Rose McGowan has filed a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein and two of his former lawyers, claiming that they attempted to silence her and ruin her career before she accused him of rape.
According to the lawsuit, Weinstein and his former lawyers David Boies and Lisa Bloom attempted to defraud, smear and marginalize McGowan before she was about to come out with her rape accusations against the former movie mogul in late 2017.
“Harvey Weinstein was able to perpetrate and cover up decades of violence and control over women because he had a sophisticated team working on his behalf to systematically silence and discredit his victims,” McGowan said in a statement. “My life was upended by their actions, and I refuse to be intimidated any longer.”
McGowan began tweeting in 2017 that she was going to name her rapist in a forthcoming memoir. The suit claims that the defendants used spies posing as women’s rights advocates and journalists to get a copy of the memoir and illegally recorded her conversations, which damaged her reputation in the entertainment industry.
“Weinstein enlisted others — including his co-Defendants in this case — as co-conspirators, all working with a single mission: to protect Weinstein’s reputation, suppress negative information about him, and silence and discredit his accusers,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
“McGowan has suffered tremendously from Defendants’ conspiracy and lies,” the suit states.” Her book sales suffered; her expenses mounted; her job opportunities vanished; and her emotional health cratered. She has experienced trauma and depression from [the] defendants’ actions, and the deep betrayal will have life-long effects.”
Weinstein has denied McGowan’s allegations of nonconsensual sex and his attorney Phyllis Kupferstein said McGowan is “a publicity seeker looking for money.”
“From the moment she sought a $6 million dollar payout in return for not making these baseless allegations, which we rejected at the time, we knew that she was waiting for an opportune time such as this to begin her suit,” Kupferstein said.