Rose McGowan Celebrates ‘Huge Victory’ After Harvey Weinstein Verdict: ‘One Less Serial Predator On the Streets’
Actress and #MeToo activist Rose McGowan called the guilty verdicts against convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein “a huge victory,” during an interview on Good Morning Britain, Tuesday, because most rape victims “never get any kind of measure of justice.”
“This is a huge victory for all of us who have ever been hurt,” declared McGowan, before describing it as “a huge moment.”
“I have to honestly say I thought he was going to be exonerated,” she continued. “I never really had hope, you see, and I realized that the other day when someone asked me, ‘Do you have hope that he’ll be found guilty?’ and I realized the last time I actually had hope was the moment before I was raped by him, and after that it became survival, and after that it became this battle and a huge war.”
“This is an unbelievable achievement, just to simply have a woman who has been raped by somebody be in a court pointing at their accuser, saying, ‘You did this to me.’ That is a privilege because that is incredibly rare,” McGowan said, noting, “There’s a two percent conviction rate in almost all rapes, and that’s an astounding number of people who walk free and an astounding number of victims that never get any kind of measure of justice, so I found that we were winning just by even having it in the court. That’s how little we’ve been taught to expect.”
McGowan also said she was kept in constant fear for speaking up, claiming, “I was sitting at home and I was thinking I should do the laundry, and then I thought, ‘Oh, I wonder if gets convicted if he’ll hire a hit man to kill me. Oh, I wonder what I want for dinner.'”
“These are just casual thoughts in my life, and that’s what’s so wrong and sick,” she explained.
After being asked if it would be “enough” if Weinstein got 29 years in prison, McGowan replied, “Yes.”
“For me personally, I would just rather he cease to exist. I think the world would be better off,” she concluded. “But I’m happy there is one less serial predator on the streets because I can tell you that people would not be safe if he were out. And it’s going to have to be enough. For most of us, this is more justice than most will ever see, so it’s an incredible moment.”
Weinstein, who was one of the most powerful Hollywood producers before #MeToo, was found guilty of rape in the third degree and a criminal sexual act in the first degree, Monday.
