‘It’s so normalised you think it’s part of your job’: the woman who lifted the lid on harassment in TV
Dawn Elrick had only been working as a runner in the TV industry for a few months when two male assistant producers told her they’d like to spit roast her. She was 22. She didn’t know what spit roasting meant so, that evening, she Googled it. “When I realised what they had said,” says Elrick, who is now 43, and works as a producer in Glasgow, “I felt so horrible.” She dreaded having to go back to work the next day.
A few years later, Elrick was working on an entertainment show. A presenter would pull her in for bear hugs, grabbing her buttocks as he did. At the wrap party, he cornered her. “He said that he wanted to come on my face,” Elrick remembers. She did not feel that she could complain to her supervisors. “It was such a busy production,” she says. “Everyone was trying so hard to get through it … No one had the space to deal with it.”
A few years on, and the Jimmy Savile story had just broken, bringing the issue of inappropriate workplace behaviour into focus. Elrick decided to make a historical complaint about the TV presenter. “They said I would be told if he was in the building,” she says. “That didn’t happen.”
Elrick had largely rationalised these incidents as the grim cost of doing the job she has dreamed of since she was a teenager. “It’s so normalised that you think it’s part of your job, and something you have to put up with,” she says. “But it never sat easy with me.” However, something happened which changed her mind: in April 2021, the Guardian broke the story of multiple accusations of bullying and sexual misconduct against Noel Clarke, which he has denied, and 2,000 people signed an open letter, calling for an end to endemic harassment, bullying and sexual abuse in the UK film and TV industry.
Suddenly, change seemed possible. “I thought, so many women have signed this open letter, and they must all have a story to tell,’” says Elrick. ‘“I was angry, and sick of it.” She set up an Instagram account, Shit Men in TV Have Said to Me, and wrote the first few posts herself, based on her experiences of being harassed on TV sets, before sending it to a few trusted friends. “I thought I’d put up a few stories,” she says, “and leave it up for a week or two. But the submissions started coming in thick and fast.”
In just four months, the account has become essential reading. Hundreds of anonymous submissions detail what it’s really like to be a woman in the UK film and TV industry. They range from derogatory and sexually explicit remarks and professional achievements being disparaged and dismissed to, in extreme cases, sexual assaults.
“Who did you give a blowjob to get into such a senior position?” quotes one account. Another details a woman’s story of being locked in a room by a male producer at a party, who insisted on giving her a massage. “I had to fight my way out of the room,” she recounts, “and told him I’d scream and bite his arm if he didn’t let me go.” “My cock is throbbing sitting so close to you,” says another, quoting the words of an experienced male director. Another man told a colleague to come back to his hotel room, because he was “not a rapist any more. And besides, you’re unrapable anyway.” On one production, the location of a rape scene was dubbed “the Weinstein room” by directors.
Elrick has been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of submissions. “My aim is to get through the back catalogue of messages,” she says. “There are about 300 posts up now, and I have another 100 to get through. And that is with me posting a lot.” Elrick aims to repost most of the messages she’s sent, but she screens out stories that may be triggering, and she does not name individuals accused of abuse.
She doesn’t attempt to factcheck the veracity of the accounts sent to her, but argues that the sheer volume of responses, coupled with repeated patterns of similar behaviour, make them plausible. “Because we don’t name names and everything is anonymous, I don’t see why anyone would lie,” says Elrick. “And my presumption is that, for the most part, women do not lie about these things.”
She has found the community that has sprung up around the Instagram account to be unexpectedly moving, giving women “a safe, cathartic space where they can share their experiences”. And, during Covid, the account has taken on the role that might once have been served by informal, in-person whisper networks. “In 2021 these are stories that maybe we’d have told each other in the pub,” she says. “But women don’t have the space to talk to each other, because we’re all working from home.”
Moreover, the account provides a “visual record of a troubled industry”, says Elrick. “I now realise that it’s very important that these accounts are read and listened to, and that the industry can understand how far and how deep the problem goes.” Since the Clarke story broke, leading bodies have indicated a desire to improve working conditions for women in the industry. Bafta and the BFI recently announced new efforts to combat bullying, harassment and racism in the workplace, while the Film and TV charity has launched a new bullying support service.
But these measures, while wellintentioned, are probably not enough to change an industry rife with troubling behaviour, unless those in charge of productions sincerely desire change. Elrick hopes senior figures in the industry will read the posts, understand how prolific abuses of power are and take appropriate action to improve conditions on their sets. “It’s important for people to know how women feel in the industry,” she says. “How vulnerable they feel. How pissed off they feel. The industry could use it as a litmus test of how its workplace culture is affecting 50% of its workforce. I am keen to be part of the solution in whatever sense I can be.”
In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland and 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by emailing jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.