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

a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy 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 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.

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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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, 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 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

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, 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

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

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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

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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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.

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.

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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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, 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

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

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

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 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 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. 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 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, 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

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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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.