Rose McGowan launched her book tour Tuesday on “Good Morning America,” detailing for the first time her allegation that Harvey Weinstein raped her at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997.
“A lot of victims and survivors will say they detach and you really do,” McGowan told interviewer Robin Roberts. “You float up above your body because you’re trying to figure out… Your brain is in another place and all of a sudden your body is like, ‘What, what, what.’”
In her book, “Brave,” McGowan describes meeting Weinstein at his hotel suite in Park City, Utah. At the end of the meeting, she turned to go, but she says Weinstein forced her to the suite’s hot tub and undressed her. She alleges that he put her on the edge of the hot tub, and then performed forcible oral sex on her.
Weinstein, who has been in exile in Arizona since the scandal broke in October, issued a statement through his attorney denying McGowan’s claim. Ben Brafman, the attorney, states that Weinstein has refrained from criticizing other accusers, “despite a wealth of evidence that would demonstrate the patent falsity of these claims.”
“Watching the ‘performance’ by Rose McGowan as she looks to promote her new book however, has made it impossible to remain quiet,” Brafman continues.
Brafman said that Weinstein had obtained emailed statements from two witnesses: Ben Affleck and Jill Messick, who was then McGowan’s manager. The Messick statement contends that McGowan described the hot tub encounter as consensual.
“When we met up the following day, she hesitantly told me of her own accord that during the meeting that night before she had gotten into a hot tub with Mr. Weinstein. She was very clear about the fact that getting into that hot tub was something that she did consensually and that in hindsight it was also something that she regretted having done,” Messick is quoted as saying.
Messick set up the meeting between McGowan and Weinstein. Following the encounter, Messick went to work for Miramax for several years.
In her book, McGowan says she immediately told Affleck what happened when she saw him at a photo op.
In the statement released by Weinstein, Affleck says, “She never told me nor did I ever infer that she was attacked by anyone. Any accounts to the contrary are false. I have no knowledge about anything Rose did or claimed to have done.”
Weinstein’s statement also included three photographs from an amfAR gala in 2005. In one of them, McGowan has her hand on Weinstein’s shoulder. In a second, Weinstein is smiling and talking to McGowan who is seated at a table. The implication appears to be that the two were on civil terms in 2005, and thus he could not have assaulted her eight years earlier.
McGowan is also set to appear on ABC’s “Nightline” on Wednesday. In an interview for the program, she describes Weinstein as a “sociopathic predator.”
(Excerpt) Read More in: Variety