HOW # METOO CAME ABOUT

The # MeToo movement hit our collective conscience in 2017, but it was 12 years earlier that youth worker Tarana Burke launched an activist group of the same name to support survivors of sexual violence. The motivation came not just from the overwhelming need for healing, but after a girl named Heaven asked to speak to her privately at an all- girl youth camp.

“She had a deep sadness and a yearning for confession … she almost begged me to listen,” Burke says.

Heaven told her about the abuse she was suffering at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend – but as the words “Me too” rang inside Burke’s head, emotions threatened to overwhelm her. Burke says she “could not find the courage that [ Heaven] had found” – and she couldn’t take any more. Even as Heaven struggled to tell what she had endured, Burke cut her off, directed her to another female counsellor who could “help her better”.

Burke says she still thinks about Heaven daily and will never forget the look of shock and rejection on her face as she walked away.

# Me Too has helped countless women and girls since then, but it became a movement in October 2017, with the allegations of abuse at the hands of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, and the urging of actor Alyssa Milano on Twitter for women to voice their own experiences of sexual aggression or harassment using the # metoo hashtag.

Almost 20 million # MeToo stories from around the world have been shared.