I knew Harvey was a monster after he tried to rape my colleague. But when I spoke out I was silenced
With Weinstein back in court, his British former PA — who stood up to his abuse — reveals the awful reality of working for the disgraced Hollywood mogul
ZELDA PERKINS endured the predatory behaviour of her boss, Harvey Weinstein, throughout the five years she was his personal assistant. His clumsy sexual advances were routine; he regularly exposed himself to her. so habitual was this grotesquely inappropriate conduct she did not — in her youthful naivete — even recognise it as abusive.
‘Harvey would try something whenever he was on his own with me,’ she says of the once esteemed Hollywood producer now serving 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. ‘i’d scold him or make fun of him; minimise his behaviour. it became normalised. i was a 22-year- old in my first job after graduating from Manchester University, and i thought a
lot of international businessmen working from hotel suites must behave like that. As time went on, when he exposed himself I’d say: “Do I really have to see that disgusting thing again?”
‘I never feared him physically overpowering me, because I always dealt robustly with him. For him, it was less to do with sex and more about power. He played mind games; the thrill was in making people submit to him. He was a master psychological manipulator.
‘Once he tried to get me to have a sauna with him. In the end, I sat in the sauna and worked, fully clothed, while he was naked behind a glass door.
‘Then he had a bath and insisted I stay. He reeled off the names of actresses he’d slept with. I asked him: “How do you look at yourself in the mirror?” He looked at me as if I was mad and said: “I have no problem at all.”
‘He had a beautiful wife and child at the time. It was a chilling moment because it was then that I realised he was a sociopath.’
Weinstein is currently standing trial on a further 11 charges of rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual battery. The alleged attacks, on five women, took place between 2004 and 2013 in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. Zelda, now 49, successfully deflected her boss’s advances when she worked for him in the 1990s. But, when Rowena Chiu — a bright but unworldly young woman, an Oxford graduate and a Christian — joined Weinstein’s Miramax London office as Zelda’s assistant, the depths of Weinstein’s depravity became apparent.
Rowena, now 48, was working alone with him in a hotel room during the Venice Film Festival in 1998 when he tried to rape her. The next morning, ‘deeply traumatised and white with shock’, Rowena met Zelda who recalls that her assistant revealed that Weinstein had begun by requesting a massage.
‘Then it escalated and Rowena was on the bed, where he attempted to rape her. A physical line had been crossed which, until then, I hadn’t believed he was capable of crossing. I knew he behaved inappropriately, but because I’d always been able to manoeuvre my way out of sticky situations, I didn’t realise how dangerous he was.
‘I felt horrified and incensed for putting someone in that vulnerable position. Rowena was in deep shock. She didn’t want to lose her job but I said: “We don’t have a job now. We’re done.” What had happened was so reprehensible I knew it was over.
‘Rowena was my responsibility, but she didn’t want to go to the police. She didn’t want to press charges. I don’t know why, but we were in an isolated position in a foreign country, and we don’t always make cogent decisions when we’re traumatised.
‘I fought back simply because it didn’t occur to me not to. It didn’t occur to me that I’d be shut down; that working for Miramax was like working for the Mob.
‘I confronted Harvey, who was in an important meeting. My biggest fear was that he’d fly into one of his terrifying rages, but when I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “You need to come with me right now”, he came like a lamb. He knew he’d been caught out.
‘I knew in that moment that what Rowena had recounted to me was absolutely true.’
Weinstein, now 70, was then at the zenith of his powers, ‘ a monstrously overweight, unpleasant-smelling, frightening man’, says Zelda. He preyed on the ambitions of both actresses and employees — desperate for jobs in the film industry — and, wielding absolute authority, he was never challenged by the sycophants who surrounded him. Until Zelda.
A powerful new film, She Said, features Samantha Morton as Zelda and tells the story of how two New York Times journalists, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (played by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan) finally exposed Weinstein’s abuse in 2017.
Yet he might have been stopped decades earlier had Zelda been supported in pursuing her boss. Instead, what happened next was arguably as profoundly disturbing as the assaults. For, far from ensuring he was stopped, the law effectively protected him and silenced his accusers.
As part of their financial settlements — they were each awarded £125,000 for the trauma they had endured — Rowena and Zelda were forced to sign gagging contracts.
These Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) even prevented them—victims of sexual harassment and assault — from ever getting help; from talking to counsellors, doctors ... even their friends and families. Chillingly, they were also told to use their ‘best endeavours’ not to aid the police if they approached them.
They were bound by an oath to remain completely and permanently silent. And the abusive Weinstein was free to continue his reign of terror.
‘These wide-ranging NDAs are a form of legal coercion and gaslighting,’ says Zelda, who co-founded the campaign Can’t Buy My Silence in September last year with Julie Macfarlane, the Canadian law professor who persuaded the Anglican Church in Canada to stop forcing NDAs on victims of clerical abuse.
They aim to bring about legal and regulatory change that will make NDAs unenforceable for anything other than their original purpose: to prevent the sharing of confidential business information.
‘I’m very thankful that justice has been served and that Harvey Weinstein will die in prison, but I feel seismic change will not happen until our laws stop allowing powerful people to act with complete impunity,’ says Zelda, who in 2017 became the first Weinstein victim in the UK to publicly break an NDA, by speaking out about his actions.
How many NDAs his lawyers issued is obscure because of their secretive nature, but it is thought around a dozen of his victims signed them.
And although Zelda has faced no legal consequences for breaking hers, when she first did so she was consumed by fears: ‘I was worried I could be sent to prison or forfeit the money I’d been awarded. But I believed public opinion would protect me as I was speaking up about a rapist.’
She continues, explaining how she and Rowena were silenced in 1998.
‘ Even though our lawyers and Harvey’s lawyers were told he had attempted to rape Rowena, they were legally committing no wrong in silencing us.’
This wide-ranging, oppressive use of NDAs is alarmingly common. UK data from 2019 shows that over twoand-a-half years, as many as 2,195 of 3,585 sex- discrimination suits were dropped before they reached court, and the vast majority of these settlements included NDAs.
Data from the non-profit organisation Speak Out Revolution shows that of 1,043 respondents who have experienced workplace harassment and discrimination, 24 per cent report signing an NDA and a further 11 per cent say they ‘cannot say for legal reasons’ (i.e. they have signed an NDA).
Zelda says: ‘ NDAs are too often used to protect abusers. These NDAs cover up malpractice and hide inequity. What place is there for them in a civilised society?’
Zelda, who lives near Salisbury, is as articulate and impassioned as she is courageous. The fact she is not married — although she has an artist partner — and has no children has freed her to devote her life to her campaign, which she helps to fund through public speaking. Raised by her maternal grandparents in rural Wiltshire after her mother died when she was three, the values that underpinned her childhood were uncompromising.
‘My grandfather was a military man, born in India. I had a stern moral upbringing; not just on sexual matters but about right and wrong, duty and obligation. I also had a firm belief in justice — that the law would be on the side of right.’
After reading philosophy and English at Manchester University, she found herself working for Miramax a couple of weeks before the Cannes Film Festival in 1993.
‘I fell into the film industry by mistake, and that was my saviour because Harvey preyed on the ambitious — that made them vulnerable.’
Shortly after she joined the organisation, Weinstein visited London. ‘I was told to go to the Savoy hotel and not to knock on the main door of the suite, where he was having a meeting, but on a secondary door.
‘I was a bit flustered and knocked on the wrong door,’ she recalls. ‘It flew open and Harvey shouted furiously at me: “Who the f*** are you?” I was a nice, middle- class country girl and I wasn’t used to people speaking to me like that.
‘I said: “Presumably I’ve come here to f***ing help you.” It was a kneejerk reaction. He looked pretty amazed that I’d answered back.’
Zelda’s feistiness set her apart: Weinstein was accustomed to sycophancy and he revelled in the discomfiture of employees who — scared of jeopardising their careers
He said: ‘If you’re going to work for me, you’ll have to be less of a prude’
— never challenged or questioned him. ‘For him, sex was an expression of power. He also enjoyed eviscerating men with terrifying tirades. The more people who saw him doing it, the better he liked it.
‘But I looked at Harvey objectively because I didn’t have stars in my eyes. I didn’t want a part in a movie and that protected me.’
She recalls how — despite that inauspicious first meeting — she was taken on to be Harvey’s assistant when he was travelling in the UK and Europe.
‘The first time I was left alone with him on an evening shift, he came into the hotel room in his underpants. I was shocked. He said: “Don’t be so prissy. If you’re going to work for me you’ll have to be less of a prude.”
‘I was so naïve I thought that it must be how the corporate world worked. Then he asked me for a massage. I said: “No, I’m leaving if that’s what you expect me to do.”
‘I used to have to wake him and get him out of bed. He would be naked with his penis out, but I evolved survival strategies. I found scolding him or making fun of him worked best. What scared me most was his anger. It was terrifying. I’d check everything four times to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake. I’d do everything in my power not to ignite his anger.’
In 1998 — after she’d been working for Weinstein for almost five years — she interviewed Rowena Chiu for the post of her assistant. She warned her that Weinstein was ‘difficult to work for, aggressive and may behave inappropriately; and that if she couldn’t cope with that, she shouldn’t take the job’.
Rowena assured her she had worked for a tricky boss before and could deal with him. Both women are physically tiny; slim and 5ft 2in. But Zelda feels Rowena was more vulnerable because she desperately wanted to work in the film industry.
She recalls how events unfolded on the night Rowena was assaulted in Weinstein’s hotel suite in Venice.
‘It was the second time she’d met Harvey, and she was doing an evening shift. She’d lost her mobile so I gave her mine, which meant she didn’t have easy access to me.
‘He began, as usual, by requesting a massage and it escalated to him having her on the bed and attempting to rape her. She managed to escape by telling him I was expecting her to call, and saying that I’d come to look for her if she didn’t call me.
‘She came to my hotel room, returned my phone, but didn’t tell me what had happened until the next morning. She was still deeply traumatised — and I felt guilty for putting her in that vulnerable position.’
After the confrontation with Weinstein, Rowena was sent back to the UK. Zelda then approached her only senior other than Weinstein himself, telling her ‘ “something terrible had happened in Venice”, and when I told her what, she did not seem surprised.
‘ She told me: “You need to get a good lawyer.” But she didn’t suggest going to the police and that was terrifying to me.’
Zelda duly sought legal advice, and was told their case was not strong. ‘Rowena had only worked for Harvey twice. The assault had happened in Italy; no charges had been brought. It would be her word against his. It was clear we had absolutely no power.’
Even so, Zelda hoped that justice would be served. But confronted by the heft of Weinstein’s international lawyers, she was horrified to learn their only option was to accept a damages agreement from him.
She objected: ‘I said no money should change hands. This was about stopping a very dangerous man from behaving in a predatory way. We insisted on safeguards, but our lawyers told us: “You have to start with the money — that is what a damages agreement is — or you won’t even get a settlement on the table.”’
They accepted £125,000 each on the proviso that clauses would be added to their NDA which, they hoped, would stop Weinstein if he ever assaulted or harassed another woman.
Among them was an insistence that Weinstein seek therapy and that Zelda should attend the first two sessions so he couldn’t lie about why he was there. There were clauses stressing that Weinstein should never be alone with a female assistant, and that complaints against him should be handled by three people, one of them a lawyer.
Zelda recognises that she was naively trusting: none of these clauses was ever acted upon and Weinstein continued flagrantly to abuse, assault and coerce.
Zelda, meanwhile — her professional reputation sullied by the fact she had left a job without explanation (she was gagged from explaining why, of course) — moved to Guatemala for five years, where she trained horses.
‘I couldn’t speak to my friends or family. I couldn’t get a job in the film industry. The NDA protected my abuser and it still goes on, every day.
‘In our universities, students have signed NDAs to hide sexual harassment, bullying, discrimination. There is an epidemic of them in employment.
‘We say that we want to put women’s safety at the top of the agenda,’ she concludes, ‘and the easiest thing to do is to reform NDAs, which so effectively silence victims of abuse.’
■ To DONATE or for information about Zelda’s campaign go to cantbuymysilence.com
If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story contact rapecrisis.org.uk
I couldn’t speak to my friends or family. I couldn’t get a job. Yet the law protected Harvey and his abuse went on