Ex-assistant ‘tried to stop Weinstein’
BRITAIN: Harvey Weinstein’s former assistant says she tried to stop him abusing women two decades ago, making him sign a legal agreement that required him to seek therapy and mend his ways.
Zelda Perkins quit Weinstein’s film company in 1998, along with a colleague who accused the movie mogul of trying to rape her.
As part of a settlement, Perkins signed a non-disclosure agreement. It kept her silent, but also committed Weinstein to attend therapy for three years. It also required the company to spill the beans to its then-owner, the Walt Disney Co, or to fire Weinstein if he made any more payouts over alleged wrongdoing.
Under the terms of the agreement, Perkins chose the therapist Weinstein was to consult. She doesn’t know whether he ever went to the sessions.
She said that a year after she left the company, she ran into Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival, and ‘‘he told me that everything I had done was pointless’’.
Perkins is due to testify today before the British Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee, which is investigating sexual harassment and the use of nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs.
NDAs are common in the corporate world, but Perkins says her experience shows they can be used to let perpetrators get away with wrongdoing while silencing their victims.
The agreement Perkins signed kept her quiet about Weinstein’s behaviour for almost 20 years. He continued to be one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers until last year, when women – including Hollywood stars – publicly accused him of groping them, exposing himself to them or forcing them into unwanted sex.
Weinstein has since been fired by the company he co-founded and expelled by Hollywood’s film academy. Police in the United States and Britain are investigating multiple claims of sexual assault. Weinstein denies all allegations of non-consensual sex.
Perkins was in her early 20s when she began working for Weinstein’s then-company, Miramax, in London. She says he was a challenging employer.
‘‘Everybody knew that he had a roving eye and he pushed it with women,’’ she said. He also had a fearsome temper, and didn’t respect usual office boundaries, sometimes walking around naked or in his underwear.
Perkins says she wasn’t aware of any allegations of sexual assault until a younger colleague came to her in distress during the 1998 Venice Film Festival and said Weinstein had tried to rape her. The pair flew back to England and went to lawyers, ‘‘with the presumption that we were going to prosecute him in court’’.
Told they could not prosecute in England because the alleged crime took place in Italy, the two women ended up negotiating an agreement that saw each receive £125,000.
While Perkins managed to get the agreement to impose conditions on Weinstein, she said the negotiating process ‘‘was humiliating and degrading’’. –AP