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'One Tree Hill' Cast and Crew Members Detail Allegations of Sexual Misconduct by Showrunner Mark Schwahn


Less than a week after One Tree Hill‘s cast and crew wrote a powerful letter accusing showrunner Mark Schwahn of sexual harassment, one of the show’s lead actresses has expanded on the allegations against him. Hilarie Burton, who played lead character Peyton Sawyer, detailed her allegations against Schwahn in an interview published Friday by Variety.

She alleged to Variety that Schwahn kissed her twice against her will and once slid his hand into the back of her pants while his wife was present. Burton also elaborated on Schwahn’s behavior on set: She says that Schwahn began grooming her by letting her attend production meetings and “pushing her character to the forefront.” Meanwhile, she says that she fought him about her character becoming unnecessarily sexualized, and that he would pit the women of the show against each other, pushing them into Burton’s orbit by encouraging offset friendships and then lying about physical relationships he said he was having with the show’s actresses, particularly with Danneel Ackles.

Burton alleges that in one of the instances of Schwahn forcing himself on her, he began making out with her in a limo from Raleigh to Wilmington after a show-related trip they’d taken together—while Schwahn was on the phone with the CW’s president, Dawn Ostroff, persuading her to let One Tree Hill stay on the air for a fifth season.

“I’m leaning in listening, and when it’s Dawn Ostroff’s turn to talk, he just leans over and starts kissing me,” Burton told Variety. “I push him off, but I can’t say anything, because he’s on the phone fighting for our show to stay on the air. I’m just in this position where I’m thinking, ‘You’ve got to take it, Hil. Just laugh it off. You’ll get to Wilmington in 45 minutes.'” After they got back to the set, Schwahn allegedly told Ackles (and, later, another actress) he and Burton had made out; Ackles promptly called Burton, who detailed what happened.

She detailed other allegations of misconduct as well, like an invitation to a swinger-type meet-up (he got “pretty angry” when she stood him up), and him kissing her for a second time in front of “everybody” when the cast and crew met up a bar. Ackles and Burton both recounted a time when, after unsuccessfully trying to get into Ackles’ hotel room, he allegedly went to Burton’s, complaining Ackles wouldn’t open her door to him.

Burton confronted him about his alleged behavior when they were shooting season four’s finale. She says Schwahn began rubbing her shoulders and back, and that’s when she went off. “You gotta stop,” Burton told Variety she said. “Mark, I’m telling you, as your friend, your wife is going to hear about this shit. You’re going to lose your job. You can’t touch the girls anymore.”

What happened next sounds terrifying: He grew angry because she’d confronted him in front of others. He later had her come to his office and “screamed at her for half an hour.” “I know exactly what this man’s hands look like, and they are my fucking nightmare,” she told Variety. “I think of hands when I think of him, because they were relentless.”

Burton left the show when her contract ran out a the end of season six, despite an offer of a raise from Warner Bros. She said she didn’t want to be viewed as “a problem” by the studio and wanted to work for them again—hence why she didn’t speak up at the time. She says that ultimately working with Schwahn has been detrimental to her career: It indirectly caused her to be dropped by her agent and led to missed acting opportunities,

Other allegations were made by different cast and crew members to Variety. An unnamed actress said that he touched her inappropriately when she approached him with a professional question and that, later, when she approached him about touching other female cast members, he also got angry and “threatened her job.”

A writer on the show that spoke to Variety, Michelle Furtney-Goodman, recalled an incident that involved Schwahn allegedly pulling her head between her knees, saying that “the back of my head was so flat and that I was the perfect woman, because I could give a guy a blowjob and he could rest his drink on the back of my head,” she told Variety. She alleges he set a soda can on her head to illustrate his point—all in front of the show’s other writers. She felt obligated to compose herself and go back to work: “I was scared that if I said anything [to Warner Bros.], I would never work in this town again,” she said.

A former male writer on the show, James Stoteraux, wasn’t immune to Schwahn’s toxic workplace culture, either. He says the showrunner gave him a T-shirt for Christmas that said, “I’m not a gynecologist, but I’ll take a look.” He said he was “relieved” to leave the “toxic, demoralizing workplace” after writing for the second and third seasons of the show.

Schwahn is currently suspended from his position as showrunner for another CW show, The Royals.

Related Stories:
–The ‘One Tree Hill’ Cast and Crew Accuse Showrunner of Sexual Harassment in Powerful Letter
–11 Little Things From One Tree Hill You Never Noticed Were Truly Terrible for Women
–Hilarie Burton Reveals the Emotional Reason Why She and Sophia Bush Will Always Be Friends



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Trending Hashtag #MeAt14 Highlights How Disturbing the Roy Moore Allegations Are


On Thursday, the Washington Post reported allegations that Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate from Alabama, had initiated a sexual encounter with an Alabama woman when she was 14 and he was 32. Three other women, then between the ages of 16 and 18, also say that Moore pursued them.

In response, the hashtag #MeAt14 began to trend on Twitter, popularized by comedian Lizz Winstead. As part of the movement, women are posting pictures of themselves at 14 as a way of emphasizing why it’s inappropriate for a young teenager—still a child—to have a sexual relationship with a man in his 30s. The photos and captions seem to emphasize the innocence of childhood and highlight that, at that age, teens are unable to consent to a relationship with an adult or encounters like the ones Moore allegedly attempted to carry out.

Moore has been elected twice and removed twice from the Alabama’s supreme court, both for ethical violations un-related to sexual misconduct. In his initial defense against the allegations, he denied even knowing the then-14-year-old and addressed the other three women: “With regard to the other girls, you understand this is 40 years ago and, after my return from the military, I dated a lot of young ladies,” adding that he didn’t “remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother.” Since the allegations broke, several fellow Republicans have distanced themselves from Moore.

On Saturday, a former co-worker of his told CNN it was “common knowledge that Roy dated high-school girls. We wondered why someone his age would hang out at high school football games and the mall, but you really wouldn’t say anything to someone like that.”

Many women—including Katie Couric and Alyssa Milano—have joined in the hashtag by posting photos of themselves accompanied by captions explaining what they were actually concerned about at 14. (Hint: Fighting off advances from adult men were not one of them.)

The hashtag, however, has also been met with some criticism, with some users saying the use of photos to illustrate the importance consent laws is misguided. “Making it about photos reinforces the wrong idea that child sexual assault is wrong only when children look like children,” wrote one user.

However, others replied, chiming in that that wasn’t really the point of using visuals in the hashtag:

Another critique holds that some tweets, including those that use the phrasing like “I was not dating a 32-year-old man,” can be seen as victim-blaming.

Regardless, the message behind #MeAt14 isn’t only about the photos; it’s about the captions that go with them, listing what young women were concerned about at that age: Get Smart re-runs, playing the French horn, Lord of the Rings discussion boards. The examples make it clear that 14 really is young—and that this hashtag should never have to exist in the first place.

Related Stories:
–A Second Woman Has Accused Ed Westwick of Sexual Assault
–Gabrielle Union Claps Back at Sexual Assault Victim Shamers
–10 Attorneys General On Why Betsy DeVos’ Sexual Assault Policies Could be Devastating





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Harvey Weinstein Hired Private Investigators to Keep Sexual Harassment Allegations Quiet


Following last month’s bombshell report documenting years of sexual harassment and assault allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein, The New Yorker just published yet another shocking investigation—this time, detailing the “army of the spies” Weinstein assembled to keep the accusations from going public.

As documented by reporter Ronan Farrow, starting in the fall of 2016, Weinstein began hiring private security agencies to secure information from the women who alleged abuse, as well as the journalists who were trying to uncover these stories.

“According to dozens of pages of documents, and seven people directly involved in the effort, the firms that Weinstein hired included Kroll, one of the world’s largest corporate intelligence companies, and Black Cube, an enterprise run largely by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies,” Farrow wrote. “Black Cube, which has branches in Tel Aviv, London, and Paris, offers its clients the skills of operatives ‘highly experienced and trained in Israel’s elite military and governmental intelligence units,’ according to its literature.”

One of the woman these operatives met with was Rose McGowan. A female investigator working on behalf of Black Cube posed as a women’s rights advocate and had repeated meetings with the actress, even telling her that she wanted to invest in her production company. The investigator was working to extract information from McGowan—who, following the original New Yorker report, publicly accused Weinstein of rape. Hours of conversations between the two women were recorded by the operative and after McGowan revealed that she had spoken to Farrow about his initial report, the investigator emailed Farrow as well (he did not respond to the message).

Beyond this, the agency hired reporters on behalf of Weinstein to obtain information from women who alleged that the producer had sexually assaulted them. Per the report:

“Black Cube also agreed to hire ‘an investigative journalist, as per the Client request,’ who would be required to conduct ten interviews a month for four months and be paid forty thousand dollars. In January, 2017, a freelance journalist called McGowan and had a lengthy conversation with her that he recorded without telling her; he subsequently communicated with Black Cube about the interviews, though he denied he was reporting back to them in a formal capacity. He contacted at least two other women with allegations against Weinstein, including the actress Annabella Sciorra, who later went public in The New Yorker with a rape allegation against Weinstein.”

The agency decline to comment on any work that was conducted for Weinstein. But they were not the only resource the producer reportedly used to collect information. Weinstein exchanged emails with Dylan Howard, the chief content officer of American Media Inc. (the company that publishes the National Enquirer), about personal information about McGowan that one of Howard’s reporters had collected in effort to discredit her. Weinstein also worked with Los Angeles-based firm PSOPS, whose investigators “produced detailed profiles of various individuals in the saga, sometimes of a personal nature, which included information that could be used to undermine their credibility.” This included detailed reporting on McGowan that included her “address and other personal information, along with sections labelled ‘Lies/Exaggerations/Contradictions,’ ‘Hypocrisy,’ and ‘Potential Negative Character Wits,’ an apparent abbreviation of ‘witnesses.'”

Weinstein consulted separate agencies to file similar reports on actress Patricia Arquette, another accuser, as well as journalists who were looking to publish reports on the allegations—include New York magazine’s editor in chief Adam Moss

A statement given to The New Yorker from Weinstein’s spokesperson Sallie Hofmeister read: “It is a fiction to suggest that any individuals were targeted or suppressed at any time.”

Related: These Are All the Women Who Have Accused Harvey Weinstein of Sexual Harassment and Assault



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Amber Tamblyn Thinks Trump's Victory Catalyzed the Harvey Weinstein Allegations


As thousands and thousands of sexual harassment and #MeToo accounts from women come to the surface, sparked by the recent allegations against Harvey Weinstein, actress Amber Tamblyn said she believes that the outpouring of these stories is thanks to President Donald Trump. And before you go, “What?“—after all, the president has been accused numerous times of sexual harassment and assault—it actually kind of makes sense.

In an interview with Cosmopolitan published Saturday, Tamblyn discussed why Trump’s election victory might have prompted women to finally come forward with stories formerly kept silent.

She has her own story, too: in September Tamblyn spoke out against actor James Woods with her own account of how he tried to pick her up when she was just 16. Recently, the social media platform has exploded with similar accounts about men in Hollywood. “We have never in the history of this country had an opportunity in the way that we have right now to share our stories so publicly and be believed,” she told Cosmo. And women’s bravery to step up and tell their stories, she says, stems from Trump winning the election.

“I think that without him being elected, if it had been Hillary
Clinton, this would’ve never happened to Harvey Weinstein. I feel like
the election of Donald Trump was a singular pointed message at women
telling us that our lives don’t matter, and that our safety doesn’t
matter, and that our physical health doesn’t matter, our reproductive
rights don’t matter, that our gender just doesn’t matter, and that we
are somehow owned by the country. I think within that one move, it was
a giant gesture, and Donald Trump symbolizes, for most women—not all
of them—he symbolizes and epitomizes everything that is deeply wrong
with masculinity and with the objectification of women. And so within
that single vote, it sort of was like a switch was flipped on and
every woman just went, ‘I’m done.’ It’s as simple as that: ‘I’m done.'”

She adds that before all of this, a woman who accused Weinstein of raping her wouldn’t have been taken seriously. One such woman, actress Rose McGowan, who has been a driving force on Twitter against Weinstein, delivered the opening remarks Friday at this weekend’s Women’s Convention in Detroit.

“I have been silenced for 20 years,” McGowan said. “I have been slut-shamed. I have been harassed… Because what happened to me behind the scenes happens to all of us in society, and it cannot stand and it will not stand.”

Tamblyn agrees—and thinks that Hollywood’s culture is finally changing and will continue to change for the better. “We’re at the beginning of a real change. I believe that,” she told Cosmo. “A lot of the interviews that I’ve given and people I’ve talked to have said, ‘Do you think it’s really going to change? Do you think it’s really going to stick?’ And I do; I do, actually. I just think it’s going to take time and patience, and a lot of love and compassion and understanding between us—meaning women, all women.”

Related Stories:
–The Frame That Holds the Big Picture: How Mothers and Daughters Can Change the Way We Talk About Being Women
–Amber Tamblyn Just Posted a Harrowing Personal Account of Sexual Assault to Her Instagram Page



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Donald Trump Has Been Subpoenaed Following a Woman's Sexual Assault Allegations


In the wake of a barrage of sexual assault and harassment allegations made against disgraced Hollywood mega-producer Harvey Weinstein—ones that show no sign of slowing—there’s more news on the allegations front, now pertaining to President Donald Trump and his upsetting history with women. Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s reality show The Apprentice, alleged last October—shortly after the “grab them by the pussy” tape was leaked—that she met Trump in a Beverly Hills hotel 10 years ago to talk about a job at the Trump Organization. There, she says, he kissed her and grabbed her. Trump called her a liar, and she promptly sued him for defamation, calling in famous women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred to help. Now, according to Buzzfeed’s report, her lawyers have subpoenaed his campaign—and the scope of documents that they’re requesting could shed light on a lot.

The subpoena was first filed in March—though it just showed up in court files last month—and Zervos’ lawyers are asking for all of the campaign’s documents that not only relate to her, but “all documents concerning any accusations that were made during Donald J. Trump’s election campaign for president, that he subjected any woman to unwanted sexual touching and/or sexually inappropriate behavior.” Basically, Trump’s campaign is requested to turn over any documents that have anything to do at all with any of the women who alleged during the election season that Trump groped them. The subpoena names at least 10 women, but the actual total could be more than a dozen. It also asks for any documents from the campaign that have to do with the Access Hollywood tape, as well as any documents that pertain to Trump denying any of the allegations.

Trump’s team has disputed all of this and even tried to shut down Zervos’ lawsuit in July—his lawyers claimed that presidents can’t have civil suits brought against them while in office and that the suit’s goal is to find ammunition to impeach him. Whether the suit will be dismissed as a result, however, hasn’t been decided yet.

Until it is, the subpoena can’t go into action. Trump’s team has said that it’s too broad to be justified and that it’s just intended to harass the president.

Whether the suit—and subpoena–will be allowed to proceed won’t be decided until well after Halloween. Trump’s team has to file a reply by October 31 to Allred’s filed opposition of Trump’s team’s motion to dismiss the civil suit (did you get all of that?). And until Trump files that last reply, the date for the actual hearing (about whether to toss the suit or not) doesn’t get set. And it’s not until after the hearing that we’ll get an answer about the subpoena.

Whew. All of this amounts to a lot of legal drama and a lot of paperwork, but what we do know is that some very interesting disclosures could be ahead—so stay tuned.

Related Stories:
–A Timeline of Donald Trump’s Inappropriate History With Women
–Donald Trump Bragged About Groping Women in a Disturbing New Video



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Here's How 'SNL' Finally Addressed the Harvey Weinstein Allegations


Saturday Night Live is known for its sharp takes on news and culture—and its willingness to skewer people, particularly disgraced people, in power. So many were surprised when, last week, the long-running series opted not to cover the unfolding Harvey Weinstein scandal in its October 7 episode, which took place two days after the New York Times published its explosive report detailing allegations of sexual harassment, assault, and inappropriate conduct committed by Weinstein. After a week of more revelations, eyes were once again on SNL last night.

Granted, it’s hard for a comedic, satirical show to find the appropriate way to cover sexual assault. SNL wound up addressing the allegations against Weinstein in two skits. The first was via a faux actors panel about sexual harassment in Hollywood with Cecily Strong playing Marion Cotillard, Leslie Jones as Viola Davis, Kate McKinnon returning as Debette Goldry, and Aidy Bryant as the panel’s moderator (playing an editor from Glamour.com, no less). Together the four women walked a fine line between serious and funny with Bryant, Jones, and Strong playing the straight types to McKinnon’s fiery shot thrower.

“I actually did have one meeting with Harvey, OK?” McKinnon’s character says when the conversation turns to Weinstein. “I was invited to his hotel room, and when I arrived, he was naked, hanging upside down from a monkey bar. He tried to trick me into thinking his genitals were actually his face. It almost worked—the resemblance is uncanny.”

The characters then go on to discuss why sexual assault keeps happening and the role that other men play in these crimes by failing to speak up. When Bryant’s character mentions the “whisper system” that women use to warn one another about threatening men, McKinnon-as-Goldry says “Back then we had a secret code among us actresses to warn each other about the creeps. The code was, ‘He raped me.’ That way if men were listening they would tune us right out, easy peasy.”

The “whisper system” is a very real thing: in the original Times report, actress Ashley Judd confirmed that “women have been talking about Harvey amongst ourselves for a long time, and it’s simply beyond time to have the conversation publicly.”

The sketch also touches on the “father of daughters” line that often gets thrown around by men when they speak out about sexual harassment and discrimination against women. As Strong-as-Cotillard said (with just the right amount of outrage): “You should be upset because you’re a human being.”

That’s when McKinnon comes in with a cutting line of her own: “Having a lady in the family doesn’t make you some kind of hero. I mean, even Hitler had a sister.”

Watch the full skit below:

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The “Weekend Update” guys also kicked off their segment with the Weinstein allegations, with Colin Jost announcing that Weinstein was going to sex addiction rehab. “Somehow I don’t think that’s going to help anybody,” says Jost. “He doesn’t need sex rehab. He needs a specialized facility where there are no women, no contact with the outside world, metal bars, and it’s a prison.”

Co-host Michael Che then ripped into the mogul’s plea for the movie industry to give him a second chance because “we all make mistakes.”

“No, man, a mistake is me walking into the wrong bathroom and using it anyway because I was crowning,” says Che. “You assaulted dozens of women. That’s not a mistake—that’s a full season of Law & Order. Your name’s a verb now. As in, ‘If this guy tries to Weinstein me, I’m going to cut off his little Harvey.'”

[embedded content]

For the record, Weinstein’s legal team has denied the claims, issuing a statement via a spokesperson stating, “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein.”

Related Stories:
–These Are All the Women Who Have Accused Harvey Weinstein of Sexual Harassment and Assault
–After Harvey Weinstein Allegations, Women Share Stories of Sexual Harassment on Twitter
–’30 Rock’ Called Out Harvey Weinstein Five Years Ago



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