaker 1: there are some people who were, you know, within his
Speaker 1: sphere who knew what he was doing. Of course, of course,
Speaker 1: and there's been this narrative, oh everybody knew. But I
Speaker 1: can tell you, as a young actor who had just
Speaker 1: moved to New York, I didn't know, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know a lot of other actresses who were you know.
Speaker 1: I was just starting to dip my tone into film
Speaker 1: and TV like that was my dream, was to move
Speaker 1: into that next chapter. I didn't have other people to
Speaker 1: talk about this with. I didn't feel safe too, so
Speaker 1: I had no idea. It wasn't until the New York
Speaker 1: Times story broke that I knew I wasn't alone. That
Speaker 1: was almost ten years later. So how did you feel
Speaker 1: in that moment? So this thing you've been carrying within you,
Speaker 1: this trauma, in the pain it caused you, you shared
Speaker 1: it with your mother, but with no one else, and
Speaker 1: you're making your way in this industry. I remember the
Speaker 1: day that story came out, you know, and I did
Speaker 1: not have the direct impact of it, and I almost
Speaker 1: dropped the paper at the time. How did you feel
Speaker 1: when you read that story? It was really surreal. I
Speaker 1: was in Europe at the time. My husband is British
Speaker 1: and we were over there visiting family, and we were
Speaker 1: about to film a short film that I had written
Speaker 1: and was acting in. And I saw the story and
Speaker 1: I felt equal parts just destroyed that this had happened
Speaker 1: to so many people, but also relieved that I wasn't alone,
Speaker 1: and a sense of Okay, if we're finally talking about this,
Speaker 1: maybe finally he'll be held accountable for what happened. Maybe
Speaker 1: I won't have to be afraid anymore. Maybe I can
Speaker 1: move through this industry in a way that feels safer.
Speaker 1: Because I had put my career off, I had a
Speaker 1: really big head start. I didn't go to college. I
Speaker 1: trained at a professional acting school in New York. I
Speaker 1: was the youngest person they had ever accepted, started my
Speaker 1: own theater company, had started like trying to take meetings
Speaker 1: with agents, and when Harvey did what he did to me,
Speaker 1: I pulled way back. I didn't feel safe going into
Speaker 1: audition rooms and meeting rooms with strange men who I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I was afraid he might be in a
Speaker 1: room that I entered into. So I kept creating. I
Speaker 1: kept making theater with people I trusted. But I really
Speaker 1: lost a lot of time. And it was only when
Speaker 1: I met my husband. We started working together, We started
Speaker 1: writing comedy together and creating together, and I suddenly felt
Speaker 1: safe again because he would go with me to auditions,
Speaker 1: he would go with me to meetings. I knew I
Speaker 1: had somebody there if something went wrong, And so I
Speaker 1: just started getting my career back and I felt hopeful
Speaker 1: that this would be a shift, this would be a change.
Speaker 1: And as the days progressed and more and more stories
Speaker 1: came out, again completely sickened that this had been going
Speaker 1: on for thirty years and there were so many people,
Speaker 1: but also hopeful, we're finally talking about this, We're finally
Speaker 1: taking this out of the shadows. Maybe things can finally change.
Speaker 1: The New York Times story coming out lead you to
Speaker 1: feel like you could speak out. Yeah, exactly that. And
Speaker 1: it was funny. I thought at first I would just
Speaker 1: write on my Facebook like sort of the broad strokes
Speaker 1: of what had happened to me. I thought, Okay, all
Speaker 1: my Facebook friends will hear what happened and they'll know,
Speaker 1: and it'll be off my chest. And that's that. I'm
Speaker 1: not famous. I'm not going to talk to the press
Speaker 1: like you know. But a friend of mine saw what
Speaker 1: I wrote and asked me if I would be willing
Speaker 1: to talk to the press, and I wasn't sure, but
Speaker 1: I said I'd talked to someone off the record, and
Speaker 1: I did, and I felt comfortable. I felt like my
Speaker 1: story would be safe in her hands, and I allowed
Speaker 1: Variety to publish again the big beats of what had
Speaker 1: happened to me. As you know, it takes time to
Speaker 1: fully process when you start retelling your narrative and finding
Speaker 1: all of the strength to talk about the details. So
Speaker 1: I shared sort of the broad beats of my story
Speaker 1: and I thought that would be it. But I kept
Speaker 1: getting press requests. And I was lucky to be filming
Speaker 1: this movie at the time because I could sort of
Speaker 1: escape onto my set and my whole crew knew what
Speaker 1: was happening, and they were really protective of me and
Speaker 1: made me feel safe. And so it felt a little
Speaker 1: bit like a nice bookend to be talking about this
Speaker 1: thing that had held me back for so long while
Speaker 1: creating and making art and doing something I really believed in.
Speaker 1: So I felt encouraged. At first. I didn't feel afraid
Speaker 1: that there would be the retaliation that I was so
Speaker 1: afraid of for a decade, because we were all telling
Speaker 1: our stories together and it looked like he was going
Speaker 1: to lose his job, and so I thought, surely, what
Speaker 1: could possibly happen now, what could go wrong? Now? Nobody
Speaker 1: could hold it against us. I mean, it's I think
Speaker 1: now one hundred and eleven people have officially gone on
Speaker 1: the record about Harvey abusing them. So what did happen
Speaker 1: after you spoke out in variety? Well, for about a
Speaker 1: month and a half, I had nothing but support, you know, friends, family,
Speaker 1: strangers all would write to me and thank me for
Speaker 1: coming forward. And that was one reason I wanted to
Speaker 1: share my story is yes, I was an actress, but
Speaker 1: it also happened in the context of domestic work, and
Speaker 1: I think that's domestic workers are so often abused and
Speaker 1: those stories don't get told very frequently. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to share that to hopefully give other people a sense
Speaker 1: that they weren't alone and what they were going through.
Speaker 1: So I felt good about it. I felt okay and
Speaker 1: I felt empowered to keep speaking. I had always been
Speaker 1: very passionate about these issues, you know, ending sexual violence
Speaker 1: and gender based violence, and now to be able to
Speaker 1: contextualize why it mattered so much to me personally felt
Speaker 1: good and like I could do some good. And I
Speaker 1: met a lot of other survivors and we started talking
Speaker 1: about trying to do work together, advocacy work together. But
Speaker 1: then about a month and a half after, I got
Speaker 1: a call from my agent at the time, and she
Speaker 1: told me that she was getting angry phone calls from
Speaker 1: casting directors that I needed to stop already, I'd already
Speaker 1: told my story. Enough was enough that I was going
Speaker 1: to be blacklisted. And it was like all of my
Speaker 1: fears coming true. And I chose to believe that this
Speaker 1: was her operating from her own place of fear, and
Speaker 1: that surely this couldn't possibly really happen. Maybe, okay, maybe
Speaker 1: she got a phone caller too, but it would be okay.
Speaker 1: I had just moved to la at this point, and
Speaker 1: I was getting probably about a half a dozen auditions
Speaker 1: a month, which is good for moving to a new
Speaker 1: market and having a small agent. And I watched that
Speaker 1: dry up very quickly and It's now five years later,
Speaker 1: and I think I've probably had around half a dozen
Speaker 1: auditions in the subsequent five years. It's been very extreme
Speaker 1: and very dramatic and very trackable. What's happened to me,
Speaker 1: And it hasn't just happened to me, It's happened to
Speaker 1: a lot of people. My question here is we had
Speaker 1: heard watching, she said, reading the myriad articles written about this,
Speaker 1: and we had heard how people who had turned away
Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein's advances would face his wrath, and that would
Speaker 1: be incurred in not getting parts. Even people who are
Speaker 1: actually relatively big names were having experienced it cost a
Speaker 1: whole continuum of people who were still coming up in
Speaker 1: the industry, people who had come up in the industry.
Speaker 1: In New York case, the article was already out, the
Speaker 1: New York Times articles already out, and your agent was
Speaker 1: still afraid. So Weinstein still held a lot of power
Speaker 1: in the industry, is what you're telling me, even after
Speaker 1: the Time's Peace came out. Yeah. I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: layered what's going on here, because, as you mentioned, when
Speaker 1: this happened to me, I talked about it. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: if people are angry at me already, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to hide this. I'm not going to once again be afraid.
Speaker 1: And because I started talking about what was happening to me,
Speaker 1: other people started sharing with me that they were having,
Speaker 1: like you said, very successful people, people who were sort
Speaker 1: of just coming up, people losing their agents, getting dropped
Speaker 1: from pilots, having all their auditions dry up. And it
Speaker 1: was just the same story over and over again. And
Speaker 1: so I think it comes down to, yes, I think
Speaker 1: Harvey still has power in this industry. I think he
Speaker 1: still has friends. But I also think there are still
Speaker 1: abusers in this industry who are afraid to be found out.
Speaker 1: And I think there are people who, even if they
Speaker 1: have nothing to hide themselves, they were afraid of the
Speaker 1: squeaky wheel. They didn't want to rock the boat. And
Speaker 1: I think these tend to be, you know, maybe lower
Speaker 1: level gatekeepers, not necessarily the people who are running the studios.
Speaker 1: I think they don't really have that fear. And so
Speaker 1: when I've talked to some of them, they've gone, oh,
Speaker 1: this is terrible that this is happening. We have to
Speaker 1: do something about it. This shouldn't be happening. But it's
Speaker 1: such a big industry and it's difficult to break into
Speaker 1: in the best of times, but I think it's implicit
Speaker 1: and explicit retaliation. I think there's a lot going on
Speaker 1: that provokes these barriers of entry to folks who have
Speaker 1: been marginalized in all sorts of ways, but certainly survivors
Speaker 1: of sexual violence. And it's got a shift and it's
Speaker 1: got a change, and so I'm trying to do something
Speaker 1: about that. What is it that's unique about the entertainment
Speaker 1: industry that you believe in enables this level, this reach
Speaker 1: of abuse of vulnerable folks. I always talk about the
Speaker 1: fact that this is not explicit to the entertainment industry,
Speaker 1: as you've mentioned yourself, but there are things that make
Speaker 1: this unique. And I'm a member of SAGAFTER and I
Speaker 1: work on a lot of committees, including the National Sexual
Speaker 1: Harassment Prevention Committee, and I talk a lot about the
Speaker 1: fact that, you know, most people in their jobs are
Speaker 1: not lucky to get an interview and then having to
Speaker 1: interview one hundred times before they get a job. Most
Speaker 1: people are not having to go into private spaces with
Speaker 1: very limited people and having to be extremely emotionally vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Most people are not asked to be almost naked and
Speaker 1: do sex scenes or intimate scenes on set. Most people
Speaker 1: are not asked to constantly relive traumatic experiences. There's a
Speaker 1: lot that means that folks who work in this industry
Speaker 1: are vulnerable. We work very long hours, we have to
Speaker 1: fight very hard for protections from our unions, and not
Speaker 1: everybody is in the union. And there's a very clear
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's not very clear, maybe it's very murky,
Speaker 1: but there is a very distinct power dynamic that exists.
Speaker 1: There are all of these layers of gatekeeping that you
Speaker 1: have to get through to get to the next thing.
Speaker 1: And I know exceptionally famous, successful actors who are still
Speaker 1: afraid to speak on set if something makes them uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: because when they do, they get pushback. And I think
Speaker 1: that we need to keep putting in these sort of
Speaker 1: safety nets. I think of it like having prop guns
Speaker 1: on set or having a stunts on set. These are
Speaker 1: safety issues. This is bodily autonomy and bodily safety, and
Speaker 1: I think if we can start thinking about it in
Speaker 1: that way, we would have a better response from the
Speaker 1: folks who are currently in power to put these things
Speaker 1: in place, because it protects them too, It limits their liability,
Speaker 1: It creates a safer and happier work environment. It allows
Speaker 1: people to be more creative, and there are things like
Speaker 1: intimacy coordinators and well being coordinators that exist that help
Speaker 1: with that, but we just have to sort of normalize
Speaker 1: that part of it. So many people are trying to
Speaker 1: get into it. Right. So there's this really interesting research
Speaker 1: out there on something called institutional betrayal. Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: taking a lot of what we might even see an
Speaker 1: individual betrayal, but it's happening at an institutional level, and
Speaker 1: much like you'd even see in a family where abuse
Speaker 1: is happening, there is a real pressure to close ranks.
Speaker 1: Let's not talk about this outside of here. Gas lighting,
Speaker 1: Did that ever really happen? The one thing we do
Speaker 1: know about institutional betrayal is that industries where there is
Speaker 1: a really high bar to entry, where there is a
Speaker 1: lot of prestige, where there is the possibility of really
Speaker 1: high status or gains to come, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of these gate keeping sorts of like hoops to jump through,
Speaker 1: as it were, those are the industries where institutional betrayal
Speaker 1: is most likely to happen. And the entertainment industry is
Speaker 1: really that because there's thousands of people clamoring for you know,
Speaker 1: very very far fewer jobs with the hope of the big,
Speaker 1: big return someday. And these patterns seem to be pretty ancient.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that tropes of things like the
Speaker 1: casting couch, those aren't. Those aren't fictions, These aren't. We
Speaker 1: hear more and more people do historical work on what
Speaker 1: the early years of the motion picture industry were. It
Speaker 1: was nothing but abuse, often of underage performers, and absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing was done about it. If anything, the abusers are
Speaker 1: absolutely emboldened. So this really definitely feels like it's intergenerational
Speaker 1: within this industry. It's been in place for a long time.
Speaker 1: The stakes are really high, and then you brought up
Speaker 1: something really interesting, which is even very seasoned performers, people
Speaker 1: who are marquee names have an anxiety about speaking out
Speaker 1: because the fact is they were indoctrinated into this. You
Speaker 1: know that it's again it's like a family where you
Speaker 1: learned and we don't talk about that. Let's not bring
Speaker 1: it up. I don't want to stir the pot. And
Speaker 1: their own handlers, agents, managers, representatives saying, don't you know,
Speaker 1: let's not say anything. Come on, it says that really
Speaker 1: affecting you. Is that really a problem, And you're right,
Speaker 1: it's numerous workplace settings. It does seem to be quite
Speaker 1: pronounced in entertainment, and I think also there's big age gaps.
Speaker 1: You have young young people entering an industry who often
Speaker 1: just lack institutional power. From that people who are senior
Speaker 1: positions who are decision making. But I also really love
Speaker 1: what you said, Sarah Ann about domestic workers, household workers,
Speaker 1: people who really really have very little social power and
Speaker 1: the amount of abuses that happen there. So I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you put a lens on that, because when we
Speaker 1: look at the harassment literature, what we see in people
Speaker 1: who are in industries like retail, bartending, other service employees,
Speaker 1: they actually report the highest rates of harassment in the workplace.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm not surprised. And you know something you
Speaker 1: mentioned about the really big stars who are afraid to
Speaker 1: speak up. I don't think it's only the indoctrination. I
Speaker 1: think it's the real risk of economic harm. Even the
Speaker 1: people I know who are the most successful people in
Speaker 1: this industry, they're always wondering when the next shob will come,
Speaker 1: if the next shob will come. It's weirdly expensive to
Speaker 1: work in this industry. Once you do have a modicum
Speaker 1: of success hiring publicists and paying your agent and your
Speaker 1: manager their fee and whatever your house and costs are, Yes,
Speaker 1: your wealth is going up, but you don't know how
Speaker 1: temporary it is. So there's this real economic harm that
Speaker 1: can come. I mean, I've certainly faced it. My finances
Speaker 1: have been massively impacted by the fact that I have
Speaker 1: basically barely been able to work the past five years
Speaker 1: in the industry that I am trained to work in.
Speaker 1: And regardless of what level or what scale you're working at,
Speaker 1: that fear of loss of income and loss of ability
Speaker 1: to work is very motivating and very real, And that's
Speaker 1: kind of the part I'm trying to address, is not
Speaker 1: just creating the safety, but also taking away the barriers
Speaker 1: to entry and taking away the fear of speaking. There
Speaker 1: was a film that I was involved with recently, an
Speaker 1: independent film, and we'll talk about this more later, but
Speaker 1: I run this organization called Hire Survivors Hollywood, and they
Speaker 1: teamed with us on it, and so they wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that they were hiring survivors in the roles
Speaker 1: that were available, and they put out a casting notice
Speaker 1: with their partnership with us, and they said that if
Speaker 1: you would like to self identify as a survivor of
Speaker 1: sexual violence, you could market in your notes and the
Speaker 1: guarante was that they would look at your materials. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a guarantee that you would get hired. But they
Speaker 1: had eighteen roles. They got about eighteen thousand submissions and
Speaker 1: they cast four survivors, so about a quarter of the
Speaker 1: roles ended up going to survivors because they took that step.
Speaker 1: And so it's not a guarantee of employment. It's just
Speaker 1: a guarantee that there aren't going to be extra barriers
Speaker 1: put in front of you. That's such an important point
Speaker 1: because I don't think everyone appreciates what it means to
Speaker 1: work on this basis where you are always having to
Speaker 1: think about the next gig. A lot of shows have
Speaker 1: limited runs. Every show is going to end at some point.
Speaker 1: Every film is a finite period of work. And that
Speaker 1: idea of working so hard and then having to think
Speaker 1: about what's the next gig going to be? It really
Speaker 1: does take away your power, can even make it hard
Speaker 1: to find an apartment when you can't show steady income
Speaker 1: or any of that. So all the things that a
Speaker 1: person needs to feel stable are taken away, and then
Speaker 1: it puts people in incredibly compromised positions in an industry
Speaker 1: where they already don't have powers. So this is bigger
Speaker 1: than just what we heard in this one story of
Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein. This is a far bigger sort of indictment
Speaker 1: of how the entertainment industry runs itself and the magnified
Speaker 1: vulnerability it puts people in by how it runs. So
Speaker 1: I think it's really amazing that you're creating that awareness.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is only
Speaker 1: happening because the abusers are protected. How is it that
Speaker 1: these big media companies, production companies, whatever, How are they
Speaker 1: protecting these abusers. I think historically it's been a financial decision.
Speaker 1: Someone like Harvey Weinstein was making a lot of money,
Speaker 1: so there was an impetus to protect him because he
Speaker 1: was the moneymaker. And the way in which I've talked
Speaker 1: about this a lot is that our industry has a
Speaker 1: responsibility because we create culture, and we create media, and
Speaker 1: we create entertainment, and that's what shapes cultural ideas and
Speaker 1: cultural norms, and so there's this very dark side to
Speaker 1: it that we're talking about how there's also a really
Speaker 1: hopeful side where if we shift, if we do the
Speaker 1: things that we need to do in order to tell
Speaker 1: stories that are more honest about what it is to
Speaker 1: be a human being, to have better representation onscreen and
Speaker 1: behind the camera, to create safer work environments. Not only
Speaker 1: can we create great art that brings in lots of money,
Speaker 1: but we can shift the cultural conversation to create a
Speaker 1: more empathetic, kinder, safer, more equitable world. And when I
Speaker 1: talk to the folks who are in positions of power,
Speaker 1: I say to them, look, I believe you should do
Speaker 1: this because it's the right thing to do. But also
Speaker 1: it's a very smart pr move. This is very positive
Speaker 1: publicity for you. It's a very smart financial move. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of underserved markets who have a lot of
Speaker 1: spending power who you will draw in to your projects
Speaker 1: if they are ethically aligned and if they're culturally aligned
Speaker 1: with what these groups of people want to see and
Speaker 1: are so hungry to see. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: it lessens liability on your sets. It allows your director
Speaker 1: to know that they can focus on their job and
Speaker 1: they have an intimacy coordinator to handle the awkward and
Speaker 1: complicated and difficult staging of those intimate and hyper exposed scenes.
Speaker 1: It allows everybody to do their jobs and feel like
Speaker 1: they're safe, and we at higher survivors Hollywood advocate for
Speaker 1: having things like pre employment trauma informed training. We advocate
Speaker 1: for things like safety meetings in any project where there
Speaker 1: is going to be a hyper exposed or intimate scene,
Speaker 1: just like if there was going to be a stunt performed.
Speaker 1: We advocate for having access to mental health professionals, to
Speaker 1: having a trauma informed therapist on set on the days
Speaker 1: where you're filming something that might be sensitive, even if
Speaker 1: it's not sexual or gender based violence, if it's something
Speaker 1: that has to do with racial violence, or you know,
Speaker 1: all these different things. And we have this i think
Speaker 1: twenty two page toolkit that I've authored and it's free
Speaker 1: and it's available for everybody works in this industry to
Speaker 1: get some guidance. And we do consulting and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of help out there to shift the narrative and
Speaker 1: to shift the culture, and more people than you would expect,
Speaker 1: I think, are been to it. It's just about letting
Speaker 1: people know that these resources exist. We consulted on a
Speaker 1: project that had a three thousand dollar budget and they
Speaker 1: were still able to hire an intimacy coordinator and hire
Speaker 1: several survivors to be in the project. And she said,
Speaker 1: which I was involved, And they did a lot of
Speaker 1: things right. They had access to a therapist for all
Speaker 1: of us on via phone at any time, They consulted
Speaker 1: with people who were depicted in the film when developing
Speaker 1: the script. They did hire survivors to be in the film,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how much of that they were
Speaker 1: planning to do already, but I called Universal when the
Speaker 1: film was announced. I called their switchboard and I got
Speaker 1: in touch with an executive there, and I didn't pitch
Speaker 1: myself as an actor. I just wanted to let them
Speaker 1: know about higher survivors because I thought it was such
Speaker 1: an obvious opportunity with this film, and they took a
Speaker 1: meeting with me. I met with their Equity and Inclusion department,
Speaker 1: and I told them about what we were trying to
Speaker 1: do and how I thought it could work. And I
Speaker 1: sort of thought i'd never hear from them again, and
Speaker 1: hopefully it just would plan to seed. Then I got
Speaker 1: an audition, and I found out that several Weinstein survivors
Speaker 1: got auditioned and a few of us got hired. And
Speaker 1: so you know, that was a thirty two million dollar
Speaker 1: budget film, and there's this three thousand dollars new media project.
Speaker 1: Anybody can integrate these steps, Anybody can help make a difference.
Speaker 1: And we've gotten so many survivors work and auditions and interviews,
Speaker 1: and it's just like me and one other person running
Speaker 1: this Right now, We've just brought in an advisory board
Speaker 1: of thirty people who are incredible. But I keep thinking like,
Speaker 1: if I'm just one little person and I can make
Speaker 1: these things happen, Imagine if everybody gets on board. Imagine
Speaker 1: if we joined together to really push things forward and
Speaker 1: get out of that deeply problematic and toxic and abusive
Speaker 1: culture that sort of knit together this industry in the
Speaker 1: first place, and remake it into what we want it
Speaker 1: to be. My session with Sarah will continue after this break.
Speaker 1: In a way, what healing is about is about persistence, right,
Speaker 1: It's about getting up in the morning. It's about doing
Speaker 1: things no matter what the size of the project is.
Speaker 1: It's about picking the phone up and you're getting through
Speaker 1: in the switchboard and actually getting through. It's those it's
Speaker 1: giving ourselves permission to take small steps to take back
Speaker 1: our power and our narratives and by extension, benefits systems
Speaker 1: around us, and then when we really feel empowered to
Speaker 1: actually try to address those systems. So I think that
Speaker 1: what you're doing in a much larger way is what
Speaker 1: people who are healing are doing in a smaller individual way,
Speaker 1: if you will, every single day. And I think that
Speaker 1: those are two really parallel processes. And I really do
Speaker 1: appreciate that there is some hope in this, like it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be again an indictment of an industry.
Speaker 1: But you also bring up something very important. The entertainment
Speaker 1: industry sits in a very unique space where they create culture.
Speaker 1: So they can create new stories, whether that is through
Speaker 1: representation how stories are told and protecting the people who
Speaker 1: tell the stories. That there's something quite powerful then that
Speaker 1: actually sort of seeps into the groundwater of a culture.
Speaker 1: You also, they'll bring up this issue and I'll go
Speaker 1: back to the dark side for a minute, which is
Speaker 1: where unfortunately, as a narcissism person, I often dwell in
Speaker 1: the dark side. But on that dark side, you brought
Speaker 1: up this concept of really what I call the golden goose,
Speaker 1: that institutions, systems, companies protect the golden goose, and as
Speaker 1: if somebody's making money or getting looks or likes or
Speaker 1: clicks or whatever it is that they want. The enabling
Speaker 1: and subsequent emboldening of those individuals and protecting of those
Speaker 1: individuals within industries has been traditionally problematic. I do agree
Speaker 1: with you that the financial risks that are now being
Speaker 1: raised by having people who are abusive on a team,
Speaker 1: on the staff running a company, I think for the
Speaker 1: first time ever, we're starting to see I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's a shift in moral conscience, but I do
Speaker 1: know it's a shift on saying we can't afford this.
Speaker 1: Is it even just about dollars and cents on their budgets.
Speaker 1: It's about all the other people, the sponsorship, all of
Speaker 1: that that gets pulled away. There is an accountability, and
Speaker 1: that to me is a meaningful shift. It's not enough yet,
Speaker 1: but it steps in the right direction. I agree, and
Speaker 1: I think I'm very tired of people asking me what
Speaker 1: I think about quote unquote cancel culture. I think what
Speaker 1: it is is accountability. It's not cancel culture if it's
Speaker 1: holding people accountable for the harm that they've caused. And
Speaker 1: sometimes that means they've caused companies financial harm and so
Speaker 1: they drop them. And sometimes it means they've caused actual
Speaker 1: criminal harm, and then they have to be held accountable
Speaker 1: for that. But accountability is essential. I think we could
Speaker 1: have really long, complicated conversations about the state of the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system in this country and globally, and whether
Speaker 1: or not it should even exist in this state. It
Speaker 1: does now. But even if we were able to shift,
Speaker 1: and I hope we get to the point were we're
Speaker 1: able to shift away from the carceral system and all
Speaker 1: of these things, accountability will always be a part of it.
Speaker 1: You have to be held accountable for your actions, both
Speaker 1: good and add all of us, none of us are perfect.
Speaker 1: We all make missteps. But there's a difference between making
Speaker 1: a mistake, making error, harming someone unintentionally, learning from it,
Speaker 1: growing changing, and being somebody who is just ritually and
Speaker 1: serially abusing and causing harm. And maybe somebody like Harvey
Speaker 1: stops doing that if early on he's actually held accountable.
Speaker 1: We don't know. I don't know. I can't pretend to
Speaker 1: know the inner workings of his mind. And maybe not,
Speaker 1: maybe he was always going to be somebody who would
Speaker 1: just exercise his power in this way. But I think
Speaker 1: we have to stop being afraid of accountability and embrace
Speaker 1: it as the transformative tool that it is. The name
Speaker 1: of this podcast is Navigating Narcissism, and it's a very
Speaker 1: big umbrella term. I've never heard someone use it these
Speaker 1: words this when it's actually quite beautiful. Ritually and serially abusive.
Speaker 1: You know that, honestly, is the core of patterns like
Speaker 1: narcissism and psychopathy are people who are ritually and serially abusive.
Speaker 1: And so I think that cultures of accountability become calmplicated
Speaker 1: in the face of those personality styles. They are precisely
Speaker 1: the people it's baked into their personality where accountability is
Speaker 1: not very likely, in fact pretty very unlikely. However, adding
Speaker 1: fuel to that fire is when there's absolutely no consequence
Speaker 1: and absolutely no accountability for protracted periods of time, years
Speaker 1: and decades. The longer and longer and longer that there's
Speaker 1: no consequence, it emboldens a person who already is lacking
Speaker 1: conscience to keep pushing that envelope. And so you are
Speaker 1: witnessing sort of a stare step escalation because the person
Speaker 1: really does feel is that they're completely teflon that nothing
Speaker 1: will ever stick, and that's the danger. Whereas in a
Speaker 1: person with a healthier sort of sense of self and
Speaker 1: healthier internal organization, that accountability and responsibility is baked into
Speaker 1: the healthy psyche. You're right, we do all make mistakes.
Speaker 1: Healthy people tend to try to make amends, and and
Speaker 1: that that you call the ritual and serial abuse. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in certain industries there's a critical massive individuals who engage
Speaker 1: in that behavior, making that industry riskier, and they tend
Speaker 1: to be high risk, high reward industries such as entertainment.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of sense. Yeah, you've now talked to
Speaker 1: many survivors, Sarah Anne. Are there any patterns you've witnessed
Speaker 1: after people have spoken out in their own stories. One
Speaker 1: thing I will say that I've learned is every single
Speaker 1: survivor is very different. How we process our trauma can
Speaker 1: be very different. Where we are in those ceiling journeys,
Speaker 1: it's very different. But I do think the common thread
Speaker 1: is that you know, none of us walk away unscathed.
Speaker 1: All of us have sort of these longer term impacts
Speaker 1: from this abuse. And I don't know that I've met
Speaker 1: anyone who doesn't feel that their career has been harmed
Speaker 1: from what had happened to them, whether it was that they,
Speaker 1: like I did early on, sort of help themselves back,
Speaker 1: whether they faced explicit retaliation, whether they felt like they
Speaker 1: couldn't talk about what happened to them and it sort
Speaker 1: of shut them down emotionally, whether they were facing health
Speaker 1: issues that made them unable to work. There's always some
Speaker 1: sort of long term harm, always economic harm, and then
Speaker 1: that's on top of the physical and psychological and interpersonal harm.
Speaker 1: So what I have witnessed is that everybody has these
Speaker 1: echoes of this one incident or several incidents, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and some people are better at masking it,
Speaker 1: and some people maybe seem to pull themselves up from
Speaker 1: it faster and move on. But it's very common for
Speaker 1: people to be dealing with the impacts of this years
Speaker 1: and decades later, and some people, you know, it takes
Speaker 1: a long time to even fully process it, to fully
Speaker 1: understand it, to be able to talk about it. And
Speaker 1: that is the one thing I think we all have
Speaker 1: in common, learning how to understand what happened to us,
Speaker 1: learning the actual multisystem impact of it, and then how
Speaker 1: to not lose ourselves to it, and unfortunately, the responsibility
Speaker 1: falls on our shoulders to fix this problem that was
Speaker 1: never ours to begin with, to ask for what we deserve,
Speaker 1: just a fair and equal chance to live out our lives.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't be the ones who are being held accountable
Speaker 1: for the abuse that was done to us. Survivors of
Speaker 1: sexual violence are some of the only survivors of a
Speaker 1: violent crime who get treated as though they are the
Speaker 1: perpetrator of that crime when they're asked about it. And
Speaker 1: I think, again, it comes down to a cultural shift
Speaker 1: about how we understand these things, how we talk about them.
Speaker 1: And I just really believe in trying to use art
Speaker 1: as an empathy machine and as an educator on all
Speaker 1: of this. And I also write as well, and it's
Speaker 1: really important to me that I do that because at
Speaker 1: least I know what I'm writing will be filtered through
Speaker 1: the world view that understands these things. I think that's great.
Speaker 1: You said something that my therapisty Are grabbed onto, which
Speaker 1: was this idea that you're using it talking about yourself
Speaker 1: of holding yourself back and people holding themselves back. I'm
Speaker 1: actually going to hold your feet to the fire on
Speaker 1: that one. It makes it sound so volitional and voluntary,
Speaker 1: don't know that it's holding yourself back. I think what
Speaker 1: we miss is that trauma is a hijacking of a system,
Speaker 1: and it's not holding oneself back. It's literally feeling as
Speaker 1: though safety and permission have been taken away. And so
Speaker 1: I'm always very mindful that trauma survivors don't feel complicit
Speaker 1: in their own sort of getting stuck as it were,
Speaker 1: as many do because there was a hijacking, and to
Speaker 1: take that back as part of the work of healing
Speaker 1: trauma to feel comfortable and safe in your own body again.
Speaker 1: And it goings back to what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: so many survivors, especially sexual violence, are made to feel
Speaker 1: and so powed they are the perpetrators or there's somehow
Speaker 1: culpable or responsible, and that kind of languaging can lead
Speaker 1: a person then to say, well, then after this happened,
Speaker 1: then I stop myself. I held myself back. Why you
Speaker 1: did no such thing? You know, this was something that
Speaker 1: happened to you, and then systems kicked in to keep
Speaker 1: you safe, and that subsequently becomes a barrier. So it's
Speaker 1: just shedding that kind of light that you've actually done
Speaker 1: quite remarkable things in the face of all of this.
Speaker 1: Thank you for saying that, and thank you for checking
Speaker 1: my language on that, because I'm always trying to sort
Speaker 1: of unpack the words I use and the impact they have,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't even thought about that. But you're right,
Speaker 1: because I feel like it's lost time, Like I feel
Speaker 1: like that's the easiest way to describe it. And when
Speaker 1: I'm angry, it's very easy for me to express it
Speaker 1: as he took that from me. But when I'm trying
Speaker 1: to talk about it in a way that feels palatable
Speaker 1: to other people, I often try to talk about it
Speaker 1: in the terms of, oh, well, it caused me to
Speaker 1: hold myself back, or it caused me to feel fearful.
Speaker 1: But you're right, it was just me trying to stay
Speaker 1: safe and trying to reclaim some sort of control over
Speaker 1: something that was taken from me. And I am resentful
Speaker 1: of that. I'm resentful for all the time that we lose,
Speaker 1: and I am resentful for all the opportunities that are
Speaker 1: taken from us. And I guess I feel lucky that
Speaker 1: I want to turn that into something productive rather than destructive.
Speaker 1: But it's still, you know, there's still the frustration and
Speaker 1: the anger there for all of that, and hopefully it
Speaker 1: helps to feel me to do work that. Look, I
Speaker 1: want my career to thrive, obviously, but I'm driven to
Speaker 1: do this work because it's not just me. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think if I thought it was just me, I probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't really be doing this. I maybe would move on
Speaker 1: to something else. But I know it's happening across the board.
Speaker 1: I know so many people are impacted in this way,
Speaker 1: and I just like, I can't sit there and let
Speaker 1: it happen when I know there are things that I
Speaker 1: can do to try to help. I think it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I can tell you, as a clinician practicing in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: the number of stories I've heard of this on the
Speaker 1: client side one is too many. But I'm tearing too
Speaker 1: many too many, Sarah, can you tell us about higher
Speaker 1: survivors Hollywood. It's really quite remarkable and I'd love for
Speaker 1: our listeners to hear about it. Thanks. Yeah. It came
Speaker 1: to me very organically, as I started speaking about the
Speaker 1: retaliation that I was facing and finding out that this
Speaker 1: was happening to so many other people in our industry.
Speaker 1: I started trying to figure out solutions because I'm sort
Speaker 1: of a very solution oriented person. And I started tweeting
Speaker 1: about how we should be firing abusers and hiring survivors instead,
Speaker 1: and how we should be talking about the talents and
Speaker 1: the skills of these people, not just the abuse that
Speaker 1: they've gone through. And then I went to pre existing
Speaker 1: organizations and I said, hey, I have some ideas. I
Speaker 1: think you could help me with this. And I spent
Speaker 1: about a year pitching these ideas and developing these ideas,
Speaker 1: and ultimately I was told these are great ideas, but
Speaker 1: we don't have the money or the manpower to do it.
Speaker 1: You should do it yourself. And I thought, well, I
Speaker 1: certainly don't have the money or the manpower, but I
Speaker 1: guess I'll do it. And I knew I was going
Speaker 1: to be speaking on a panel at a film festival
Speaker 1: with other survivors in New York, and I sort of
Speaker 1: called up my part time assistant and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to buy these websites and will you secure
Speaker 1: this social media handles because I'm going to launch this
Speaker 1: today finally, and he was very excited, and he's now
Speaker 1: become my director of Digital Communication, Shane Kellminski, who's been
Speaker 1: running it with me from the beginning, and we announced
Speaker 1: that we were going to be an initiative that worked
Speaker 1: to end retaliation against survivors in the entertainment industry, and
Speaker 1: we very quickly became a place where we could educate
Speaker 1: about things that were still happening within the entertainment industry
Speaker 1: that we're abusive to draw positive attention to survivors, so
Speaker 1: we do a Survivors Shout Out Sunday every week where
Speaker 1: we talk about people in their work and to create
Speaker 1: opportunities for employment for survivors, and we've developed this toolkit
Speaker 1: which is on our website. It's also part of the
Speaker 1: Reframe resource. We have consulted on many film projects and
Speaker 1: gotten lots of survivors work both on camera and behind
Speaker 1: the camera, and we are working to expand we're very
Speaker 1: close to getting fiscal sponsorship, so we should be able
Speaker 1: to start taking money in finally and getting donations and
Speaker 1: sort of feeding our programs that way. But we have
Speaker 1: given media training to survivors. We've talked to organizations with
Speaker 1: an interne in an industry like the Casting Society of
Speaker 1: America and try to encourage people like casting directors are
Speaker 1: so important and hold so much power, and it can
Speaker 1: be really positive power. So we're just really trying to
Speaker 1: reshape things from the ground up. And not every project
Speaker 1: has the same needs. So there could be a small
Speaker 1: film that has filled all of their crew but has
Speaker 1: a few roles left to cast and they'd like to
Speaker 1: make sure they open the door to survivors and we
Speaker 1: can help with that. Or we can help when somebody's
Speaker 1: just starting to write a script and maybe it has
Speaker 1: to do as survivors, but they are not really well
Speaker 1: versed in that. We can find them a consultant, we
Speaker 1: can find them a co writer. There's all sorts of
Speaker 1: things that we can provide, but the focus is on
Speaker 1: equity and safety and inclusion, and our particular focus as
Speaker 1: sexual violence survivors. But we believe the work bleeds out
Speaker 1: into everything in our industry and will make it easier
Speaker 1: for all historically marginalized people to be safe and to
Speaker 1: be included. And I think it all stems from the
Speaker 1: same thing, which is this concentration and abuse of power,
Speaker 1: and if we can do our part to address that,
Speaker 1: I think we can help make things more pleasant for
Speaker 1: everybody who's trying to do this work. It's fantastic it's
Speaker 1: such an important anti oppressive approach within the entertainment industry
Speaker 1: because this is often an unseen group, right, there's not
Speaker 1: group membership in the way we would traditionally consider other
Speaker 1: marginalized groups, ethnic minority group members You know, it's something
Speaker 1: that people it will cross cut, will be a cost
Speaker 1: people of all ethnicities, all of you know, certainly in
Speaker 1: the LGBTQ community, only this. We had spoken to someone
Speaker 1: on our podcast who talked about this kind of behavior
Speaker 1: within the modeling industry. I mean, it's really that you
Speaker 1: see this as something where this is a group that
Speaker 1: has not often been considered in conversations unequity, and yet
Speaker 1: it changes a person to be a sexual abuse survivor,
Speaker 1: changes something, and it changes how a person shows up professionally,
Speaker 1: and so there's a profundity to really addressing there's oppressive
Speaker 1: corner of the industry in a way that helps people
Speaker 1: who really feel unsafe to feel safe and to actually
Speaker 1: try or even try again. You said, for people who
Speaker 1: might have said I can't do this anymore, this doesn't
Speaker 1: feel safe. So I think it's really amazing And what's
Speaker 1: so inspiring about your stories years of no auditions and
Speaker 1: years of being pulled out of the industry that you
Speaker 1: literally entered. I mean, adolescence to me is still a
Speaker 1: kid when you're still a kid. Yeah, you're starting to
Speaker 1: work again, and I've watched she said, and I kind
Speaker 1: of had my star sighting moment. I'm like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk to her so very special in my living
Speaker 1: room when I saw you, because I really really loved
Speaker 1: the film for you personally, Sarah Anne, what has the
Speaker 1: experience been like for you of starting to work in
Speaker 1: the industry again and especially with the success if she said,
Speaker 1: thank you. First of all, I think, she said, is
Speaker 1: such a beautiful film, and I'm very picky about films
Speaker 1: that depict survivors of sexual violence. And I felt really
Speaker 1: confident in this one, and it's such a great team.
Speaker 1: It's meant the world to me to be able to
Speaker 1: be part of. She said. I felt like to be
Speaker 1: able to finally have my first feature debut in something
Speaker 1: that's so personally meaningful to me, and to get to
Speaker 1: play this incredible woman Emily Steele, who's this pulit surprise
Speaker 1: winning journalist who helped break the story open about Bill O'Reilly.
Speaker 1: It felt like a full circle moment. It felt like
Speaker 1: I was reclaiming some of my power and getting some
Speaker 1: poetic justice. And I never stopped creating. I make my
Speaker 1: own work. I was never going to completely give up
Speaker 1: on this, but to get the validation of having these
Speaker 1: extremely skilled professionals, numerius raiders and incredible director Deety Gardners,
Speaker 1: one of the most well respected producers in the industry,
Speaker 1: Francine Maisler's one of the best casting directors it's ever existed.
Speaker 1: And they don't just give parts to people because it's
Speaker 1: a nice thing to do. You know. It's a big
Speaker 1: budget film, high stakes, and I earned my way into it,
Speaker 1: but I got the opportunity because they were cognizant of
Speaker 1: the inequities that are happening. And it felt wonderful and
Speaker 1: it's been really fun. It's like I'm the happiest I
Speaker 1: ever am when I'm getting to act on set. I
Speaker 1: feel at home, I feel at pee, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm still not really getting auditions, and I don't know
Speaker 1: when my next job is coming, and it is that
Speaker 1: constant struggle for all of us. But it definitely is
Speaker 1: in the back of my head that Okay, this wonderful
Speaker 1: thing has happened, this great film has happened. I know
Speaker 1: people know that I can do this. Now I have
Speaker 1: to make sure that the next job does come in,
Speaker 1: not just for me, but for all the people in
Speaker 1: my community that I'm trying to help. And that's why
Speaker 1: I will keep working at this thing of higher survivors
Speaker 1: for as long as it needs to be there, because
Speaker 1: we can't take our eye off the ball or else
Speaker 1: it's just going to be easy to ignore folks. I
Speaker 1: guess again, And you mentioned survivors are a very diverse
Speaker 1: group of people. There's a lot of multiply marginalized people
Speaker 1: who are survivors. I myself, I'm disabled, I'm queer, but
Speaker 1: I'm also white, and it's very important to me that
Speaker 1: our organization does not fall into the traps of white
Speaker 1: feminism and that we have a really diverse group of
Speaker 1: people sharing their thoughts so that they catch me out
Speaker 1: if I'm missing something, and I think that's essential. And
Speaker 1: several other people I know. Pamela Guest is another great
Speaker 1: advocate and survivor and actor who's pushing for a recognition
Speaker 1: of survivors as a protected class, and several states do
Speaker 1: recognize survivors of sexual violence, stalking, and domestic violence as
Speaker 1: a protected class. The EOC does, so we need to
Speaker 1: catch up with that. Historically, there's been a really poor
Speaker 1: understanding of disabled people as being part of the conversation
Speaker 1: COURTEI as well, So I'm really passionate about making sure
Speaker 1: people are aware of I mean, a quarter of the
Speaker 1: population is disabled. A lot of them are invisibly disabled,
Speaker 1: like I am. And it's similar with sexual violence survivors.
Speaker 1: One in four women, I believe one in six men,
Speaker 1: and we know that those numbers are likely much higher
Speaker 1: than reported. It's a huge proportion of our society that
Speaker 1: has experienced this, and we have to be aware of
Speaker 1: the challenges that face this community. Absolutely, and I think
Speaker 1: that you know, I'm glad you're bringing up the issue
Speaker 1: of people who are differently abled, because within that are
Speaker 1: people who are also living with mental health issues. People
Speaker 1: are speaking out about it, but they're not. I actually
Speaker 1: think we're in an interesting inversion moment where a lot
Speaker 1: of people are speaking about it openly, but a lot
Speaker 1: more people aren't, and that people think doors are open,
Speaker 1: but there's actually sort of like it's very tricky glass
Speaker 1: that you actually can walk through. So I'm so glad
Speaker 1: you're bringing up all of those dimensions of what defines
Speaker 1: these traditionally underrepresented groups. Another question that hit me is
Speaker 1: as you made she said, as a survivor of that experience,
Speaker 1: of that moment of Harvey Weinstein's abuse, what was it
Speaker 1: like for you psychologically to be an artist within a
Speaker 1: project that was actually also capturing the story of your
Speaker 1: real life pain. It was for me extremely empowering. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I got to read the script once I
Speaker 1: accepted the role, I got to read the whole script,
Speaker 1: so I knew that, yes, this is the story of
Speaker 1: these journalists, but it also very much gives focus to
Speaker 1: several of the women who decided to go on the
Speaker 1: record and the challenges of that, the fears that go
Speaker 1: along with making yourself so vulnerable and sharing this part
Speaker 1: of your story. And so I knew I was getting
Speaker 1: to participate in a film that I felt ethically aligned
Speaker 1: with and that I felt was a really good way
Speaker 1: to tell this story again in a way that would
Speaker 1: hit people in a different facet. You hit them in
Speaker 1: their hearts and hit them so it really humanized the experience,
Speaker 1: and it didn't ever sensationalize the sexual violence. It didn't
Speaker 1: show it on screen, which I really appreciated. And I
Speaker 1: got to play a character who reveals to one of
Speaker 1: the journalists who's investigating Harvey that one of their sources,
Speaker 1: Lisa Bloom, who is the lawyer's actually working with Harvey
Speaker 1: and it's actually working against survivors. And Lisa Bloom is
Speaker 1: someone who I've always had a huge amount of end
Speaker 1: tipathy for and resentment towards, and to get to play
Speaker 1: a character or sort of calling her out felt very
Speaker 1: empowering to me and fun to get to do that.
Speaker 1: It's like, we're not just talking about Harvey, we are
Speaker 1: talking about the systems around him and the people who
Speaker 1: were complicit. And I think that's a really important part
Speaker 1: of it. It is a huge part of it, and
Speaker 1: I think that systemic complicity is a part of even
Speaker 1: this conversation we talk about in terms of unacceptable behavior within,
Speaker 1: not on the individual relationships with systemic relationships. The focus
Speaker 1: of this podcast is that recognition of complicity, and it
Speaker 1: also becomes a personal responsibility for anyone to ask themselves
Speaker 1: as I walk into a system, as I recognize what's happening,
Speaker 1: how can I be sure to check in with myself.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are all really complicated conversations, but I
Speaker 1: do think that the entire movement that came of this
Speaker 1: of recognition of these issues. It was absolutely an issue
Speaker 1: of gender, but it was also an issue of oppression,
Speaker 1: and of course, from my seat, I also thought it
Speaker 1: was an issue of narcissism. So I think that all
Speaker 1: of those things were playing a role. We will be
Speaker 1: right back with this conversation with Sarah. So, Sarah, I'd
Speaker 1: like to shift now to in recent years and even
Speaker 1: in recent months, how did you feel after Weinstein was
Speaker 1: convicted and sentenced. It's very complicated. I think I felt
Speaker 1: relief because it was a form of justice, and I
Speaker 1: had a civil legal battle with Weinstein that lasted about
Speaker 1: four and a half years, and I was one of
Speaker 1: the only remaining people in this civil suit because I
Speaker 1: fell under federal sex trafficking laws, so the statute of
Speaker 1: limitation hadn't passed. The judge was really difficult and very regressive,
Speaker 1: and it cost survivors a lot in that fight, and
Speaker 1: me and the two other women who were left in
Speaker 1: this case ended up fighting to create a victim's fund
Speaker 1: out of the bankruptcy, and that was a very complicated
Speaker 1: legal situation. So I know from my own personal experience
Speaker 1: on the civil side how scary this all is. You know,
Speaker 1: unless you've been through it, things like discovery, getting your
Speaker 1: computer and your phone taken, preparing for depositions, knowing that
Speaker 1: you're going to have to be in the same room
Speaker 1: with your abuser again, it is terrifying. And so for
Speaker 1: all the women who agreed to participate in these criminal cases,
Speaker 1: I owe them so much respect and so much gratitude.
Speaker 1: But also knowing that not everybody who wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to bring forward a criminal case was able to.
Speaker 1: I think it's important that working within the system that
Speaker 1: we have, seeing that occasionally it does work to serve
Speaker 1: justice is really important. And it's not perfect justice, and
Speaker 1: it's certainly not comprehensive. But I believe he's in a
Speaker 1: place now where he can't physically hurt people anymore, and
Speaker 1: I think that's important. But I also think it's important
Speaker 1: to watch people who are so powerful have to be
Speaker 1: held accountable and it doesn't always happen. We saw what
Speaker 1: happened with will Cosby. Danny Masterson luckily is going to
Speaker 1: be retried Kevin Spacey got off the hook in New York.
Speaker 1: I have hopes for the UK, but there are powerful
Speaker 1: abusers who get a pass, and then occasionally there are
Speaker 1: powerful abusers who are held accountable, And I hope it's
Speaker 1: been healing for survivors to see that, whether they're survivors
Speaker 1: of Weinstein himself or whether they're survivors of other abusers.
Speaker 1: I hope at least seeing somebody occasionally found guilty and
Speaker 1: having to serve time bring them some sense of peace
Speaker 1: and a sense that there can be progress made on
Speaker 1: all of this. Thank you for sharing that you're bringing
Speaker 1: up such a complicated issue for survivors, which is this
Speaker 1: issue of justice. Right, it seems many times in these
Speaker 1: cases to be more the exception and the rule. We
Speaker 1: know that prosecution of sexual assault cases, it's the least
Speaker 1: likely that those cases will be tried and adjudicated and
Speaker 1: prosecuted and sentenced in a manner that actually does leave
Speaker 1: survivors feeling whole. Listen, we can even look at the
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein case. They actually let him go so he
Speaker 1: could then go reperpetrate for years. I mean, so, even
Speaker 1: when it does go through the system, it's often a
Speaker 1: miscarriage of justice and one of the most complicated issues
Speaker 1: for survivors of any form of abuse. I think it's
Speaker 1: really magnified and survivors of sexual assault is that lack
Speaker 1: of justice. Even the way the system is set up,
Speaker 1: As you said, these procedures are almost designed to retraumatize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a huge amount of understanding and empathy for that.
Speaker 1: It's why I keep going back to this as the
Speaker 1: system we have to work within. So I guess there's
Speaker 1: a generally positive feeling and when I feel like the
Speaker 1: system is working, whatever that means, because I do think
Speaker 1: the system is set up to work in a way
Speaker 1: that is often against the survivors. But you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't fix everything. It doesn't take away my pain, it
Speaker 1: doesn't take away the repercussions of what have happened. But
Speaker 1: I do feel safer knowing he can't cause physical harm.
Speaker 1: So it is as you say, it's very complicated. Even
Speaker 1: when it is your abuser, Even when there is this
Speaker 1: supposed justice being served, it doesn't feel like a complete
Speaker 1: there's the period on the sentence, Now we can move on. No,
Speaker 1: And I think that that's often the mistake too, is
Speaker 1: that survivors would be told, let's say the case was
Speaker 1: adjudicated in a manner that the person was found guilty,
Speaker 1: they are facing a sentence, and then there's the arrogance
Speaker 1: of turning to the survivrans there now you must be fine,
Speaker 1: and I'm saying, oh, no, no, no. We see such
Speaker 1: a range of reaction from some survivors saying I should
Speaker 1: feel fine, and I don't. What's wrong with me? So
Speaker 1: there can be self blame. In some cases, there may
Speaker 1: even be guilt. I mean, it's a very very complicated
Speaker 1: series of reactions. And so this idea of it being
Speaker 1: a punctuation mark at vest it's a semicolon that where like,
Speaker 1: there's a whole hell of a lot of thoughts still
Speaker 1: happening after that moment, and of healing, And I think
Speaker 1: that the healing goes off in different directions depending on
Speaker 1: where the case winds up. But many times, the only
Speaker 1: reason these cases ended up in situations where there was
Speaker 1: a guilty verdict delivered was that these survivors literally had
Speaker 1: to put their souls and psyches on the line in
Speaker 1: a courtroom to face their worst fears, to live in
Speaker 1: a nightmarish state for months and years at a time.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. I mean I've read what's happened to some
Speaker 1: of the women who have taken the stand in both
Speaker 1: in New York and California in this case, in many
Speaker 1: other cases, and it is shocking. I think lawyers who
Speaker 1: engage in those victim blaming tactics should be disbarred. There's
Speaker 1: no basis in fact or legalitying what they're doing, and
Speaker 1: it is deeply retraumatizing. That's why I said, like the
Speaker 1: bravery and what we owe the people who do agree
Speaker 1: to put themselves through that is immense because it is
Speaker 1: not easy and it is not set up to be
Speaker 1: at all trauma informed. Whatever. The opposite of trauma informed
Speaker 1: is how our justice system works. To be honest with you, really,
Speaker 1: so for you personally, Sarah, And what are you hoping
Speaker 1: for for your future in the entertainment industry. I just
Speaker 1: want to work, you know. I just want to be
Speaker 1: hired to act in other people's projects that I want
Speaker 1: to make my projects that I'm writing, and I want
Speaker 1: to bring along talented people with me as I succeed,
Speaker 1: and I want to model what I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: the rest of the industry to do in my hiring
Speaker 1: practices and in my culture of my sets, and I
Speaker 1: won't ever stop doing it. Nobody's ever going to get
Speaker 1: me to stop, even if everybody says no and stop scalling.
Speaker 1: I can make my own work, But I do. I
Speaker 1: have some exciting projects coming up in the future, and
Speaker 1: I hope that they are really successful. One that I'd
Speaker 1: like to mention is actually a musical called The Right Girl,
Speaker 1: and the writer of the script is a fellow Weinstein
Speaker 1: survivor named Blue is at Geiss and the music is
Speaker 1: all by Diane Warren, and they have brought in a
Speaker 1: bunch of survivors as story contributors who get to financially
Speaker 1: benefit once the show opens and recoups. And I'm luckily
Speaker 1: enough to also be an actor in that project. And
Speaker 1: it goes back to my first love of musical theater.
Speaker 1: And so that's really great. And it's just a project
Speaker 1: that I help people get really excited by. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's good stuff being made and there are good people
Speaker 1: still working in this industry, and it's just about saying
Speaker 1: yes to the right thing instead of saying yes to
Speaker 1: the familiar thing sometimes. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that.
Speaker 1: First of all, congratulations. You have to tell us where
Speaker 1: we can find the right girl, because I would love
Speaker 1: to see it, hopefully soon. Oh yeah, well, there you go.
Speaker 1: That's all the reasons in New York and that's see.
Speaker 1: It would be wonderful. So I had read an interesting
Speaker 1: article recently in the La Times, and seeing more of this,
Speaker 1: I'm beginning to see the willingness to start telling more
Speaker 1: nuanced tales of women that aren't just informed by hegemonic
Speaker 1: representations of women, but are actually represented by again very subtle,
Speaker 1: layered representations of women. Because of invalidating, manipulative and done
Speaker 1: right abusive relationships, We've lost so much voice in our world,
Speaker 1: people who believe that their voices weren't worthy of being heard.
Speaker 1: And if nothing else to me, making awareness of these
Speaker 1: things means we're going to hear a much larger and
Speaker 1: more diverse chorus of voices with often really lyrically beautiful stories,
Speaker 1: because despite these wounds they carry, it's through that suffering
Speaker 1: that we actually often get far more beautiful art in
Speaker 1: all of its forms. So that's my hope. What comes
Speaker 1: out of that? Where can people find you and connect
Speaker 1: with you in your organization? I'm really easy to find
Speaker 1: on social media, it's just my full name, Sarah and
Speaker 1: Massy Sarah with an H and with no E, and
Speaker 1: then Higher Survivors Hollywood is Higher Survivors on Twitter, Hire
Speaker 1: Survivors Hollywood on Instagram, and our website is Hire Survivors
Speaker 1: Hollywood dot org. Okay, all right, great, yeah, and we'll
Speaker 1: have that in our show notes as well so people
Speaker 1: can find you. So thank you so much. And now
Speaker 1: as my final thought, I'd like to ask you what
Speaker 1: is the piece of advice you would give to a
Speaker 1: survivor of an abusive relationship. My advice is always try
Speaker 1: to remember that nothing that happened to is your fault,
Speaker 1: and find a way to share your story that feels safe,
Speaker 1: and never feel pressured to do it in a way
Speaker 1: that doesn't. So I think, especially after Me Too became
Speaker 1: very mainstream, after Toronto Burkes decade of tireless Work, there
Speaker 1: was a sense that was a requirement for survivors to
Speaker 1: tell their stories in this public way. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think it's really important that we don't push that because
Speaker 1: one of the things we lose is our autonomy and
Speaker 1: our voice as survivors. And if we are going to
Speaker 1: choose to share this extremely vulnerable, impactful thing that happened
Speaker 1: to us. We have to do it in a way
Speaker 1: that feels right and safe. So sometimes it's telling a therapist,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's telling a trusted friend or family member. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's writing it in your journal, and sometimes it's shouting
Speaker 1: it to the world through the media or social media.
Speaker 1: But whatever it is, make sure it feels like what
Speaker 1: you're ready to do and what feels right for you.
Speaker 1: And again, thank you, Sarah, and I am just actually
Speaker 1: awestruck by what you're doing and higher survivors Hollywood. I
Speaker 1: think it's just amazing. I wish this actually existed in
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form in almost every industry, and
Speaker 1: yours might be the model program that's certainly there betweaks
Speaker 1: for other industries, but it's needed. And this was not
Speaker 1: a yeah yeah, this was not an easy industry to
Speaker 1: do it in, and yet you did it. And so
Speaker 1: I again, as I've always held for survivorship, that the
Speaker 1: things that come out of our pain are often the
Speaker 1: most beautiful things of all. Thank you again, Sarah Anne
Speaker 1: for your beautiful story of survival. Our audience needs to
Speaker 1: hear this, and I'm very, very grateful to you for
Speaker 1: your attention today. Thank you, thank you, thank you much
Speaker 1: for having me here. Yeah. In my first takeaway, once again,
Speaker 1: Sarah Anne's story, like so many others, reminds us of
Speaker 1: the importance of having one validating person to talk to
Speaker 1: after the experience of trauma. Sarah Anne shared that she
Speaker 1: talked with her mother immediately after her assault and how
Speaker 1: that did ground her. Many, if not most, trauma survivors
Speaker 1: either do not have that person or may feel so
Speaker 1: frozen in fear or shame that they do not know
Speaker 1: who to tell. Especially in cases of sexual assault, many
Speaker 1: trauma survivors blame themselves. If you have experienced sexual assault
Speaker 1: and want to confidentially talk with someone, please go to
Speaker 1: RAIN dot org, r ai NN dot org, or called
Speaker 1: the National Sexual Assault Hotline at eight hundred six five
Speaker 1: six Hope Hope, which is eight hundred six five six
Speaker 1: four six seven three for our next takeaway, There is
Speaker 1: a danger in viewing trauma or assault as a single
Speaker 1: episode in a person's life. It simplifies the process to
Speaker 1: the world and misses the far reaching impact on the
Speaker 1: survivor's life. Trauma disrupts a life. It can interrupt social
Speaker 1: and emotional development, as well as professional development. Trauma survivors
Speaker 1: feel they lose time as they process what happens to them,
Speaker 1: and in many cases, as we saw for Sarah Ann,
Speaker 1: they lose opportunities. Not only does time freeze and distort
Speaker 1: the traumatic experience itself, this same time distortion happens for
Speaker 1: the survivors. There is a risk that the world at
Speaker 1: large looks at trauma survivors and wonders how one day
Speaker 1: or one experience can be so disruptive. It can because
Speaker 1: it changes how a survivor perceives the world. And Sarah
Speaker 1: Ann's story captures that of millions of trauma survivors and
Speaker 1: is a call out for all of us to keep
Speaker 1: talking about sexual trauma, as well as for more empathy, understanding,
Speaker 1: and awareness from schools, industries, justice systems, and the world
Speaker 1: at large. In this next takeaway, can perpetrating behavior change
Speaker 1: without consequences? I don't think so. No, will it change
Speaker 1: even if there are consequences? That depends. The conversation often
Speaker 1: drifts to how can we stop the perpetrators. It's all
Speaker 1: but impossible to do that after they've been emboldened, and
Speaker 1: we have seen that story of people looking the other
Speaker 1: way and the absence of consequences in so many of
Speaker 1: these public stories for so many years. Sarah Ann's and
Speaker 1: the experience of so many people, and not only the
Speaker 1: entertainment industry, but in a variety of industries ranging from
Speaker 1: domestic workers to actors to any job out there, is
Speaker 1: that survivors are often not heard and are often re
Speaker 1: traumatized by processes like interrogation, silencing, shaming, smear campaigns, and
Speaker 1: the trauma of procedures that require people to face their
Speaker 1: perpetrator in court. It is no wonder that many people
Speaker 1: do not feel safe pursuing charges and complaints, which results
Speaker 1: in emboldening perpetrators. Further, the systems must change and must
Speaker 1: be informed by trauma based science and practice. In our
Speaker 1: next takeaway, there are many things that can make certain
Speaker 1: industries more likely to foster abuse. Sarah Anne was speaking
Speaker 1: about a specific industry, the entertainment industry, which has historically
Speaker 1: had a poor track record of emboldening abusers. It's an
Speaker 1: industry where there's a high bar for entry, in which
Speaker 1: many people who often have far less social power or status,
Speaker 1: and they're young, they don't have resources that they're attempting
Speaker 1: to get into. There are also issues in how people
Speaker 1: are paid for work, with most people working shorter term
Speaker 1: stints and having to find new work all the time,
Speaker 1: which can result in less protection or even spotting of
Speaker 1: patterns since jobs and people are constantly in flux, which
Speaker 1: makes them more vulnerable. She also highlights other industries, namely
Speaker 1: people who do domestic work, who are also often less empowered,
Speaker 1: hold less status, and do not have health and safety protections,
Speaker 1: and also vulnerable to workplace harm. And again this is
Speaker 1: mirrored in service professions like restaurant servers hotel employees. But
Speaker 1: these public cases of large scale abuse should not just
Speaker 1: serve as salacious entertainment. We must learn from this and
Speaker 1: create the reforms and accountability that are needed to protect
Speaker 1: people from trauma and abuses that can affect them for
Speaker 1: lifetimes now. Lastly, healing is a thousand small things that
Speaker 1: survivors do that can sometimes culminate in a big thing.
Speaker 1: Sarah Ann's focus on creating safer spaces for sexual assault
Speaker 1: survivors in Hollywood culminated in Higher Survivors Hollywood, but she
Speaker 1: shared that sometimes it was small and hopeful acts like
Speaker 1: calling the switchboard at a major studio, that culminates in
Speaker 1: not only a meeting but an audition. So many things
Speaker 1: may institutionally be taken away from people who are harmed
Speaker 1: and betrayed by large organizations, and it can feel hopeless
Speaker 1: for people in these systems to do anything. But it
Speaker 1: is the small things and the willingness of survivors to
Speaker 1: give themselves permission to do these things that can change
Speaker 1: the world. This can include reflecting on what it is
Speaker 1: survivors need, what could help others in this kind of
Speaker 1: a situation, how to create greater safety in their communities
Speaker 1: or workplaces, and doing the small things that can get there.
Speaker 1: Trauma can rob people of a sense of agency or
Speaker 1: the idea that anything you do actually matters. And my
Speaker 1: hope is that Sarah Ann's story, despite the terrible economic
Speaker 1: and professional impact her experiences have had on her, including
Speaker 1: losing work and auditions, is a reminder that he means
Speaker 1: persisting in even the smallest waste. Thank you everyone for
Speaker 1: tuning in and make sure to rate and share this
Speaker 1: show and subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me
Speaker 1: on Instagram at doctor Rominey and we'll see you next
Speaker 1: week for another episode of Navigating Narcissism.