Reese Witherspoon has spoken out about sexual assault in Hollywood – and confessed that she was assaulted by a director when she was just 16 years old.
The 41-year-old went into the topic of assault and how women are mistreated in Hollywood during her speech at the Elle Women in Hollywood event on Monday night, amid the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
“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,” she began.
The actress went on to discuss her own experience and how it affected her growing up.
“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.”
“[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,” she added.
“And 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.”
Reese went on to say that she has spoken to fellow Hollywood stars about their own assault, and how they have become public about their experience.
“I have just spoken to so many actresses and writers, particularly women, who have had similar experiences and many of them have bravely gone public with their stories. That truth is very encouraging to me and everyone out there in the world because you can only heal by telling the truth.”
Reese’s speech comes after disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was fired from the company he co-founded, after several women made allegations of sexual misconduct against him, which were published in The New York Times.
Women including Cara Delevingne, Ashley Judd, and Angelina Jolie and many more have since come forward with their own stories about Harvey.
