Years before her alleged rape at the hands of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Rose McGowan claims she was sexually assaulted by a “very famous” man when she was only 15 years old.
The 44-year-old actress sat down with journalist Ronan Farrow at New York City’s 92Y on Thursday night, where the new claim was brought up, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Though McGowan was not ready to disclose the man’s name, Farrow, who was already aware of the claim, said he was a “prominent” man in Hollywood.
This man picked me up when I was 15 years old,” McGowan said. “He took me home after he met me and he showed me a soft porn movie he had made for Showtime, under a different name. And then he had sex with me.”
McGowan said that for years, she filed it away as a “sexual experience” and that when she looked back at it, she “had been attracted to him.”
It wasn’t until years later, when she saw Farrow’s article about Harvey Weinstein in The New Yorker when she realized something was wrong.
“That creep did this to a 15-year-old,” she said. “It was not until two weeks after your story broke — our story, our world’s story — that I was in bed and I started saying, ‘Oh my God. I think that’s molestation.’”
Farrow pointed out that McGowan was underage at the time, but pointed out the alleged incident came with some grayer areas around consent.
McGowan’s response? “I’ve been pulled over for speeding a couple times but I’ll tell you what, I’ve sped a lot more that I’ve been pulled over. Two percent of all reported rape cases are false — and that’s of the very few rape cases that actually get brought,” she said.
During the interview to promote her new E! docuseries, Citizen Rose, and memoir, Brave, McGowan broke down in tears while discussing her alleged experience with Weinstein. She referred to him as “the monster.”
McGowan was one of the first women to speak out in October when news broke about Weinstein’s alleged decades of alleged sexual misconduct and assault in The New York Times and The New Yorker. The former producer has since been accused by over 60 women of various forms of sexual assault and misconduct.
Weinstein has denied all claims against him, and his lawyer slammed what he likened to a smear campaign by McGowan.
“Watching the ‘performance’ by Rose McGowan as she looks to promote her new book, however, has made it impossible to remain quiet as she tries to smear Mr. Weinstein with a bold lie that is denied not only by Mr. Weinstein himself, but by at least two witnesses,” Ben Bafman, one of Weinstein’s attorneys, said.
McGowan’s publicist called Brafman’s statement “an affront not only to Rose but to the hundreds of women who have come forward with their stories of harassment, sexual abuse and rape perpetrated by Mr. Weinstein and those like him.”
According to McGowan, the former mogul’s denial “unequivocally proves a continued attempt to malign, smear and ‘slut shame” McGowan and “is a sad, pathetic old-fashioned sexist attempt to undermine obvious truth and the gaslighting will no longer be tolerated.”
