Harvey Weinstein Denies Rose McGowan Sexual Assault Claims

Harvey Weinstein‘s lawyer released a statement on Tuesday, January 30, denying Rose McGowan‘s claims that the Hollywood producer sexually assaulted her.

“As a general matter, Harvey Weinstein and his attorneys have refrained from publicly criticizing any of the women who have made allegations of sexual assault against Mr. Weinstein despite a wealth of evidence that would demonstrate the patent falsity of these claims,” the producer’s attorney, Ben Brafman, told Us Weekly in a statement. “Watching the ‘performance’ by Rose McGowan as she looks to promote her new book however, has made it impossible to remain quiet as she tries to smear Mr. Weinstein with a bold lie that is denied not only by Mr. Weinstein himself, but by at least two witnesses, including Ms. McGowan’s own Manager at the time who Ms. McGowan claims to have confided in the day after the alleged assault and an A-list actor Ben Affleck who Ms. McGowan claims to have also told about her encounter with Mr. Weinstein shortly after the incident she now describes as ‘rape,’ but which in 1997 she described to her Manager as a ‘consensual’ act of sex.”

As previously reported, the former Hollywood studio head was fired by his own company in October 2017, after several women came forward, in the wake of a New York Times expose detailing more than three decades of sexual misconduct, to claim Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them.

He said in a statement last year that the sexual encounters were consensual. Weinstein subsequently sought treatment in Arizona after his wife, Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman, announced she was leaving him amid the sex scandal.

The former Charmed star was one of the women named in the Times story as Weinstein’s victim and the newspaper reported that she was paid a $100,000 settlement by the producer. She spoke out about her encounter with Weinstein on Twitter and in interviews and details her allegations against him in her new book, Brave.

Referring to him only as “the monster,” McGowan claims that Weinstein lured her to his Park City, Utah, hotel room in 1997 under the guise of the meeting. She wrote that after they talked, he pushed her into the bathroom and pulled her clothes off, performing oral sex on her while he pleasured himself.

Afterward, she wrote about going to a photo shoot with her Phantoms costar Affleck. Seeing that she was shaken and hearing that she’d just been in Weinstein’s hotel room, McGowan claims the Oscar winner told her, “Goddamn it. I told him to stop doing that.” Affleck denied knowing about Weinstein’s behavior after the Times story broke last year.

Weinstein’s lawyer included quotes from McGowan’s then-manager Jill Messick and Affleck in his statement on Tuesday.

“In an email to Mr. Weinstein regarding the encounter, Jill Messick says the following, ‘When we met up the following day, she hesitantly told me of her own accord that during the meeting that night before she had gotten into a hot tub with Mr. Weinstein. She was very clear about the fact that getting into that hot tub was something that she did consensually and that in hindsight it was also something that she regretted having done,'” Brafman wrote, adding that Affleck “expressed the following in an email to Mr. Weinstein, ‘She never told me nor did I ever infer that she was attacked by anyone. Any accounts to the contrary are false. I have no knowledge about anything Rose did or claimed to have done.'”

McGowan responded to the Weinstein’s denial via Twitter on Tuesday, writing, “I’m going to step on your fat neck for all time #HarveyWeinstein. I WILL SAY YOUR NAME. It is you whi did this to us. THIEF! And to all of you scoundrels aiding predators you are damned for the hurt you’ve caused. We reject your social lies. Name it. Shame it. Call it out. #CitizenRose.”