Tormented by Harvey Weinstein and Survived to Tell About It with Sarah Ann Masse

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today we hear from Sarah Anne Massey, who, like many others,
was assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. The full circle moment is
that Sarah Anne had a role in the film She
said about the investigation on Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment, assault
and abuse of numerous women. What happens when speaking out

(00:22):
means giving up dreams, aspirations, and a lifetime of work.
Sarah Anne takes us through what her experience of trauma
survivorship looks like. This podcast should not be used as
a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are
advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy

(00:46):
from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition,
mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on
this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering
to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely

(01:09):
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia,
or their employees. Sarah and Massey. Welcome to Navigating Narcissism.
It is such a pleasure and honor to have you on.
You're doing some really amazing and important things in the industry.

(01:33):
And before we get to all of that, I would
like to start with your backstory, which in this year,
when the films She Said Just came out, you were
assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, and from there some really extraordinary
things happened in your story and in your career. So
I'd like to start at the beginning, Sarah Ann, and

(01:53):
I'd like to ask you how did you become acquainted
with Harvey Weinstein. I had just moved to New York.
I was a young theater actor, and I had started
my own theater company, and you know, I was sort
of trying to do that thing I'd been dreaming of
since I was a little girl. And I was a
nanny as my day job. You know, all my friends

(02:13):
were waiters and bartenders, but I loved kids. And after
living in New York for a little while, I realized
my one part time nannying job was not enough to
cover all of my bills. So I looked for a
second job. And I found a nanning agency and they
sort of catered to like, you know, higher net worth clientele,
and I thought it would be good. I could get
a part time job and make some more money and

(02:35):
continue to support my acting. So they contacted me and said,
we have a client who we think would be really
good for you. They work in the entertainment industry, and
we know that you've worked with clients so we're in
the entertainment industry before, and would you be interested in
meeting with them? And I said, yeah, sure, and they said, okay,
it's a producer named Harvey Weinstein, and I said, oh, yeah,

(02:56):
of course I know who that is, you know, biggest
producer in the country. And I didn't really think twice
about it. I'm not someone who gets star struck or uncomfortable,
and I'm used to being around folks who work in
the industry, and I thought it would be good because
I understood the world that he was coming from. And
I've always made it very clear that, like I draw

(03:16):
a very fine line between or not a fine line,
a very bright line between my acting work and my
nanning work, so there was never any concern about, you know,
having it be like a conflict of interest or anything.
So they thought I should go out on the interview,
and prior to meeting with Harvey, I actually had a
few interviews with two of his female assistants in New York,

(03:37):
and they took me out to breakfast and they sort
of explained how the job would work, and at the
time I didn't think anything of it, but they kept
mentioning how discretion was very important, and I thought, well, sure,
he'll have famous people around, and they don't want me
selling photographs off my phone to the paparazzie. I get it.
Totally makes sense, I understand. And they explained to me

(04:00):
that I would have to go to Connecticut for the interview,
go to his home in Connecticut, and that I would
be meeting with him and his children at his home,
which is when I used to with Nanning. Almost always
go to the person's home and you meet with them
in the family, and so I felt comfortable. I felt confident.
They had mentioned a few times that they wanted to

(04:21):
make sure that me being an actor wasn't going to
be a problem, and I said to them what I
said to you, I would never utilize my position as
a nanny to try to advance my career. I keep
a very clear delineation between those two worlds, and they
seemed really comfortable with that. So I grew up in
Connecticut So I went to my parents' house in Connecticut,
and I was preparing for the interview, and the night

(04:42):
before I got contacted by one of the assistants and said,
I'm not going to be able to be there, sorry,
but let me know how it goes. So I was
expecting this assistant to be there, and again I thought, Okay,
it'll be fine. I'm not worried about it. I've been
on a million of these interviews before. And then I
walked into to essentially what had been a trap that

(05:02):
would set for me at his home, and he just
was the furthest thing from professional. He opened the door
in his underwear. And at this point, I'm parked in
this driveway that's a mile from the street, behind a
huge locked gate, And I thought he probably forgot about
the interview, and it was a weekend and he was

(05:22):
relaxing in his house and would be embarrassed and would
excuse himself to change before we did the interview. You know,
I'm young, and I'm naive, and I am trusting and
not assuming anything nefarious is happening. But he did not.
He condicted the entire interview in his underwear. He asked
me about my acting, which I was one of the
first things I felt uncomfortable about. He wanted to see

(05:43):
my resume and headshot, and because I always carried the
same bag with me to auditions sort of interviews, I
had them, and so I gave them to him, and
he was asking me a lot about that, and I
kept trying to redirect, and at one point I thought
we were completely alone, and I started feeling more and
more uncomfortable. Again. I had no real way to get out.
And at one point two if his children ran in,
and I felt relief. I thought, Okay, okay, we're gonna

(06:06):
get back on track. It's going to be fine. And
the second they came into the room, he turned like
night and day. He went from I think he was
attempting to be charming to being this roaring monster, screaming
at his children to leave the room, to leave us alone,
to not come back, and until I had left, that
we must be left alone. And that's when I knew

(06:28):
I was in definitive danger. When they left, he shifted
right back right here, this flipped anger switch, going from
an attempt to be charming or flirtatious too rageful. Sarah
Ann amazingly picked up on it and recognize she was
in danger. But it is remarkable how often this flip

(06:49):
is missed or justified. Well regulated people keep things even keeled.
But if a person is attempting to dominate a situation
and are interrupted in that, well, that's precisely the kind
of situation that will flip the switch of an antagonistic person.
And he started sexually harassing me. He started asking me

(07:10):
if I would ever use sex to get ahead in
my acting career. He started asking me if I would
ever flirt with or sleep with his friends to get
ahead in my acting career. Both times I answered definitively no.
I was clearly offended by the question, and he kept
asking me questions and I was sort of at this
point really having this trauma response of freezing and panicking

(07:31):
and just trying to stay calm. And he stood up,
and I thought, Okay, either he's going to let me
go or he's going to attack me. Hopefully this is
the end of the interview. And I get out and
he approached me, and I thought he was going to
shake my hand, and he grabbed me and he pulled
me in and he pressed his genitals against me and
he held me really tight and really long, and I

(07:51):
was just completely frozen. And I don't know how long
it lasted. It felt like it lasted hours. It was
probably seconds or minutes. And he whispered that he loved me,
and then he let me go and he let me
out the door. And I really don't know how to
explain the level of fear that I was experiencing, because,

(08:11):
like I said, I'm young, I'm alone, I'm locked behind
this gain on this compound. Nobody could hear me, nobody
could help me. And I think the thing that really
sticks out to me is I remember driving there very clearly,
because like I said, I grew up there. I knew
the roads, I knew exactly where I was going once
I saw the address, and when I left, the last
thing I remember is looking down at my feet on
the driveway. I don't remember driving home. I don't remember

(08:32):
how I got back to my parents' house. I clearly
was just completely shutting down. And the next thing I
remember is like being mid sentenced talking to my mom.
She had clearly asked me how things went and saw
that I looked upset, and yeah, it was like, I mean,
even now, it's such a long time later, just retelling
this story, I'm so activated and I have to try

(08:53):
to remind my brain that I'm not in that place anymore.
I'm safe now. But it was really terrifying, and you know,
it's not the first I had been abused by a man,
and it wasn't the last time. And I think some
people when they hear about trauma or abuse, they sort
of rank it in their minds and they go, well,
it wasn't rape, so you lucked out. And I even

(09:13):
had that idea in my head, like, oh, it could
have been worse. But two months prior to this, I
was raped, And I have to say the level of
trauma is very similar, and the long term impacts with
what Harvey did to me are very extreme. It had
a really intense impact on my career, on my health.
I developed chronic illnesses, on my mental health, I lost

(09:35):
a lot of time in my career and face economic harm.
And I think people need to sort of be more
aware of the fact that the power dynamics at play
can have a really big impact and having no expectation
of that going in, there was no preparation that I
might be in danger, that somebody might try to sexualize
me and sexually assault me. So I think that really
means that for me, I was so unprepared that it

(09:55):
came as such a shock and such a terrifying experience
that it really impacted me for very time. Your nervous
system was already living into the next thing that could
conceivably happen. What we forget is that the brain is
always saying, Okay, this terrible thing is about to happen,
and the reaction, the cascade that happens in our body
is as though it does happen. So when in that moment,

(10:17):
you didn't know how bad it was going to get.
So the terror you experienced was the terror of trauma,
which is so linked into uncertainty, What's going to happen next?
Am I going to die? Which is often the question
people ask themselves. You also then bring up the next
piece of trauma we don't talk about enough, which is
we often think of trauma as an episode, a thing

(10:38):
that happens, an episode that happens, and as you describe it,
the impact of this episode lasted for years and years
and years. And when people say, well, that was a day,
it was an afternoon, it was an hour, really could
it be affecting you ten fifteen years later, to which
it is a resounding yes. And not only did it

(10:58):
affect you structurally, We're going to get to how this
affected your career because of how the entertainment industry is set.
It affected you physically, It affected your mental health. That
episode that other people would say it was just an
hour time doesn't follow the usual rules when it comes
to mental health, and that hour became something that would
echo through your life. So I really appreciate you talking

(11:20):
about not just the moment, but how far that reaches
and in any relationship, when somebody has that kind of betrayal,
and that was a betrayal you went in there with trust,
It's very, very impactful. I want to ask you, in
the aftermath of that, it sounds like you went home
and talk to your mother. Did you share with your
mother what happened? I did, and she is one of

(11:41):
the only people I actually told. And it was really
interesting watching her as I spoke, because you know, I
think she could tell something was off, but I think
she also knew that he had a reputation being kind
of like a tough boss, so I think maybe she
was thinking more along those lines. And as I told

(12:02):
her what happened, beat by beat, I saw her face
fall and I saw it hit her. And it was
validating actually to see that, because the praying does a
lot of funny things in the aftermath of trauma. And
I've learned a lot about the neurobiology of trauma over
the years, and you try to make sense of what
happened to you, and you try to make it okay

(12:23):
and make yourself feel safe again. And so seeing her
react and hearing her react as though this was not okay,
not normal, that he had done something wrong, validated for
me all of those feelings that I had, And I
think that's really important. You know, not all of us
get that when we disclosed for the first time. We
don't always get support and belief, and so I feel
very grateful that I had that. But having said that,

(12:46):
you know, she didn't say anything about and I didn't
think about going to the police or even reporting it
to the nannying agency. I didn't even know how to begin,
how to talk about it. And I was instantly afraid
of the impact it would have on my life if
I told people my life, my career, all of it.
That was such a huge fear for me for such
a long time that I did just keep it quiet,

(13:08):
and a few people who are very close to me knew.
And that was it when this happened to you. And
you again, when I go back to what you said,
is that many people go through something like this and
they have nowhere to take it right. I shuddered to
think how much unreported trauma, unshared stories of abuse, not
just in the entertainment industry and all industries, workplaces, in
life in general. How much has been unsaid and how

(13:30):
much people carry this pain within them throughout their lives.
Having that place, like you said, it was important, it's
not enough. And then on top of that, you had
to make these calculations in your head, these decisions of
if I talk about this more, then these other things
can happen. You're a young person, and that's all very
real people say, Oh, may just being anxious. You don't

(13:52):
being anxious, You're being realistic. When this happened to you,
Sarah Ann, At this time, though none of this story
had broken, so all we knew was I guess some
people knew that Harvey Weinstein was just an angry dude
and had a lot of bluster, as a boss. That
seemed to be the talk you know, around the industry,

(14:13):
but none of the rest of this had come out.
You didn't have a context to places him, And am
I right about that? That's completely right. I do think
there are some people who were, you know, within his
sphere who knew what he was doing. Of course, of course,
and there's been this narrative, oh everybody knew. But I
can tell you, as a young actor who had just
moved to New York, I didn't know, and I didn't
know a lot of other actresses who were you know.

(14:35):
I was just starting to dip my tone into film
and TV like that was my dream, was to move
into that next chapter. I didn't have other people to
talk about this with. I didn't feel safe too, so
I had no idea. It wasn't until the New York
Times story broke that I knew I wasn't alone. That
was almost ten years later. So how did you feel
in that moment? So this thing you've been carrying within you,

(14:57):
this trauma, in the pain it caused you, you shared
it with your mother, but with no one else, and
you're making your way in this industry. I remember the
day that story came out, you know, and I did
not have the direct impact of it, and I almost
dropped the paper at the time. How did you feel
when you read that story? It was really surreal. I
was in Europe at the time. My husband is British

(15:17):
and we were over there visiting family, and we were
about to film a short film that I had written
and was acting in. And I saw the story and
I felt equal parts just destroyed that this had happened
to so many people, but also relieved that I wasn't alone,
and a sense of Okay, if we're finally talking about this,

(15:40):
maybe finally he'll be held accountable for what happened. Maybe
I won't have to be afraid anymore. Maybe I can
move through this industry in a way that feels safer.
Because I had put my career off, I had a
really big head start. I didn't go to college. I
trained at a professional acting school in New York. I
was the youngest person they had ever accepted, started my
own theater company, had started like trying to take meetings

(16:02):
with agents, and when Harvey did what he did to me,
I pulled way back. I didn't feel safe going into
audition rooms and meeting rooms with strange men who I
didn't know. I was afraid he might be in a
room that I entered into. So I kept creating. I
kept making theater with people I trusted. But I really
lost a lot of time. And it was only when
I met my husband. We started working together, We started

(16:25):
writing comedy together and creating together, and I suddenly felt
safe again because he would go with me to auditions,
he would go with me to meetings. I knew I
had somebody there if something went wrong, And so I
just started getting my career back and I felt hopeful
that this would be a shift, this would be a change.
And as the days progressed and more and more stories

(16:46):
came out, again completely sickened that this had been going
on for thirty years and there were so many people,
but also hopeful, we're finally talking about this, We're finally
taking this out of the shadows. Maybe things can finally change.
The New York Times story coming out lead you to
feel like you could speak out. Yeah, exactly that. And
it was funny. I thought at first I would just

(17:08):
write on my Facebook like sort of the broad strokes
of what had happened to me. I thought, Okay, all
my Facebook friends will hear what happened and they'll know,
and it'll be off my chest. And that's that. I'm
not famous. I'm not going to talk to the press
like you know. But a friend of mine saw what
I wrote and asked me if I would be willing
to talk to the press, and I wasn't sure, but
I said I'd talked to someone off the record, and

(17:30):
I did, and I felt comfortable. I felt like my
story would be safe in her hands, and I allowed
Variety to publish again the big beats of what had
happened to me. As you know, it takes time to
fully process when you start retelling your narrative and finding
all of the strength to talk about the details. So
I shared sort of the broad beats of my story

(17:51):
and I thought that would be it. But I kept
getting press requests. And I was lucky to be filming
this movie at the time because I could sort of
escape onto my set and my whole crew knew what
was happening, and they were really protective of me and
made me feel safe. And so it felt a little
bit like a nice bookend to be talking about this
thing that had held me back for so long while

(18:12):
creating and making art and doing something I really believed in.
So I felt encouraged. At first. I didn't feel afraid
that there would be the retaliation that I was so
afraid of for a decade, because we were all telling
our stories together and it looked like he was going
to lose his job, and so I thought, surely, what
could possibly happen now, what could go wrong? Now? Nobody
could hold it against us. I mean, it's I think

(18:33):
now one hundred and eleven people have officially gone on
the record about Harvey abusing them. So what did happen
after you spoke out in variety? Well, for about a
month and a half, I had nothing but support, you know, friends, family,
strangers all would write to me and thank me for
coming forward. And that was one reason I wanted to

(18:53):
share my story is yes, I was an actress, but
it also happened in the context of domestic work, and
I think that's domestic workers are so often abused and
those stories don't get told very frequently. So I wanted
to share that to hopefully give other people a sense
that they weren't alone and what they were going through.
So I felt good about it. I felt okay and

(19:14):
I felt empowered to keep speaking. I had always been
very passionate about these issues, you know, ending sexual violence
and gender based violence, and now to be able to
contextualize why it mattered so much to me personally felt
good and like I could do some good. And I
met a lot of other survivors and we started talking
about trying to do work together, advocacy work together. But
then about a month and a half after, I got

(19:36):
a call from my agent at the time, and she
told me that she was getting angry phone calls from
casting directors that I needed to stop already, I'd already
told my story. Enough was enough that I was going
to be blacklisted. And it was like all of my
fears coming true. And I chose to believe that this
was her operating from her own place of fear, and

(19:56):
that surely this couldn't possibly really happen. Maybe, okay, maybe
she got a phone caller too, but it would be okay.
I had just moved to la at this point, and
I was getting probably about a half a dozen auditions
a month, which is good for moving to a new
market and having a small agent. And I watched that
dry up very quickly and It's now five years later,

(20:18):
and I think I've probably had around half a dozen
auditions in the subsequent five years. It's been very extreme
and very dramatic and very trackable. What's happened to me,
And it hasn't just happened to me, It's happened to
a lot of people. My question here is we had
heard watching, she said, reading the myriad articles written about this,
and we had heard how people who had turned away

(20:41):
Harvey Weinstein's advances would face his wrath, and that would
be incurred in not getting parts. Even people who are
actually relatively big names were having experienced it cost a
whole continuum of people who were still coming up in
the industry, people who had come up in the industry.
In New York case, the article was already out, the
New York Times articles already out, and your agent was

(21:03):
still afraid. So Weinstein still held a lot of power
in the industry, is what you're telling me, even after
the Time's Peace came out. Yeah. I think it's pretty
layered what's going on here, because, as you mentioned, when
this happened to me, I talked about it. I thought, well,
if people are angry at me already, I'm not going
to hide this. I'm not going to once again be afraid.

(21:25):
And because I started talking about what was happening to me,
other people started sharing with me that they were having,
like you said, very successful people, people who were sort
of just coming up, people losing their agents, getting dropped
from pilots, having all their auditions dry up. And it
was just the same story over and over again. And
so I think it comes down to, yes, I think
Harvey still has power in this industry. I think he

(21:46):
still has friends. But I also think there are still
abusers in this industry who are afraid to be found out.
And I think there are people who, even if they
have nothing to hide themselves, they were afraid of the
squeaky wheel. They didn't want to rock the boat. And
I think these tend to be, you know, maybe lower
level gatekeepers, not necessarily the people who are running the studios.

(22:07):
I think they don't really have that fear. And so
when I've talked to some of them, they've gone, oh,
this is terrible that this is happening. We have to
do something about it. This shouldn't be happening. But it's
such a big industry and it's difficult to break into
in the best of times, but I think it's implicit
and explicit retaliation. I think there's a lot going on
that provokes these barriers of entry to folks who have

(22:28):
been marginalized in all sorts of ways, but certainly survivors
of sexual violence. And it's got a shift and it's
got a change, and so I'm trying to do something
about that. What is it that's unique about the entertainment
industry that you believe in enables this level, this reach
of abuse of vulnerable folks. I always talk about the

(22:49):
fact that this is not explicit to the entertainment industry,
as you've mentioned yourself, but there are things that make
this unique. And I'm a member of SAGAFTER and I
work on a lot of committees, including the National Sexual
Harassment Prevention Committee, and I talk a lot about the
fact that, you know, most people in their jobs are
not lucky to get an interview and then having to

(23:09):
interview one hundred times before they get a job. Most
people are not having to go into private spaces with
very limited people and having to be extremely emotionally vulnerable.
Most people are not asked to be almost naked and
do sex scenes or intimate scenes on set. Most people
are not asked to constantly relive traumatic experiences. There's a

(23:30):
lot that means that folks who work in this industry
are vulnerable. We work very long hours, we have to
fight very hard for protections from our unions, and not
everybody is in the union. And there's a very clear
I mean, maybe it's not very clear, maybe it's very murky,
but there is a very distinct power dynamic that exists.
There are all of these layers of gatekeeping that you

(23:51):
have to get through to get to the next thing.
And I know exceptionally famous, successful actors who are still
afraid to speak on set if something makes them uncomfortable,
because when they do, they get pushback. And I think
that we need to keep putting in these sort of
safety nets. I think of it like having prop guns

(24:12):
on set or having a stunts on set. These are
safety issues. This is bodily autonomy and bodily safety, and
I think if we can start thinking about it in
that way, we would have a better response from the
folks who are currently in power to put these things
in place, because it protects them too, It limits their liability,
It creates a safer and happier work environment. It allows

(24:33):
people to be more creative, and there are things like
intimacy coordinators and well being coordinators that exist that help
with that, but we just have to sort of normalize
that part of it. So many people are trying to
get into it. Right. So there's this really interesting research
out there on something called institutional betrayal. Okay, so it's
taking a lot of what we might even see an
individual betrayal, but it's happening at an institutional level, and

(24:56):
much like you'd even see in a family where abuse
is happening, there is a real pressure to close ranks.
Let's not talk about this outside of here. Gas lighting,
Did that ever really happen? The one thing we do
know about institutional betrayal is that industries where there is
a really high bar to entry, where there is a

(25:16):
lot of prestige, where there is the possibility of really
high status or gains to come, and there's a lot
of these gate keeping sorts of like hoops to jump through,
as it were, those are the industries where institutional betrayal
is most likely to happen. And the entertainment industry is
really that because there's thousands of people clamoring for you know,

(25:40):
very very far fewer jobs with the hope of the big,
big return someday. And these patterns seem to be pretty ancient.
I mean, I think that tropes of things like the
casting couch, those aren't. Those aren't fictions, These aren't. We
hear more and more people do historical work on what
the early years of the motion picture industry were. It

(26:00):
was nothing but abuse, often of underage performers, and absolutely
nothing was done about it. If anything, the abusers are
absolutely emboldened. So this really definitely feels like it's intergenerational
within this industry. It's been in place for a long time.
The stakes are really high, and then you brought up
something really interesting, which is even very seasoned performers, people

(26:24):
who are marquee names have an anxiety about speaking out
because the fact is they were indoctrinated into this. You
know that it's again it's like a family where you
learned and we don't talk about that. Let's not bring
it up. I don't want to stir the pot. And
their own handlers, agents, managers, representatives saying, don't you know,
let's not say anything. Come on, it says that really
affecting you. Is that really a problem, And you're right,

(26:47):
it's numerous workplace settings. It does seem to be quite
pronounced in entertainment, and I think also there's big age gaps.
You have young young people entering an industry who often
just lack institutional power. From that people who are senior
positions who are decision making. But I also really love
what you said, Sarah Ann about domestic workers, household workers,
people who really really have very little social power and

(27:11):
the amount of abuses that happen there. So I'm so
glad you put a lens on that, because when we
look at the harassment literature, what we see in people
who are in industries like retail, bartending, other service employees,
they actually report the highest rates of harassment in the workplace.
Oh yeah, I'm not surprised. And you know something you
mentioned about the really big stars who are afraid to

(27:32):
speak up. I don't think it's only the indoctrination. I
think it's the real risk of economic harm. Even the
people I know who are the most successful people in
this industry, they're always wondering when the next shob will come,
if the next shob will come. It's weirdly expensive to
work in this industry. Once you do have a modicum
of success hiring publicists and paying your agent and your

(27:54):
manager their fee and whatever your house and costs are, Yes,
your wealth is going up, but you don't know how
temporary it is. So there's this real economic harm that
can come. I mean, I've certainly faced it. My finances
have been massively impacted by the fact that I have
basically barely been able to work the past five years
in the industry that I am trained to work in.

(28:14):
And regardless of what level or what scale you're working at,
that fear of loss of income and loss of ability
to work is very motivating and very real, And that's
kind of the part I'm trying to address, is not
just creating the safety, but also taking away the barriers
to entry and taking away the fear of speaking. There

(28:34):
was a film that I was involved with recently, an
independent film, and we'll talk about this more later, but
I run this organization called Hire Survivors Hollywood, and they
teamed with us on it, and so they wanted to
make sure that they were hiring survivors in the roles
that were available, and they put out a casting notice
with their partnership with us, and they said that if
you would like to self identify as a survivor of

(28:56):
sexual violence, you could market in your notes and the
guarante was that they would look at your materials. It
wasn't a guarantee that you would get hired. But they
had eighteen roles. They got about eighteen thousand submissions and
they cast four survivors, so about a quarter of the
roles ended up going to survivors because they took that step.
And so it's not a guarantee of employment. It's just

(29:16):
a guarantee that there aren't going to be extra barriers
put in front of you. That's such an important point
because I don't think everyone appreciates what it means to
work on this basis where you are always having to
think about the next gig. A lot of shows have
limited runs. Every show is going to end at some point.
Every film is a finite period of work. And that
idea of working so hard and then having to think

(29:39):
about what's the next gig going to be? It really
does take away your power, can even make it hard
to find an apartment when you can't show steady income
or any of that. So all the things that a
person needs to feel stable are taken away, and then
it puts people in incredibly compromised positions in an industry
where they already don't have powers. So this is bigger

(30:00):
than just what we heard in this one story of
Harvey Weinstein. This is a far bigger sort of indictment
of how the entertainment industry runs itself and the magnified
vulnerability it puts people in by how it runs. So
I think it's really amazing that you're creating that awareness.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is only

(30:21):
happening because the abusers are protected. How is it that
these big media companies, production companies, whatever, How are they
protecting these abusers. I think historically it's been a financial decision.
Someone like Harvey Weinstein was making a lot of money,
so there was an impetus to protect him because he

(30:42):
was the moneymaker. And the way in which I've talked
about this a lot is that our industry has a
responsibility because we create culture, and we create media, and
we create entertainment, and that's what shapes cultural ideas and
cultural norms, and so there's this very dark side to
it that we're talking about how there's also a really
hopeful side where if we shift, if we do the

(31:04):
things that we need to do in order to tell
stories that are more honest about what it is to
be a human being, to have better representation onscreen and
behind the camera, to create safer work environments. Not only
can we create great art that brings in lots of money,
but we can shift the cultural conversation to create a
more empathetic, kinder, safer, more equitable world. And when I

(31:26):
talk to the folks who are in positions of power,
I say to them, look, I believe you should do
this because it's the right thing to do. But also
it's a very smart pr move. This is very positive
publicity for you. It's a very smart financial move. There's
a lot of underserved markets who have a lot of
spending power who you will draw in to your projects

(31:48):
if they are ethically aligned and if they're culturally aligned
with what these groups of people want to see and
are so hungry to see. And on top of that,
it lessens liability on your sets. It allows your director
to know that they can focus on their job and
they have an intimacy coordinator to handle the awkward and
complicated and difficult staging of those intimate and hyper exposed scenes.

(32:09):
It allows everybody to do their jobs and feel like
they're safe, and we at higher survivors Hollywood advocate for
having things like pre employment trauma informed training. We advocate
for things like safety meetings in any project where there
is going to be a hyper exposed or intimate scene,
just like if there was going to be a stunt performed.
We advocate for having access to mental health professionals, to

(32:32):
having a trauma informed therapist on set on the days
where you're filming something that might be sensitive, even if
it's not sexual or gender based violence, if it's something
that has to do with racial violence, or you know,
all these different things. And we have this i think
twenty two page toolkit that I've authored and it's free
and it's available for everybody works in this industry to
get some guidance. And we do consulting and there's a

(32:52):
lot of help out there to shift the narrative and
to shift the culture, and more people than you would expect,
I think, are been to it. It's just about letting
people know that these resources exist. We consulted on a
project that had a three thousand dollar budget and they
were still able to hire an intimacy coordinator and hire
several survivors to be in the project. And she said,

(33:13):
which I was involved, And they did a lot of
things right. They had access to a therapist for all
of us on via phone at any time, They consulted
with people who were depicted in the film when developing
the script. They did hire survivors to be in the film,
and I don't know how much of that they were
planning to do already, but I called Universal when the
film was announced. I called their switchboard and I got

(33:38):
in touch with an executive there, and I didn't pitch
myself as an actor. I just wanted to let them
know about higher survivors because I thought it was such
an obvious opportunity with this film, and they took a
meeting with me. I met with their Equity and Inclusion department,
and I told them about what we were trying to
do and how I thought it could work. And I
sort of thought i'd never hear from them again, and
hopefully it just would plan to seed. Then I got

(34:00):
an audition, and I found out that several Weinstein survivors
got auditioned and a few of us got hired. And
so you know, that was a thirty two million dollar
budget film, and there's this three thousand dollars new media project.
Anybody can integrate these steps, Anybody can help make a difference.
And we've gotten so many survivors work and auditions and interviews,

(34:21):
and it's just like me and one other person running
this Right now, We've just brought in an advisory board
of thirty people who are incredible. But I keep thinking like,
if I'm just one little person and I can make
these things happen, Imagine if everybody gets on board. Imagine
if we joined together to really push things forward and
get out of that deeply problematic and toxic and abusive

(34:42):
culture that sort of knit together this industry in the
first place, and remake it into what we want it
to be. My session with Sarah will continue after this break.
In a way, what healing is about is about persistence, right,
It's about getting up in the morning. It's about doing

(35:04):
things no matter what the size of the project is.
It's about picking the phone up and you're getting through
in the switchboard and actually getting through. It's those it's
giving ourselves permission to take small steps to take back
our power and our narratives and by extension, benefits systems
around us, and then when we really feel empowered to

(35:24):
actually try to address those systems. So I think that
what you're doing in a much larger way is what
people who are healing are doing in a smaller individual way,
if you will, every single day. And I think that
those are two really parallel processes. And I really do
appreciate that there is some hope in this, like it
doesn't have to be again an indictment of an industry.

(35:47):
But you also bring up something very important. The entertainment
industry sits in a very unique space where they create culture.
So they can create new stories, whether that is through
representation how stories are told and protecting the people who
tell the stories. That there's something quite powerful then that
actually sort of seeps into the groundwater of a culture.

(36:07):
You also, they'll bring up this issue and I'll go
back to the dark side for a minute, which is
where unfortunately, as a narcissism person, I often dwell in
the dark side. But on that dark side, you brought
up this concept of really what I call the golden goose,
that institutions, systems, companies protect the golden goose, and as
if somebody's making money or getting looks or likes or

(36:29):
clicks or whatever it is that they want. The enabling
and subsequent emboldening of those individuals and protecting of those
individuals within industries has been traditionally problematic. I do agree
with you that the financial risks that are now being
raised by having people who are abusive on a team,

(36:50):
on the staff running a company, I think for the
first time ever, we're starting to see I don't know
if it's a shift in moral conscience, but I do
know it's a shift on saying we can't afford this.
Is it even just about dollars and cents on their budgets.
It's about all the other people, the sponsorship, all of
that that gets pulled away. There is an accountability, and

(37:11):
that to me is a meaningful shift. It's not enough yet,
but it steps in the right direction. I agree, and
I think I'm very tired of people asking me what
I think about quote unquote cancel culture. I think what
it is is accountability. It's not cancel culture if it's
holding people accountable for the harm that they've caused. And
sometimes that means they've caused companies financial harm and so
they drop them. And sometimes it means they've caused actual

(37:33):
criminal harm, and then they have to be held accountable
for that. But accountability is essential. I think we could
have really long, complicated conversations about the state of the
criminal justice system in this country and globally, and whether
or not it should even exist in this state. It
does now. But even if we were able to shift,
and I hope we get to the point were we're
able to shift away from the carceral system and all

(37:56):
of these things, accountability will always be a part of it.
You have to be held accountable for your actions, both
good and add all of us, none of us are perfect.
We all make missteps. But there's a difference between making
a mistake, making error, harming someone unintentionally, learning from it,
growing changing, and being somebody who is just ritually and
serially abusing and causing harm. And maybe somebody like Harvey

(38:18):
stops doing that if early on he's actually held accountable.
We don't know. I don't know. I can't pretend to
know the inner workings of his mind. And maybe not,
maybe he was always going to be somebody who would
just exercise his power in this way. But I think
we have to stop being afraid of accountability and embrace
it as the transformative tool that it is. The name
of this podcast is Navigating Narcissism, and it's a very

(38:41):
big umbrella term. I've never heard someone use it these
words this when it's actually quite beautiful. Ritually and serially abusive.
You know that, honestly, is the core of patterns like
narcissism and psychopathy are people who are ritually and serially abusive.
And so I think that cultures of accountability become calmplicated
in the face of those personality styles. They are precisely

(39:03):
the people it's baked into their personality where accountability is
not very likely, in fact pretty very unlikely. However, adding
fuel to that fire is when there's absolutely no consequence
and absolutely no accountability for protracted periods of time, years
and decades. The longer and longer and longer that there's

(39:27):
no consequence, it emboldens a person who already is lacking
conscience to keep pushing that envelope. And so you are
witnessing sort of a stare step escalation because the person
really does feel is that they're completely teflon that nothing
will ever stick, and that's the danger. Whereas in a
person with a healthier sort of sense of self and

(39:50):
healthier internal organization, that accountability and responsibility is baked into
the healthy psyche. You're right, we do all make mistakes.
Healthy people tend to try to make amends, and and
that that you call the ritual and serial abuse. Unfortunately,
in certain industries there's a critical massive individuals who engage

(40:12):
in that behavior, making that industry riskier, and they tend
to be high risk, high reward industries such as entertainment.
That's a lot of sense. Yeah, you've now talked to
many survivors, Sarah Anne. Are there any patterns you've witnessed
after people have spoken out in their own stories. One

(40:32):
thing I will say that I've learned is every single
survivor is very different. How we process our trauma can
be very different. Where we are in those ceiling journeys,
it's very different. But I do think the common thread
is that you know, none of us walk away unscathed.
All of us have sort of these longer term impacts
from this abuse. And I don't know that I've met

(40:55):
anyone who doesn't feel that their career has been harmed
from what had happened to them, whether it was that they,
like I did early on, sort of help themselves back,
whether they faced explicit retaliation, whether they felt like they
couldn't talk about what happened to them and it sort
of shut them down emotionally, whether they were facing health

(41:16):
issues that made them unable to work. There's always some
sort of long term harm, always economic harm, and then
that's on top of the physical and psychological and interpersonal harm.
So what I have witnessed is that everybody has these
echoes of this one incident or several incidents, as you
mentioned earlier, and some people are better at masking it,

(41:39):
and some people maybe seem to pull themselves up from
it faster and move on. But it's very common for
people to be dealing with the impacts of this years
and decades later, and some people, you know, it takes
a long time to even fully process it, to fully
understand it, to be able to talk about it. And
that is the one thing I think we all have
in common, learning how to understand what happened to us,

(42:02):
learning the actual multisystem impact of it, and then how
to not lose ourselves to it, and unfortunately, the responsibility
falls on our shoulders to fix this problem that was
never ours to begin with, to ask for what we deserve,
just a fair and equal chance to live out our lives.
We shouldn't be the ones who are being held accountable

(42:24):
for the abuse that was done to us. Survivors of
sexual violence are some of the only survivors of a
violent crime who get treated as though they are the
perpetrator of that crime when they're asked about it. And
I think, again, it comes down to a cultural shift
about how we understand these things, how we talk about them.
And I just really believe in trying to use art
as an empathy machine and as an educator on all

(42:45):
of this. And I also write as well, and it's
really important to me that I do that because at
least I know what I'm writing will be filtered through
the world view that understands these things. I think that's great.
You said something that my therapisty Are grabbed onto, which
was this idea that you're using it talking about yourself
of holding yourself back and people holding themselves back. I'm
actually going to hold your feet to the fire on

(43:07):
that one. It makes it sound so volitional and voluntary,
don't know that it's holding yourself back. I think what
we miss is that trauma is a hijacking of a system,
and it's not holding oneself back. It's literally feeling as
though safety and permission have been taken away. And so
I'm always very mindful that trauma survivors don't feel complicit

(43:30):
in their own sort of getting stuck as it were,
as many do because there was a hijacking, and to
take that back as part of the work of healing
trauma to feel comfortable and safe in your own body again.
And it goings back to what you're saying is that
so many survivors, especially sexual violence, are made to feel
and so powed they are the perpetrators or there's somehow

(43:52):
culpable or responsible, and that kind of languaging can lead
a person then to say, well, then after this happened,
then I stop myself. I held myself back. Why you
did no such thing? You know, this was something that
happened to you, and then systems kicked in to keep
you safe, and that subsequently becomes a barrier. So it's
just shedding that kind of light that you've actually done
quite remarkable things in the face of all of this.

(44:15):
Thank you for saying that, and thank you for checking
my language on that, because I'm always trying to sort
of unpack the words I use and the impact they have,
and I hadn't even thought about that. But you're right,
because I feel like it's lost time, Like I feel
like that's the easiest way to describe it. And when
I'm angry, it's very easy for me to express it
as he took that from me. But when I'm trying

(44:35):
to talk about it in a way that feels palatable
to other people, I often try to talk about it
in the terms of, oh, well, it caused me to
hold myself back, or it caused me to feel fearful.
But you're right, it was just me trying to stay
safe and trying to reclaim some sort of control over
something that was taken from me. And I am resentful
of that. I'm resentful for all the time that we lose,

(44:55):
and I am resentful for all the opportunities that are
taken from us. And I guess I feel lucky that
I want to turn that into something productive rather than destructive.
But it's still, you know, there's still the frustration and
the anger there for all of that, and hopefully it
helps to feel me to do work that. Look, I
want my career to thrive, obviously, but I'm driven to

(45:16):
do this work because it's not just me. Yeah. I
think if I thought it was just me, I probably
wouldn't really be doing this. I maybe would move on
to something else. But I know it's happening across the board.
I know so many people are impacted in this way,
and I just like, I can't sit there and let
it happen when I know there are things that I
can do to try to help. I think it's fantastic.
I can tell you, as a clinician practicing in Los Angeles,

(45:37):
the number of stories I've heard of this on the
client side one is too many. But I'm tearing too
many too many, Sarah, can you tell us about higher
survivors Hollywood. It's really quite remarkable and I'd love for
our listeners to hear about it. Thanks. Yeah. It came
to me very organically, as I started speaking about the
retaliation that I was facing and finding out that this

(46:00):
was happening to so many other people in our industry.
I started trying to figure out solutions because I'm sort
of a very solution oriented person. And I started tweeting
about how we should be firing abusers and hiring survivors instead,
and how we should be talking about the talents and
the skills of these people, not just the abuse that
they've gone through. And then I went to pre existing

(46:23):
organizations and I said, hey, I have some ideas. I
think you could help me with this. And I spent
about a year pitching these ideas and developing these ideas,
and ultimately I was told these are great ideas, but
we don't have the money or the manpower to do it.
You should do it yourself. And I thought, well, I
certainly don't have the money or the manpower, but I
guess I'll do it. And I knew I was going

(46:44):
to be speaking on a panel at a film festival
with other survivors in New York, and I sort of
called up my part time assistant and I said, hey,
I'm going to buy these websites and will you secure
this social media handles because I'm going to launch this
today finally, and he was very excited, and he's now
become my director of Digital Communication, Shane Kellminski, who's been
running it with me from the beginning, and we announced

(47:06):
that we were going to be an initiative that worked
to end retaliation against survivors in the entertainment industry, and
we very quickly became a place where we could educate
about things that were still happening within the entertainment industry
that we're abusive to draw positive attention to survivors, so
we do a Survivors Shout Out Sunday every week where
we talk about people in their work and to create

(47:28):
opportunities for employment for survivors, and we've developed this toolkit
which is on our website. It's also part of the
Reframe resource. We have consulted on many film projects and
gotten lots of survivors work both on camera and behind
the camera, and we are working to expand we're very
close to getting fiscal sponsorship, so we should be able

(47:48):
to start taking money in finally and getting donations and
sort of feeding our programs that way. But we have
given media training to survivors. We've talked to organizations with
an interne in an industry like the Casting Society of
America and try to encourage people like casting directors are
so important and hold so much power, and it can
be really positive power. So we're just really trying to

(48:10):
reshape things from the ground up. And not every project
has the same needs. So there could be a small
film that has filled all of their crew but has
a few roles left to cast and they'd like to
make sure they open the door to survivors and we
can help with that. Or we can help when somebody's
just starting to write a script and maybe it has
to do as survivors, but they are not really well
versed in that. We can find them a consultant, we

(48:32):
can find them a co writer. There's all sorts of
things that we can provide, but the focus is on
equity and safety and inclusion, and our particular focus as
sexual violence survivors. But we believe the work bleeds out
into everything in our industry and will make it easier
for all historically marginalized people to be safe and to
be included. And I think it all stems from the

(48:53):
same thing, which is this concentration and abuse of power,
and if we can do our part to address that,
I think we can help make things more pleasant for
everybody who's trying to do this work. It's fantastic it's
such an important anti oppressive approach within the entertainment industry
because this is often an unseen group, right, there's not

(49:14):
group membership in the way we would traditionally consider other
marginalized groups, ethnic minority group members You know, it's something
that people it will cross cut, will be a cost
people of all ethnicities, all of you know, certainly in
the LGBTQ community, only this. We had spoken to someone
on our podcast who talked about this kind of behavior
within the modeling industry. I mean, it's really that you

(49:38):
see this as something where this is a group that
has not often been considered in conversations unequity, and yet
it changes a person to be a sexual abuse survivor,
changes something, and it changes how a person shows up professionally,
and so there's a profundity to really addressing there's oppressive

(49:59):
corner of the industry in a way that helps people
who really feel unsafe to feel safe and to actually
try or even try again. You said, for people who
might have said I can't do this anymore, this doesn't
feel safe. So I think it's really amazing And what's
so inspiring about your stories years of no auditions and
years of being pulled out of the industry that you

(50:21):
literally entered. I mean, adolescence to me is still a
kid when you're still a kid. Yeah, you're starting to
work again, and I've watched she said, and I kind
of had my star sighting moment. I'm like, I'm going
to talk to her so very special in my living
room when I saw you, because I really really loved
the film for you personally, Sarah Anne, what has the
experience been like for you of starting to work in

(50:44):
the industry again and especially with the success if she said,
thank you. First of all, I think, she said, is
such a beautiful film, and I'm very picky about films
that depict survivors of sexual violence. And I felt really
confident in this one, and it's such a great team.
It's meant the world to me to be able to
be part of. She said. I felt like to be
able to finally have my first feature debut in something

(51:06):
that's so personally meaningful to me, and to get to
play this incredible woman Emily Steele, who's this pulit surprise
winning journalist who helped break the story open about Bill O'Reilly.
It felt like a full circle moment. It felt like
I was reclaiming some of my power and getting some
poetic justice. And I never stopped creating. I make my
own work. I was never going to completely give up
on this, but to get the validation of having these

(51:28):
extremely skilled professionals, numerius raiders and incredible director Deety Gardners,
one of the most well respected producers in the industry,
Francine Maisler's one of the best casting directors it's ever existed.
And they don't just give parts to people because it's
a nice thing to do. You know. It's a big
budget film, high stakes, and I earned my way into it,
but I got the opportunity because they were cognizant of

(51:50):
the inequities that are happening. And it felt wonderful and
it's been really fun. It's like I'm the happiest I
ever am when I'm getting to act on set. I
feel at home, I feel at pee, I feel like
I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing. But you know,
I'm still not really getting auditions, and I don't know
when my next job is coming, and it is that
constant struggle for all of us. But it definitely is

(52:11):
in the back of my head that Okay, this wonderful
thing has happened, this great film has happened. I know
people know that I can do this. Now I have
to make sure that the next job does come in,
not just for me, but for all the people in
my community that I'm trying to help. And that's why
I will keep working at this thing of higher survivors
for as long as it needs to be there, because
we can't take our eye off the ball or else

(52:32):
it's just going to be easy to ignore folks. I
guess again, And you mentioned survivors are a very diverse
group of people. There's a lot of multiply marginalized people
who are survivors. I myself, I'm disabled, I'm queer, but
I'm also white, and it's very important to me that
our organization does not fall into the traps of white
feminism and that we have a really diverse group of

(52:54):
people sharing their thoughts so that they catch me out
if I'm missing something, and I think that's essential. And
several other people I know. Pamela Guest is another great
advocate and survivor and actor who's pushing for a recognition
of survivors as a protected class, and several states do
recognize survivors of sexual violence, stalking, and domestic violence as

(53:15):
a protected class. The EOC does, so we need to
catch up with that. Historically, there's been a really poor
understanding of disabled people as being part of the conversation
COURTEI as well, So I'm really passionate about making sure
people are aware of I mean, a quarter of the
population is disabled. A lot of them are invisibly disabled,
like I am. And it's similar with sexual violence survivors.

(53:38):
One in four women, I believe one in six men,
and we know that those numbers are likely much higher
than reported. It's a huge proportion of our society that
has experienced this, and we have to be aware of
the challenges that face this community. Absolutely, and I think
that you know, I'm glad you're bringing up the issue
of people who are differently abled, because within that are
people who are also living with mental health issues. People

(54:00):
are speaking out about it, but they're not. I actually
think we're in an interesting inversion moment where a lot
of people are speaking about it openly, but a lot
more people aren't, and that people think doors are open,
but there's actually sort of like it's very tricky glass
that you actually can walk through. So I'm so glad
you're bringing up all of those dimensions of what defines
these traditionally underrepresented groups. Another question that hit me is

(54:24):
as you made she said, as a survivor of that experience,
of that moment of Harvey Weinstein's abuse, what was it
like for you psychologically to be an artist within a
project that was actually also capturing the story of your
real life pain. It was for me extremely empowering. Like

(54:45):
I said, I got to read the script once I
accepted the role, I got to read the whole script,
so I knew that, yes, this is the story of
these journalists, but it also very much gives focus to
several of the women who decided to go on the
record and the challenges of that, the fears that go
along with making yourself so vulnerable and sharing this part
of your story. And so I knew I was getting

(55:06):
to participate in a film that I felt ethically aligned
with and that I felt was a really good way
to tell this story again in a way that would
hit people in a different facet. You hit them in
their hearts and hit them so it really humanized the experience,
and it didn't ever sensationalize the sexual violence. It didn't
show it on screen, which I really appreciated. And I
got to play a character who reveals to one of

(55:29):
the journalists who's investigating Harvey that one of their sources,
Lisa Bloom, who is the lawyer's actually working with Harvey
and it's actually working against survivors. And Lisa Bloom is
someone who I've always had a huge amount of end
tipathy for and resentment towards, and to get to play
a character or sort of calling her out felt very
empowering to me and fun to get to do that.

(55:50):
It's like, we're not just talking about Harvey, we are
talking about the systems around him and the people who
were complicit. And I think that's a really important part
of it. It is a huge part of it, and
I think that systemic complicity is a part of even
this conversation we talk about in terms of unacceptable behavior within,
not on the individual relationships with systemic relationships. The focus

(56:10):
of this podcast is that recognition of complicity, and it
also becomes a personal responsibility for anyone to ask themselves
as I walk into a system, as I recognize what's happening,
how can I be sure to check in with myself.
I mean, these are all really complicated conversations, but I
do think that the entire movement that came of this
of recognition of these issues. It was absolutely an issue

(56:34):
of gender, but it was also an issue of oppression,
and of course, from my seat, I also thought it
was an issue of narcissism. So I think that all
of those things were playing a role. We will be
right back with this conversation with Sarah. So, Sarah, I'd
like to shift now to in recent years and even

(56:56):
in recent months, how did you feel after Weinstein was
convicted and sentenced. It's very complicated. I think I felt
relief because it was a form of justice, and I
had a civil legal battle with Weinstein that lasted about
four and a half years, and I was one of

(57:17):
the only remaining people in this civil suit because I
fell under federal sex trafficking laws, so the statute of
limitation hadn't passed. The judge was really difficult and very regressive,
and it cost survivors a lot in that fight, and
me and the two other women who were left in
this case ended up fighting to create a victim's fund
out of the bankruptcy, and that was a very complicated

(57:40):
legal situation. So I know from my own personal experience
on the civil side how scary this all is. You know,
unless you've been through it, things like discovery, getting your
computer and your phone taken, preparing for depositions, knowing that
you're going to have to be in the same room
with your abuser again, it is terrifying. And so for
all the women who agreed to participate in these criminal cases,

(58:02):
I owe them so much respect and so much gratitude.
But also knowing that not everybody who wanted to be
able to bring forward a criminal case was able to.
I think it's important that working within the system that
we have, seeing that occasionally it does work to serve
justice is really important. And it's not perfect justice, and
it's certainly not comprehensive. But I believe he's in a

(58:24):
place now where he can't physically hurt people anymore, and
I think that's important. But I also think it's important
to watch people who are so powerful have to be
held accountable and it doesn't always happen. We saw what
happened with will Cosby. Danny Masterson luckily is going to
be retried Kevin Spacey got off the hook in New York.
I have hopes for the UK, but there are powerful

(58:47):
abusers who get a pass, and then occasionally there are
powerful abusers who are held accountable, And I hope it's
been healing for survivors to see that, whether they're survivors
of Weinstein himself or whether they're survivors of other abusers.
I hope at least seeing somebody occasionally found guilty and
having to serve time bring them some sense of peace

(59:07):
and a sense that there can be progress made on
all of this. Thank you for sharing that you're bringing
up such a complicated issue for survivors, which is this
issue of justice. Right, it seems many times in these
cases to be more the exception and the rule. We
know that prosecution of sexual assault cases, it's the least
likely that those cases will be tried and adjudicated and

(59:30):
prosecuted and sentenced in a manner that actually does leave
survivors feeling whole. Listen, we can even look at the
Jeffrey Epstein case. They actually let him go so he
could then go reperpetrate for years. I mean, so, even
when it does go through the system, it's often a
miscarriage of justice and one of the most complicated issues
for survivors of any form of abuse. I think it's

(59:51):
really magnified and survivors of sexual assault is that lack
of justice. Even the way the system is set up,
As you said, these procedures are almost designed to retraumatize. Yeah,
I have a huge amount of understanding and empathy for that.
It's why I keep going back to this as the
system we have to work within. So I guess there's

(01:00:13):
a generally positive feeling and when I feel like the
system is working, whatever that means, because I do think
the system is set up to work in a way
that is often against the survivors. But you know, it
doesn't fix everything. It doesn't take away my pain, it
doesn't take away the repercussions of what have happened. But
I do feel safer knowing he can't cause physical harm.

(01:00:34):
So it is as you say, it's very complicated. Even
when it is your abuser, Even when there is this
supposed justice being served, it doesn't feel like a complete
there's the period on the sentence, Now we can move on. No,
And I think that that's often the mistake too, is
that survivors would be told, let's say the case was
adjudicated in a manner that the person was found guilty,

(01:00:55):
they are facing a sentence, and then there's the arrogance
of turning to the survivrans there now you must be fine,
and I'm saying, oh, no, no, no. We see such
a range of reaction from some survivors saying I should
feel fine, and I don't. What's wrong with me? So
there can be self blame. In some cases, there may
even be guilt. I mean, it's a very very complicated

(01:01:19):
series of reactions. And so this idea of it being
a punctuation mark at vest it's a semicolon that where like,
there's a whole hell of a lot of thoughts still
happening after that moment, and of healing, And I think
that the healing goes off in different directions depending on
where the case winds up. But many times, the only
reason these cases ended up in situations where there was

(01:01:43):
a guilty verdict delivered was that these survivors literally had
to put their souls and psyches on the line in
a courtroom to face their worst fears, to live in
a nightmarish state for months and years at a time.
Absolutely absolutely. I mean I've read what's happened to some
of the women who have taken the stand in both
in New York and California in this case, in many

(01:02:04):
other cases, and it is shocking. I think lawyers who
engage in those victim blaming tactics should be disbarred. There's
no basis in fact or legalitying what they're doing, and
it is deeply retraumatizing. That's why I said, like the
bravery and what we owe the people who do agree
to put themselves through that is immense because it is

(01:02:24):
not easy and it is not set up to be
at all trauma informed. Whatever. The opposite of trauma informed
is how our justice system works. To be honest with you, really,
so for you personally, Sarah, And what are you hoping
for for your future in the entertainment industry. I just
want to work, you know. I just want to be
hired to act in other people's projects that I want

(01:02:47):
to make my projects that I'm writing, and I want
to bring along talented people with me as I succeed,
and I want to model what I'm trying to get
the rest of the industry to do in my hiring
practices and in my culture of my sets, and I
won't ever stop doing it. Nobody's ever going to get

(01:03:07):
me to stop, even if everybody says no and stop scalling.
I can make my own work, But I do. I
have some exciting projects coming up in the future, and
I hope that they are really successful. One that I'd
like to mention is actually a musical called The Right Girl,
and the writer of the script is a fellow Weinstein
survivor named Blue is at Geiss and the music is

(01:03:27):
all by Diane Warren, and they have brought in a
bunch of survivors as story contributors who get to financially
benefit once the show opens and recoups. And I'm luckily
enough to also be an actor in that project. And
it goes back to my first love of musical theater.
And so that's really great. And it's just a project
that I help people get really excited by. And you know,
there's good stuff being made and there are good people

(01:03:48):
still working in this industry, and it's just about saying
yes to the right thing instead of saying yes to
the familiar thing sometimes. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that.
First of all, congratulations. You have to tell us where
we can find the right girl, because I would love
to see it, hopefully soon. Oh yeah, well, there you go.
That's all the reasons in New York and that's see.
It would be wonderful. So I had read an interesting

(01:04:11):
article recently in the La Times, and seeing more of this,
I'm beginning to see the willingness to start telling more
nuanced tales of women that aren't just informed by hegemonic
representations of women, but are actually represented by again very subtle,
layered representations of women. Because of invalidating, manipulative and done

(01:04:32):
right abusive relationships, We've lost so much voice in our world,
people who believe that their voices weren't worthy of being heard.
And if nothing else to me, making awareness of these
things means we're going to hear a much larger and
more diverse chorus of voices with often really lyrically beautiful stories,
because despite these wounds they carry, it's through that suffering

(01:04:54):
that we actually often get far more beautiful art in
all of its forms. So that's my hope. What comes
out of that? Where can people find you and connect
with you in your organization? I'm really easy to find
on social media, it's just my full name, Sarah and
Massy Sarah with an H and with no E, and
then Higher Survivors Hollywood is Higher Survivors on Twitter, Hire

(01:05:17):
Survivors Hollywood on Instagram, and our website is Hire Survivors
Hollywood dot org. Okay, all right, great, yeah, and we'll
have that in our show notes as well so people
can find you. So thank you so much. And now
as my final thought, I'd like to ask you what
is the piece of advice you would give to a
survivor of an abusive relationship. My advice is always try

(01:05:41):
to remember that nothing that happened to is your fault,
and find a way to share your story that feels safe,
and never feel pressured to do it in a way
that doesn't. So I think, especially after Me Too became
very mainstream, after Toronto Burkes decade of tireless Work, there
was a sense that was a requirement for survivors to

(01:06:02):
tell their stories in this public way. Yeah, and I
think it's really important that we don't push that because
one of the things we lose is our autonomy and
our voice as survivors. And if we are going to
choose to share this extremely vulnerable, impactful thing that happened
to us. We have to do it in a way
that feels right and safe. So sometimes it's telling a therapist,

(01:06:22):
sometimes it's telling a trusted friend or family member. Sometimes
it's writing it in your journal, and sometimes it's shouting
it to the world through the media or social media.
But whatever it is, make sure it feels like what
you're ready to do and what feels right for you.
And again, thank you, Sarah, and I am just actually
awestruck by what you're doing and higher survivors Hollywood. I
think it's just amazing. I wish this actually existed in

(01:06:44):
some way, shape or form in almost every industry, and
yours might be the model program that's certainly there betweaks
for other industries, but it's needed. And this was not
a yeah yeah, this was not an easy industry to
do it in, and yet you did it. And so
I again, as I've always held for survivorship, that the
things that come out of our pain are often the

(01:07:06):
most beautiful things of all. Thank you again, Sarah Anne
for your beautiful story of survival. Our audience needs to
hear this, and I'm very, very grateful to you for
your attention today. Thank you, thank you, thank you much
for having me here. Yeah. In my first takeaway, once again,
Sarah Anne's story, like so many others, reminds us of

(01:07:28):
the importance of having one validating person to talk to
after the experience of trauma. Sarah Anne shared that she
talked with her mother immediately after her assault and how
that did ground her. Many, if not most, trauma survivors
either do not have that person or may feel so
frozen in fear or shame that they do not know

(01:07:51):
who to tell. Especially in cases of sexual assault, many
trauma survivors blame themselves. If you have experienced sexual assault
and want to confidentially talk with someone, please go to
RAIN dot org, r ai NN dot org, or called
the National Sexual Assault Hotline at eight hundred six five

(01:08:15):
six Hope Hope, which is eight hundred six five six
four six seven three for our next takeaway, There is
a danger in viewing trauma or assault as a single
episode in a person's life. It simplifies the process to
the world and misses the far reaching impact on the

(01:08:36):
survivor's life. Trauma disrupts a life. It can interrupt social
and emotional development, as well as professional development. Trauma survivors
feel they lose time as they process what happens to them,
and in many cases, as we saw for Sarah Ann,
they lose opportunities. Not only does time freeze and distort

(01:09:00):
the traumatic experience itself, this same time distortion happens for
the survivors. There is a risk that the world at
large looks at trauma survivors and wonders how one day
or one experience can be so disruptive. It can because
it changes how a survivor perceives the world. And Sarah

(01:09:21):
Ann's story captures that of millions of trauma survivors and
is a call out for all of us to keep
talking about sexual trauma, as well as for more empathy, understanding,
and awareness from schools, industries, justice systems, and the world
at large. In this next takeaway, can perpetrating behavior change

(01:09:47):
without consequences? I don't think so. No, will it change
even if there are consequences? That depends. The conversation often
drifts to how can we stop the perpetrators. It's all
but impossible to do that after they've been emboldened, and
we have seen that story of people looking the other
way and the absence of consequences in so many of

(01:10:11):
these public stories for so many years. Sarah Ann's and
the experience of so many people, and not only the
entertainment industry, but in a variety of industries ranging from
domestic workers to actors to any job out there, is
that survivors are often not heard and are often re
traumatized by processes like interrogation, silencing, shaming, smear campaigns, and

(01:10:37):
the trauma of procedures that require people to face their
perpetrator in court. It is no wonder that many people
do not feel safe pursuing charges and complaints, which results
in emboldening perpetrators. Further, the systems must change and must
be informed by trauma based science and practice. In our

(01:11:02):
next takeaway, there are many things that can make certain
industries more likely to foster abuse. Sarah Anne was speaking
about a specific industry, the entertainment industry, which has historically
had a poor track record of emboldening abusers. It's an
industry where there's a high bar for entry, in which

(01:11:24):
many people who often have far less social power or status,
and they're young, they don't have resources that they're attempting
to get into. There are also issues in how people
are paid for work, with most people working shorter term
stints and having to find new work all the time,
which can result in less protection or even spotting of

(01:11:45):
patterns since jobs and people are constantly in flux, which
makes them more vulnerable. She also highlights other industries, namely
people who do domestic work, who are also often less empowered,
hold less status, and do not have health and safety protections,
and also vulnerable to workplace harm. And again this is

(01:12:08):
mirrored in service professions like restaurant servers hotel employees. But
these public cases of large scale abuse should not just
serve as salacious entertainment. We must learn from this and
create the reforms and accountability that are needed to protect

(01:12:28):
people from trauma and abuses that can affect them for
lifetimes now. Lastly, healing is a thousand small things that
survivors do that can sometimes culminate in a big thing.
Sarah Ann's focus on creating safer spaces for sexual assault
survivors in Hollywood culminated in Higher Survivors Hollywood, but she

(01:12:52):
shared that sometimes it was small and hopeful acts like
calling the switchboard at a major studio, that culminates in
not only a meeting but an audition. So many things
may institutionally be taken away from people who are harmed
and betrayed by large organizations, and it can feel hopeless

(01:13:13):
for people in these systems to do anything. But it
is the small things and the willingness of survivors to
give themselves permission to do these things that can change
the world. This can include reflecting on what it is
survivors need, what could help others in this kind of
a situation, how to create greater safety in their communities

(01:13:35):
or workplaces, and doing the small things that can get there.
Trauma can rob people of a sense of agency or
the idea that anything you do actually matters. And my
hope is that Sarah Ann's story, despite the terrible economic
and professional impact her experiences have had on her, including

(01:13:55):
losing work and auditions, is a reminder that he means
persisting in even the smallest waste. Thank you everyone for
tuning in and make sure to rate and share this
show and subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me
on Instagram at doctor Rominey and we'll see you next
week for another episode of Navigating Narcissism.

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Dr. Ramini Durvasula

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Tormented by Harvey Weinstein and Survived to Tell About It with Sarah Ann Masse