It seems like the stories being poured out one after the other just seem to be getting worse and worse about Harvey Weinstein. Women after women have come out with their appalling encounters with the ogre-ish Hollywood media mogul.
I think what shocked everyone is how long this had been going on for. Weinstein had been luring unaware females into his private chambers for "massages" for decades. Top executives even knew these illicit affairs were going on and chose not to do anything. There were even cases where the victim reported the harassment only for her claims to get shut down in order to prevent damage to Weinstein's career.
This is absolutely disgusting. The fact that this cover-up was able to last decades with barely a peep attests to the fact that Hollywood has a serious problem concerning people in high positions. Reese Witherspoon stated that she felt the most comfortable talking about her experience ever because of the load of women coming out and sharing their stories about Weinstein.
It seems now that it was widely known in the entertainment industry that Weinstein was a sexual predator and had problems. It was often joked about by several people in the past. It's shocking and sad to me that everyone knew this about this issue but it took decades for something to be done about it.
The bystander effect is a real psychological phenomenon that is proven by the Weinstein case. The bystander effect states that people refrain from stepping in to help someone because of pressure from others standing around doing nothing and the thought that someone else will step in and help. This was clearly evident in the Weinstein case where potentially thousands of people knew about what he was up to and refrained from calling him out and doing anything.
Anyone can experience sexual abuse and trauma and we need to make sure that the victims are heard and get help.
We cannot let more Weinsteins loose into society.
We cannot lead people to believe that you can sexually abuse women for decades with no repercussions, we cannot refrain from helping victims of sexual assault.
