Speaker 1: Diversion audio.
Speaker 2: A note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of
Speaker 2: sexual violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please
Speaker 2: take care and listening. It was a warm spring morning
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five, Ronda da Costa read a copy
Speaker 2: of the Pasadena Star News and she was furious. A
Speaker 2: year earlier, Ronda used sex work to support herself and
Speaker 2: her young child. A man named Daniel Zebuski picked her
Speaker 2: up and she agreed to have oral sex with him
Speaker 2: for thirty dollars. Instead, he raped, sodomized, and robbed her.
Speaker 2: Many people people don't report it after something like that happens.
Speaker 2: Some are too traumatized to even tell someone close to them,
Speaker 2: let alone speak about it in front of a whole
Speaker 2: court room full of strangers. But Ronda knew that she
Speaker 2: deserved justice. Then the judge who was supposed to preside
Speaker 2: over her trial decided it wasn't worth his time. He
Speaker 2: dismissed the case, saying that the court was not responsible
Speaker 2: for resolving quote the contractual dispute between a whore and
Speaker 2: her trick. Then he actually apologized to the jury for
Speaker 2: wasting their time, as if all that wasn't bad enough
Speaker 2: He then gave an interview with a local paper that
Speaker 2: made his views on the case even clearer. This is
Speaker 2: a quote. The law was set up to protect good people, you,
Speaker 2: my wife, my daughters, my granddaughters. It doesn't protect a
Speaker 2: street walking prostitute from a contract gone awry. This case
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been filed. A whore is a whore is
Speaker 2: a whore. I don't know about you, but a statement
Speaker 2: like this one is what would keep me from reporting
Speaker 2: an assault to family. The unstated policy that a victim
Speaker 2: has to have not deserved it to get justice, that
Speaker 2: would give me pause about whether the case should be filed,
Speaker 2: even though, to use the judge's own verbiage against him,
Speaker 2: a crime is a crime is a crime, which is
Speaker 2: part of the reason why our judicial system is broken. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Rhonda must have known that there were people in the
Speaker 2: American criminal justice system who didn't respect the rights of
Speaker 2: sex workers, but seeing it in writing on written record
Speaker 2: like that must have been shocking. Ronda needed someone to
Speaker 2: fight for her, to prove to the world that sex
Speaker 2: workers had the same rights as anybody else, and eventually
Speaker 2: she did find someone to make that case. Ronda found
Speaker 2: Gloria Allred Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told.
Speaker 2: I'm Mary Kay mcbraer. Today's episode, we're calling Gloria Allred,
Speaker 2: sexual assault survivor turned powerhouse attorney. The press loves to
Speaker 2: paint a picture of Gloria all Read as a flinty
Speaker 2: female lawyer standing in front of a bank of cameras
Speaker 2: pretending to care about her client's crocodile tears. But the
Speaker 2: real Gloria is obviously much more complicated. She's an icon
Speaker 2: who's been involved in so many major legal cases oj
Speaker 2: Bill Cosby, the fight for gay marriage, priest abuse cases,
Speaker 2: and AIDS discrimination. She's seen it all. She's been practicing
Speaker 2: law for nearly fifty years, and in that time she's
Speaker 2: been a hero, a villain, and everything in between. More
Speaker 2: after the break. It's common to hear about how fame
Speaker 2: corrupts people, makes them prioritize their image more than their humanity.
Speaker 2: We often think of it in vanity metrics, how many
Speaker 2: followers will you lose if you post a political pig?
Speaker 2: But there are practical concerns too. Will your sponsors pull
Speaker 2: their ads because they don't want to be associated with
Speaker 2: the grim reality you need to share? And if so,
Speaker 2: what does that look like in your everyday life, not
Speaker 2: only with monetary concerns like can you afford your mortgage now?
Speaker 2: But can you go out to eat with your kids
Speaker 2: without getting harassed even if you are in the right. Basically,
Speaker 2: if your persona affects the perception of you publicly, especially
Speaker 2: on a big scale, then what you say matters, especially
Speaker 2: because the public can turn so quickly from lauding someone
Speaker 2: to canceling them. Gloria eventually went on to file a
Speaker 2: civil suit against Ronda's attacker and an official complaint against
Speaker 2: the judge who dropped her case. Sadly, Ronda died in
Speaker 2: a car accident before she could go to trial. But
Speaker 2: just getting the case filed was a big step in itself.
Speaker 2: I mean, it shouldn't have been. It shouldn't be that
Speaker 2: hard to prosecute a rapist just because of the profession
Speaker 2: of the person whom he assaulted, But it was. These
Speaker 2: are the kinds of cases that Gloria took on throughout
Speaker 2: her career. Cases that are, as Gloria puts it, not
Speaker 2: even about justice. Justice would be that they had never
Speaker 2: been raped or abused or fired. There are cases that
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been groundbreaking, but they were because we have
Speaker 2: a long way to go. Let's go back to the beginning,
Speaker 2: or rather Gloria's beginning, before she fought for women's rights
Speaker 2: in the courtroom. Gloria Alread was Gloria Rachel Bloom, a
Speaker 2: kid growing up in a working class Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: Her father was a door to door salesman and her
Speaker 2: mother was a stay at home mom. Though the family
Speaker 2: was poor, they seemed like they were genuinely happy. Gloria's
Speaker 2: parents doated on her. Neither one of them ever made
Speaker 2: it past the eighth grade, and they wanted their daughter
Speaker 2: to have all the opportunities they never got. Gloria graduated
Speaker 2: from an all girls high school with a partial scholarship
Speaker 2: to the University of Pennsylvania. She seemed to be on
Speaker 2: the right track for becoming a high powered, influential lawyer.
Speaker 2: But then Gloria picked Peyton Bray. Peyton was the kind
Speaker 2: of guy who seemed too good to be true, because
Speaker 2: he usually is too good to be true. They met
Speaker 2: in Gloria's first week of college and were married a
Speaker 2: year later. She was pregnant by the age of night.
Speaker 2: Gloria's carefully planned future was starting to veer off course.
Speaker 2: Peyton entered the military after college, and then he dropped
Speaker 2: out of boot camp after a bipolar episode. One evening,
Speaker 2: while cooking, Peyton burned something on the stove, and he
Speaker 2: threw the pan of hot food across the room. Gloria
Speaker 2: must have told herself that this was just a one
Speaker 2: time thing, that he wouldn't do it again, But then
Speaker 2: he did again and again. In nineteen sixty two, the
Speaker 2: pair divorced and Gloria moved back in with her parents.
Speaker 2: She took a job at Gimbal Brothers department store, where
Speaker 2: she worked long, difficult hours and made fifteen dollars less
Speaker 2: per week than a man in the same position. Gloria's
Speaker 2: first step towards getting out of that slump was to
Speaker 2: go back to school. Twice a week, she commuted to
Speaker 2: grad school in New York. She also took a job
Speaker 2: teaching at a low income high school in Philadelphia. The
Speaker 2: Gloria already who worked at Benjamin Franklin High was very
Speaker 2: different from the outspoken force of nature we know today.
Speaker 2: For one thing, she was a lot less political. In
Speaker 2: one of her NYU classes, she remembers a professor asking
Speaker 2: her if she ever thought about women's rights. Gloria asked,
Speaker 2: what rights don't women have? In nineteen sixty six, Gloria
Speaker 2: took a job at a low income school in East
Speaker 2: la It wasn't much different than the job she had
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia, but as she put it, I figured, if
Speaker 2: I was going to be poor, then I'd be poor
Speaker 2: where it was warm. Gloria was surprised and appalled by
Speaker 2: the conditions of the schools and watts. She had students
Speaker 2: in the eleventh grade who didn't know how to read.
Speaker 2: But in spite of the overcrowding and underfunding, Gloria loved
Speaker 2: being a teacher. She might have continued to teach if
Speaker 2: not for the trip to Acapulco. Gloria was on vacation
Speaker 2: with a friend when a doctor asked her out. The
Speaker 2: man told Gloria that before they could go to dinner,
Speaker 2: he needed to check on a patient in the hospital.
Speaker 2: She waited for him at his clinic. Afterward, he said
Speaker 2: he had one more stop at another patient's hotel who
Speaker 2: had already checked out of the hospital, to make sure
Speaker 2: they were recuperating all right. Again, Gloria followed along. When
Speaker 2: they got to the hotel, there was no one in
Speaker 2: the room. She turned around to ask the doctor what
Speaker 2: was going on and saw that he had a gun
Speaker 2: pointed at her. The man raped her. Gloria felt powerless.
Speaker 2: She couldn't go to the police. Why would they believe
Speaker 2: her over the word of a respected doctor. More importantly,
Speaker 2: she didn't want to tell anyone. Something horrible happened, and
Speaker 2: all she wanted to do was put it behind her.
Speaker 2: In the documentary, seeing All Read, the interviewer asked Gloria
Speaker 2: if the rape was the worst thing that ever happened
Speaker 2: to her. Gloria smiles slightly and shakes her head. The
Speaker 2: worst moment of her life came after when Gloria got
Speaker 2: back to the United States, she discovered that she was pregnant.
Speaker 2: This was seven years before Roe versus Wade, and in California,
Speaker 2: abortion was still illegal, so Gloria got an abortion from
Speaker 2: an unlicensed provider. When she started hemorrhaging after the procedure,
Speaker 2: she called the man who performed the operation. He told her,
Speaker 2: we did what you paid for. Were not responsible for
Speaker 2: what happens afterwards. Back then, as opposed to now, women
Speaker 2: weren't being penalized for getting abortions, only the people who
Speaker 2: provided them were penalized, but Gloria didn't know that, so
Speaker 2: she was afraid to seek care. It wasn't until she
Speaker 2: had a one hundred and six degree fever and was
Speaker 2: on the verge of bleeding to death that Gloria went
Speaker 2: to a special ward for women who had botched abortions.
Speaker 2: The doctors covered her in ice to bring down her fever.
Speaker 2: A nurse looked down at her and said, this will
Speaker 2: teach you a lesson. Gloria couldn't stop rape from happening,
Speaker 2: but she could and would work all her life to
Speaker 2: change the systems that punished its victims. More about that.
Speaker 2: After the break, Gloria was still a single mom who
Speaker 2: needed to make a living. She taught high school and
Speaker 2: Watts for two more years. Then in nineteen six twenty eight,
Speaker 2: she took a job as the first full time female
Speaker 2: staffer for the Los Angeles Teachers Organization. Chicano parents and
Speaker 2: students were fed up with the quality of education in
Speaker 2: their schools. Mexican American students were experiencing a sixty percent
Speaker 2: dropout rate, largely due to the racism they experienced from
Speaker 2: school administrators. Some teachers banned students from speaking Spanish and
Speaker 2: purposefully funneled Chicano students into vocational programs rather than encouraging
Speaker 2: them to pursue further education. In March of nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: more than fifteen thousand students walked out of East LA
Speaker 2: schools and protests. Gloria organized a teaching but perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 2: she saw firsthand the profound impact that a well organized
Speaker 2: protest can have. Eventually, Gloria made community protests a key
Speaker 2: tool in her future playbook for winning cases. Gloria had
Speaker 2: long been interested in becoming a lawyer. Back in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: She even looked into law school, but the cost was
Speaker 2: just too much. Now, her experiences as an educator and
Speaker 2: organizer brought law school back up again, and in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight, she met someone who would solve her money problems.
Speaker 2: For good William Alred was handsome and charming. Most importantly,
Speaker 2: he saw Gloria for the strong, dynamic woman she was,
Speaker 2: even when she couldn't see herself that way. They married
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight, and Bill encouraged her dream of
Speaker 2: going to law school by paying for her education. He was,
Speaker 2: by the way, a multi millionaire who owned an aircraft
Speaker 2: parts manufacturing company. Gloria gradu duated from Loyola Law School
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy five. With two other lawyers and the
Speaker 2: support of her adoring husband, she started her own law firm.
Speaker 2: It was clear from the beginning that as a lawyer,
Speaker 2: Gloria had two qualities that stood out. Her flare for
Speaker 2: the dramatic in her sense of what was right. Gloria
Speaker 2: and her partners started out with criminal defense work, but
Speaker 2: they quickly switched over to civil cases involving racial and
Speaker 2: sexual discrimination. In the late seventies, Gloria started volunteering with
Speaker 2: the National Organization for Women, and it was through them
Speaker 2: that she held her first press conference. Governor Jerry Brown
Speaker 2: made a campaign promise to appoint more women judges, but
Speaker 2: he failed to follow through. Gloria read a prepared statement
Speaker 2: for the cameras. A few weeks after the conference, Governor
Speaker 2: Brown did appoint more female judges, and then when Gloria
Speaker 2: hosted another conference several months later, he appointed more. The
Speaker 2: lesson Gloria took from this was clear press conferences worked
Speaker 2: for Gloria. These were good times. Her money problems were
Speaker 2: a thing of the past. She had a happy marriage
Speaker 2: with a supportive husband who believed in her, and she
Speaker 2: was making a difference. Over the next decade, she had
Speaker 2: impressive wins. She sued a drug store for separating toys
Speaker 2: by gender. Then she sued a restaurant that had a
Speaker 2: special unpriced menu for women eating with men, because obviously
Speaker 2: the man would be paying. Next, she sued the sheriff
Speaker 2: of Los Angeles County on behalf of women forced to
Speaker 2: give birth in chains. Sorry listeners, As a first time
Speaker 2: new mother, I need to die a tribe here real quick.
Speaker 2: Imagine a mother who is actively in labor, shackled to
Speaker 2: a bed so she doesn't run away. First of all,
Speaker 2: anyone who's been pregnant knows that you can't run period. Dude.
Speaker 2: Pregnancy is miserable, and if someone says it's not, they're
Speaker 2: either straight up lying or their brain chemistry has tricked
Speaker 2: them into forgetting that their pelvis was a jigsaw puzzle
Speaker 2: and their lungs were compressed for weeks. Just to illustrate
Speaker 2: for those who are not convinced that giving birth and
Speaker 2: chains is preposterous, look, if you're in labor, well, first
Speaker 2: of all, if you get any drugs, then you physically
Speaker 2: cannot walk if you don't have any drugs. The moment
Speaker 2: you try to stand, even if it's just to stagger
Speaker 2: to the bathroom, you get a debilitating contraction. So the
Speaker 2: idea of running away during labor is absurd. And if
Speaker 2: you're thinking, but what about after the baby is born.
Speaker 2: As a person who felt better immediately after giving birth,
Speaker 2: I can still assure you no, your uterus is contracting
Speaker 2: in a period cramp like never before because it was
Speaker 2: just holding a violent little angel, and now it has
Speaker 2: to contract back to the size of one ounce starting
Speaker 2: right now, or you'll hemorrhage and potentially bleed to death.
Speaker 2: So you're not running away then either. And I'm not
Speaker 2: even addressing the instance that you could need surgical stitches
Speaker 2: to prepare the damage to your vagina and rectum. You
Speaker 2: might hover for a moment to transition from a bed
Speaker 2: to a wheelchair, but you can't push it yourself, and
Speaker 2: you definitely can't push the wheelchair you're in while holding
Speaker 2: the newborn. And have you ever tried to run in
Speaker 2: an adult diaper?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Fuck you. So, in conclusion, chaining a woman to the
Speaker 2: childbirth bed is solely for fucked up optics. But thanks
Speaker 2: to Gloria's nineteen eighty lawsuit, it won't happen anymore, at
Speaker 2: least not in Los Angeles. All through the eighties, the
Speaker 2: hits kept. Gloria testified at a hearing where a conservative
Speaker 2: senator proposed banning abortion and putting limits on birth control.
Speaker 2: She ended her testimony by presenting him with a black
Speaker 2: leather chastity belt. She represented a lesbian couple who were
Speaker 2: sent away from a restaurant for sitting in a booth
Speaker 2: reserved for romantic couples, and a man kicked out of
Speaker 2: a nail salon after the receptionist learned he had aids.
Speaker 2: One favorite is when she forced the Friars Club, a
Speaker 2: social club for showbiz professionals, to accept female members. Part
Speaker 2: of her strategy included bursting into their steam room reporters
Speaker 2: in tow wearing an eighteen ninety swimsuit, holding a tape measure,
Speaker 2: and singing the Peggy Lee hit Is That All There Is?
Speaker 2: I Love the drama. But not all of her cases
Speaker 2: were quite so fun. One of Gloria's most groundbreaking cases
Speaker 2: from the nineteen eighties was on behalf of a then
Speaker 2: twenty two two year old Latina woman named Rita Mia.
Speaker 2: Growing up, Rita loved going to church. She sang in
Speaker 2: the choir, helped teach Sunday school, and had dreams of
Speaker 2: someday becoming a nun. Rita was sixteen when the abuse began.
Speaker 2: Father Tamayo reached through a broken confessional panel to fondle
Speaker 2: her breast. He told her that he needed her to
Speaker 2: help him, and she obeyed. She continued to obey for
Speaker 2: two years, then when she turned eighteen, he took her
Speaker 2: to an abandoned house to have sex. On another night,
Speaker 2: he took her to an hourly motel. He started bringing
Speaker 2: in other priests as well, seven in all. Eventually, Rita
Speaker 2: became pregnant. When she told Tomayo, he suggested she get
Speaker 2: an abortion, but she would not, so instead, Tomayo sent
Speaker 2: her to stay with his brother in the Philippines. The
Speaker 2: plan was that she would have the baby there and
Speaker 2: then give it up for adoption. Rita agreed because Tomayo
Speaker 2: told her that this was what she needed to do
Speaker 2: to protect the church. But once she reached the Philippines,
Speaker 2: Rita felt as if the church abandoned her. During the
Speaker 2: seven months she was there, she lived on less than
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty dollars. She became malnourished and sick.
Speaker 2: During the pregnancy, she suffered from acclampsia, which is a
Speaker 2: severe condition that caused her to have seizures and pass out.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know you've seen downton abbe. At one point,
Speaker 2: a priest was called to perform her last writes. While
Speaker 2: she recovered in the hospital, Rita decided not to give
Speaker 2: the baby up for adoption. When she returned to California,
Speaker 2: she contacted Bishop John Ward of the Los Angeles Archdiocese
Speaker 2: and told him everything that happened to her. He told
Speaker 2: her not to worry, that he would investigate. All she
Speaker 2: needed to do was wait and don't say anything to anyone.
Speaker 2: Four months passed before he finally claimed there was nothing
Speaker 2: he could do. Then Rita found Gloria. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: Gloria filed a lawsuit against the Catholic Archdiocese in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: and Gloria called a press conference. The interview was a success,
Speaker 2: but what Rita and Gloria didn't know was that as
Speaker 2: camera bulbs flashed and reporters yelled questions, seven priests slipped
Speaker 2: out of the city. Each of the men named in
Speaker 2: the lawsuit disappeared without a trace. Rita's lawsuit reached a
Speaker 2: point of stagnation. All seven of the priests she named disappeared,
Speaker 2: and the Los Angeles Archdiocese refused to provide addresses for them,
Speaker 2: and the church went on attack against Rita. Later that year,
Speaker 2: a prominent bishop gave a television interview where he claimed
Speaker 2: that Rita had a bad reputation for fraternizing with the
Speaker 2: altar boys. Rita had never kissed a boy before she
Speaker 2: was abused by father Tamayo, but that didn't matter. In
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, the court ruled that the church was
Speaker 2: not responsible for the abuse. Rita waited too long before filing,
Speaker 2: and the statute of limitations ran out. Part of the
Speaker 2: reason was that church officials had told Rita to wait
Speaker 2: while they investigated, but it didn't matter. Rita's case would
Speaker 2: never go to trial. Things were at a low point
Speaker 2: for the case and for Gloria's personal life as well.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty five, the US government began investigating Gloria's husband, Bill,
Speaker 2: for selling counterfeit airplane parts. The criticism she received up
Speaker 2: until this was from people angry that she challenged the
Speaker 2: status quo that she could handle now because of something
Speaker 2: her husband did. She wasn't the wrong for Gloria, his
Speaker 2: ethical lapse was a complete betrayal. Soon after the investigation began,
Speaker 2: the couple separated. Initially, it was mostly to protect Gloria's
Speaker 2: public image as well as the couple's assets, but after
Speaker 2: Bill was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the US government,
Speaker 2: the separation became a very real divorce. After the end
Speaker 2: of her marriage, Gloria threw herself into her work. Though
Speaker 2: the case against the Los Angeles Archdiocese was thrown out,
Speaker 2: there was still something she could get for Rita, the
Speaker 2: identity of her child's father. In nineteen ninety one, Father
Speaker 2: Tamayo returned to Los Angeles and contacted Gloria directly. His
Speaker 2: conscience finally got the better of him and he was
Speaker 2: ready to come clean. The press conference was held in
Speaker 2: Gloria's office. Father Tomayo took a seat in front of
Speaker 2: the colorful tapestry and shifted under the heat of the
Speaker 2: bright lights as he spoke. He said his superiors ordered
Speaker 2: his silence. They told him and the other priests to
Speaker 2: leave the country. In fact, the church paid to Mayo
Speaker 2: to flee to the Philippines. In nineteen eighty seven, Tomayo
Speaker 2: wanted to return to Los Angeles, but once again the
Speaker 2: Church told him to stay away. Finally, Father to Mayo
Speaker 2: suffered a series of strokes. Perhaps seeing that the end
Speaker 2: of his life could be near, Tomayo seized the urge
Speaker 2: to repent. He returned to Los Angeles against the church's orders,
Speaker 2: and he brought with him extensive documentation of everything the
Speaker 2: church did to cover up Rita's abuse. It would be
Speaker 2: eleven more years before Rito would finally see something close
Speaker 2: to justice. In two thousand and two, a California legislature
Speaker 2: extended the statute of limitations for victims of abuse by
Speaker 2: clergy members. Rita went on to win a five hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars settlement from the court, and perhaps more importantly,
Speaker 2: she learned the identity of her child's father. After over
Speaker 2: a decade, Gloria successfully tracked down the two priests slash
Speaker 2: rapists who were most likely to be the father of
Speaker 2: Rita's child. They served one of the men with a
Speaker 2: paternity suit and conclusively established that he was her child's
Speaker 2: biological father. By then, Rita's daughter Jackie was twenty years
Speaker 2: old in starting her own family. The results of the
Speaker 2: test might not change much for them, but it did
Speaker 2: provide a sense of closure. By two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: Gloria started taking on some very high profile cases. She
Speaker 2: represented Nicole Brown's parents in their civil case against O. J. Simpson,
Speaker 2: and she filed multiple complaints about Michael Jackson with Child
Speaker 2: Protective Services. She represented Dote Fayette's fiance who sued Fayed
Speaker 2: for breach of marital contract after his affair with Princess
Speaker 2: Diana became public. Gloria also defended Rachel Uchito, one of
Speaker 2: Tiger Wood's mistresses, who was being sued by Woods for
Speaker 2: breaking her NDA, and she advised a former porn star
Speaker 2: during a House of Representative's Ethics Committee investigation for her
Speaker 2: part in the sexting scandal involving then Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Speaker 2: These women fell under the same umbrella of judgment as
Speaker 2: Ronda da Costa the story at the top of this episode,
Speaker 2: Though the circumstances were, of course very different, mistresses and
Speaker 2: porn stars did not constitute what the press considered deserving protagonists. Listeners,
Speaker 2: you and I know better, and so did Gloria the
Speaker 2: press observed that she just wanted to chime in on
Speaker 2: any subject that attracted attention. Everyone deserves justice, but people
Speaker 2: contain multitudes. Gloria represented people who deserve justice and attracted attention.
Speaker 2: At one point, she even starred in a courtroom reality
Speaker 2: TV show called We the People. With Gloria already, the
Speaker 2: public was catching on to her tactics. Gloria became known
Speaker 2: as the Queen of the press conference, a woman with
Speaker 2: a talent for manipulating the press and positioning herself as
Speaker 2: a heroic defender of the oppressed. I don't really mind
Speaker 2: that myself, I mean, why not do both? But the
Speaker 2: public was turning on her, and it showed was the
Speaker 2: butt of every joke.
Speaker 1: Look, and there's nothing there's no greater definition of stupid
Speaker 1: or liar than Gloria allread well. Notwithstanding that, Gloria already
Speaker 1: got her hooks into Amber and we've seen that show
Speaker 1: many times now and Saturday Night Live, Karen from Boston asks,
Speaker 1: I saw your latest freak show press conference with Ms Diaz,
Speaker 1: and I have to ask, is there anything you.
Speaker 3: Won't do to push your butt ugly mug in front
Speaker 3: of a camera. Another good question, Karen, I have to
Speaker 3: think about that, but I guess my answer would.
Speaker 2: Be no, even the Simpson's gotta dig, shut up both.
Speaker 1: Of you or else Sue.
Speaker 2: I'll save it for your next book, you little snitch.
Speaker 1: That's a salt. That is a salt.
Speaker 2: Maybe defending a woman who got fired after having a
Speaker 2: boob job isn't the most important case in the world,
Speaker 2: doesn't make it unimportant, and representing her certainly doesn't negate
Speaker 2: all the very important good work she did, like defending
Speaker 2: six migrant farm workers who were denied employment because of
Speaker 2: their gender, or representing the first same sex couple to
Speaker 2: be married in California. Gloria might chase exciting cases, but
Speaker 2: she takes plenty of modest ones too. Whose fault is
Speaker 2: it really if we're more interested in hearing about famous
Speaker 2: mistresses than exploited farm workers. Up until twenty seventeen, that
Speaker 2: was pretty much the story behind Gloria alread a good
Speaker 2: woman who got a bad rap. But twenty seventeen is
Speaker 2: the twist That summer two reporters investigating the crimes of
Speaker 2: Harvey Weinstein came up cross a damning letter from the
Speaker 2: lawyer defending him. That lawyer was Lisa Bloom, Gloria's daughter.
Speaker 2: Like her mother, Lisa grew up to become an advocate
Speaker 2: for women's rights and known for taking on powerful predators.
Speaker 2: She played a key role in cases against Donald Trump
Speaker 2: and Bill O'Reilly. But now she agreed to defend Harvey Weinstein,
Speaker 2: as in famed sexual predator Harvey Weinstein. Perhaps part of
Speaker 2: Lisa's motivation was the fact that Weinstein was going to
Speaker 2: be making her book into a film, or that he
Speaker 2: was paying her a fifty thousand dollars retainer and an
Speaker 2: eight hundred and ninety five dollars hourly fee. But back
Speaker 2: to that letter. It was a query letter explaining what
Speaker 2: Lisa would do for Harvey once he hired her, and
Speaker 2: it was bad. She writes about Rose McGowan, who was
Speaker 2: accusing him of rape. Quote, I feel equipped to help
Speaker 2: you against the Roses of the world because I have
Speaker 2: represented so many of them. They start out as impressive,
Speaker 2: bold women, but the more one presses for evidence, the
Speaker 2: weaknesses and lies are revealed. She doesn't seem to have
Speaker 2: much going on these days except her rapidly escalating identity
Speaker 2: as a feminist warrior. After that, there's a list of
Speaker 2: tactics she'd use on Weinstein's behalf, things like quote come
Speaker 2: out publicly in a preemptive interview where you talk about
Speaker 2: evolving on women's issues, prompted by the death of your
Speaker 2: mother and maybe nasty, unfounded, hurtful rumors about you, and
Speaker 2: quote place an article regarding her becoming increasingly unglued, so
Speaker 2: that when someone googles her, this is what pops up.
Speaker 2: She was using the tactics she learned defending women to
Speaker 2: discredit them, and as the two journalists investigated further, they
Speaker 2: discovered that Gloria herself had also played in covering up
Speaker 2: Weinstein's crimes. In two thousand and four, a young dancer
Speaker 2: named Ashley Maddow contacted Gloria's firm about an incident where
Speaker 2: Harvey nearly raped her. Gloria was unavailable at the time,
Speaker 2: but one of the partners at her firm took the case.
Speaker 2: He told Ashley that she wasn't strong enough to go
Speaker 2: up against a producer like Harvey. He said her best
Speaker 2: option was to sign an NDA in exchange for money,
Speaker 2: of which the law firm would take a forty percent cut. Later,
Speaker 2: when Ashley saw all the harm that Weinstein caused she
Speaker 2: called Gloria to see if there was a way for
Speaker 2: her to break her NDA. She recalled Gloria saying that
Speaker 2: she was lucky to get her on the phone. Gloria
Speaker 2: usually only talked to very important people. When she asked
Speaker 2: about the NDA, Gloria basically told Ashley that she was
Speaker 2: too poor to break anything. The firm bought a woman's silence,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't the only time they'd done it. Gloria
Speaker 2: herself also helped facilitate similar deals for victims of Bill
Speaker 2: O'Reilly and ex gymnastics coach Larry Nasser. You could argue
Speaker 2: that Gloria's firm was just doing what was best for
Speaker 2: their client. Maybe they really believed that Ashley wouldn't hold
Speaker 2: up to the life ruining scrutiny that comes with accusing
Speaker 2: a powerful man of rape. If that was true, then
Speaker 2: taking the money was the best way for her to
Speaker 2: get anything out of a really traumatic event in her life.
Speaker 2: Or maybe they thought that sixty percent of the NDA's
Speaker 2: payoff was life changing money. Maybe she wasn't the prototype
Speaker 2: of a deserving protagonist, so she could help herself, But
Speaker 2: for what whatever reason, her case might not help other
Speaker 2: women Any of these things could be true, but I
Speaker 2: do know that no matter how you slice it, that
Speaker 2: was Ashley's decision to make. So I don't know is
Speaker 2: Gloria a hero, an ambulance chasing fame junkie or a
Speaker 2: villain wearing the thin disguise of a women's rights crusader.
Speaker 2: When she started out, Gloria wanted to change the systems
Speaker 2: that hurt her. But that meant working inside them. And
Speaker 2: we all know what happens when you gaze long into
Speaker 2: the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you. Thank you
Speaker 2: to Gloria Allread for her autobiography, Fight Back and Win,
Speaker 2: My thirty year fight against Injustice and how you can
Speaker 2: win your own battles. It was a great help in
Speaker 2: writing this episode. Other sources include the film Seeing all
Speaker 2: Read in several news articles. All of these sources are
Speaker 2: linked in our show notes. If you want to learn more,
Speaker 2: join me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories
Speaker 2: Ever told for the tragic story of Sinadu Taedessa, a
Speaker 2: young woman who survived a turbulent childhood, studied hard, and
Speaker 2: made it to Harvard, only to lose the battle with
Speaker 2: her own mind. The greatest true crime Stories Ever Told
Speaker 2: is a production of Diversion Audio. Your host is me
Speaker 2: Mary Kay mcbraer and this episode was written by Zoe
Speaker 2: Luisa Lewis. Our show is produced by Emma Dmouth and
Speaker 2: edited by Antonio Enriquez. Our theme music is by Tyler Cash.
Speaker 2: Executive produced by Scott Waxman.