Sex assault attorney ‘on the other side’
ACTOR ALLEGATIONS
NEW YORK • Celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom has built a career representing victims of sexual harassment and assault. Now she says she’s trying to “make a difference here on the other side” by defending movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
On Friday, Bloom both defended Weinstein and acknowledged he’d been “stupid.” She saluted the women who had come forward to allege wrongdoing but said many allegations were overblown and consisted of Weinstein telling a woman she “looked cute without my glasses.”
“He wanted to be respectful to women and he still wants to be respectful to women. And he’s asked me, of all people, to help guide him in that direction, to explain to him the laws of sexual harassment and why this is important,” said Bloom, whose mother is Gloria Allred, another famed attorney.
The New York Times reported that Weinstein had reached at least eight legal settlements with women over alleged harassment. The allegations have been levied by actresses including Ashley Judd and former employees at both the Weinstein Co. and Weinstein’s former company, Miramax.
Bloom has long represented women in highprofile sexual harassment cases, including alleged victims of former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and model Janice Dickinson in her case against Bill Cosby. She said she met Weinstein a year ago after his company decided to develop Bloom’s book Suspicion Nation. She said she confronted him then about rumours of harassment in a “frank, blunt way.”
“I was very surprised that he admitted to being stupid, to saying things that he shouldn’t have said and I told him that needs to be your approach. You can’t go back and change what’s happened in the past, but you can go forward and acknowledge it, ask for forgiveness, change your behaviour,” she said.
“And I thought I had a chance to make a difference here on the other side. We’ll see if I’ve done that right.”
Weinstein’s attorney, Charles Harder, said in a statement that the Times story was “saturated with false and defamatory statements.” Weinstein is reportedly suing the paper for US$50 million.
Bloom more gently poured cold water on the Times report, saying there had been some complaints against Weinstein but “not as many as” the Times said.
Bloom said Weinstein had anger problems and said he could be intimidating. She said he “knows he has to work on that” and praised him for acknowledging that he “hurt people.”