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Reese Witherspoon and Martha Stewart Reveal They Were Both Sexually Assaulted at Age 16
Two more stars have come forward to reveal they were sexually assaulted earlier in their careers amid Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct scandal. Both Reese Witherspoon and Martha Stewart candidly spoke out about being sexually assaulted and sexually harassed, respectively, while working in showbiz at age 16. "This has been a really hard week for women in Hollywood, for women all over the world, and a lot of situations and a lot of industries are forced to remember and relive a lot of ugly truths," Reese, 41, said at a Beverly Hills event on Monday, Oct. 16, according to People.
"I have my own experiences that have come back to me very vividly and I find it really hard to sleep, hard to think, hard to communicate a lot of the feelings that I’ve been having about anxiety, honest, the guilt for not speaking up earlier," she continued. "[I feel] true disgust at the director who assaulted me when I was 16 years old and anger at the agents and the producers who made me feel that silence was a condition of my employment… I wish that I could tell you that was an isolated incident in my career, but sadly it wasn’t. I’ve had multiple experiences of harassment and sexual assault and I don’t speak about them very often."
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Martha, 76, similarly revealed she was sexually harassed while working as a model at age 16 in the late 1950s. "I was asked to wear a bikini under my clothes. I thought, 'Oh, maybe we’re doing a beach commercial or something.' So I go into the room and there’s a table with all men sitting around it and it’s an advertisement agency, I can’t remember which one it was. They said, 'Now you can take your clothes off,' and I said, 'Oh, is this where are we doing the commercial? Are we wearing bikinis in the commercial.' They said, 'No, but as long as you’re here we might as well see what you look like.' I thought that was harassment of the first order," she told People on Monday, Oct. 16.
"I just walked out of the room. I said, 'I’m sorry, gentleman. This is not what I’m here for.' And I left. That’s harassment, but there are other kinds of harassment," the lifestyle guru continued. "Encouraging your children that they can do anything they want is good to reinforce their own sense of self and self-worth. I think that’s terribly important. I think women just have to understand that you can say no. You can walk out of a room. It might hurt your career [but] you’ll find something better somewhere else," Martha continued.
