2 women, 2 decisions: Going public on Harvey Weinstein

Day by day, the accusations pile up, as scores of women come forward to say they were victims of Harvey Weinstein. But others with stories to tell have not.

For some of these women who’ve chosen not to go public, the fear of being associated forever with the sordid scandal — and the effects on their careers, and their lives — might be too great. Or they may still be struggling with the lingering effects of their encounters.

Canadian actress Erika Rosenbaum, 37, had just gone public with her own allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein when, about 10 days ago, she received a Facebook message from a young woman, asking if they could speak.

The aspiring filmmaker and actress had listened to Rosenbaum’s recorded interview with The New York Times, in which she described several disturbing incidents in hotel rooms with the producer some 15 years ago. And she wanted to tell Rosenbaum about her own, remarkably similar but much more recent experiences with Weinstein — a series of harrowing hotel-room encounters which, she says, took place just last year, when she was 21.

She told Rosenbaum that she’d developed a relationship with Weinstein, that was really two relationships: “One where he was very much a mentor ... and another that I kept locked inside a secret compartment in my mind where he was manipulating me in a way that I didn’t know how I’d got there, or how to get out.”

“It really was like speaking to myself at that age,” Rosenbaum says.

“I felt like I was talking to an older version of myself,” says the young woman.

She wanted Rosenbaum’s advice: Should she go public with her story? She wanted her experience to serve as a warning for other young women about what can happen in friendships with powerful older men. But she was just beginning her career, and worried about being tainted by association with the scandal. And because the encounters were so recent, she was only beginning to process it all.

Rosenbaum told her that going public was a personal decision, not right for everyone — “If she’s not ready to come forward, she’s not ready.”

The young woman has decided that for now, she is not. “I’m not Gwyneth or Angelina or Lupita,” she says of some of the most famous women who have accused Weinstein. “I think I deserve to build my career without being linked to Harvey Weinstein every time somebody Googles my name.”