Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Amazon’s Roy Price, TV political journalist Mark Halperin, Charlie Rose, Garrison Keillor, Russell Simmons, Matt Lauer … the allegations of sexual harassment just keep hitting like one giant tidal wave.
Many of us are cheering on the sidelines as justice seems to finally be served—but what’s it like when you’re one of the women who was groped, assaulted, traumatized? Or one of the women who knew it happened to a beloved coworker? How do you decide to speak out? How do you help your colleagues through the media and legal storm that follows? Melinda Arons was one of several political reporters working for Mark Halperin, who supported each other 13 years ago as his inappropriate behavior hit its peak.
At the time, Halperin was the hotshot political director of ABC News, a regular on TV and radio, and founder of The Note, a daily online news digest that was considered “the most influential tip sheet in Washington.” Later, his bestselling book about the 2008 Presidential election, Game Change, co-written with journalist John Heilemann, was made into an HBO movie. But as his success soared, the reporters who had worked for him could not forget, and this fall, as the Weinstein scandal exploded, they came together again to help bring his actions to light.
While some of the women (denoted as numbered “colleagues” below) have chosen to remain anonymous out of concern for their families or careers, this is their story.
A “fabulous,” “thrilling” job of a lifetime
ARONS: I’d been at ABC News for three years in 2003, when I was chosen as an “off air,” a reporter who goes on the campaign trail. Mark Halperin was my boss. I was 27 and I loved working for Mark. He was brilliant and thrilling to be around; he knew how to work the room like nobody’s business. Mark founded The Note, which ran online every morning and was read by everyone and anyone in politics. It was very heady to be in that orbit. I felt like I was on this fabulous track. And I bonded with other women “off airs” who’d also been pulled from various ABC departments to work for the first time with Mark.
COLLEAGUE 1: ABC News was a wildly different place back then—much bigger than now and filled with execs in fancy suits and massive stars like Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters.
COLLEAGUE 2: And Peter Jennings. Peter had one political director. It was Mark. So the nexus of power was really intoxicating for a young reporter.
ARONS: You’d be asked to do such crazy shit. Your regular day would be following a candidate to Pizza Hut in Nowhere, Iowa, and then hunker down in a freezing truck to type your notes, working till all hours in some hotel room. There was 100 percent the feeling [of] “You can’t hack this job? There’s a line of people around the block who will happily take your place.”
COLLEAGUE 2: One night on the 2004 campaign trail, Mark invited me to his hotel room to talk about work. It’s news—he worked around the clock. So I went. But as soon as I opened the door I was uncomfortable. His jacket was off; his shirt unbuttoned. He immediately went to kiss me—it’s weird to even use that vernacular because it was somewhere between a kiss and shoving his tongue down my throat. I was married at the time. I just remember saying, “I’m not doing this,” and I left. After that there were innuendos. One time he called me late at night and said something like, “If you won’t come to my hotel room at least talk to me.”
COLLEAGUE 3: During my first meeting Mark, I was in his office, sitting across the desk, and he got up and came around behind me. I was like, What is going on? Then he pushed his penis up against my shoulder. I don’t remember how I got out of there, but I got out of there.
COLLEAGUE 4: The worst time for me was when a bunch of us were grabbing appetizers, getting drinks; I think it was at a hotel bar after a debate. I went to use the restroom, which was downstairs in a hallway. When I came out Mark was blocking the door, leaning there with his shirt partially unbuttoned, asking me to go into the men’s bathroom with him. He’d clearly waited for me and made sure the coast was clear. I remember I was wearing a red sweater. My heart was racing. I squirmed around, knocking his arm down, and ran like no one’s business.
COLLEAGUE 1: With me it was after one of the Democratic debates in Des Moines. It was freezing cold. We were all out drinking. He kept asking me to go up to hotel room. I remember saying, “No, no, I have to go home,” and leaving the bar. It was just really skeevy.
ARONS: When I started hearing all these stories, I was so confused and so disappointed in him. Like, “Why did you have to be that guy?” We used to have this gallows humor joke given he never attempted anything with me—“What am I, chopped liver?” I honestly don’t know why he never targeted me, but it was agonizing knowing it was happening to my friends and feeling helpless to do anything about it. Even now, I don’t feel like it’s my story to tell, and am so angry and hurt that my friends had to endure it.
“You were labeled one of Those Girls Who Complains”
COLLEAGUE 2: When Melinda told me to go to HR, I said, “I can handle it.” People have asked me again and again, why didn’t you report it? Why didn’t you tell a supervisor? Mark was my supervisor. And the stories of sexual harassment I grew up with still placed the women in a position of ridicule.
ARONS: And even though I clearly thought we should go to HR, honestly we didn’t even know where HR was, or who to go to. There was no clear system to report anything like this.
COLLEAGUE 4: And if you told someone senior on staff and she or he didn’t take you seriously, you’d have written your ticket out. You were labeled one of Those Girls Who Complains. I’d started as an assistant and worked my butt off. I had a whole career ahead of me. [None of the women believe they were stopped from moving up.]
COLLEAGUE 3: Now it’s clear that if we’d gone to HR, maybe we would have been able to stop him from doing this to other women. But I was a kid. I don’t come from a wealthy background. I needed my job.
[Halperin issued a statement on October 27, in which he apologized and said that in reading the accounts of women at ABC news, “I have recognized conduct for which I feel profound guilt and responsibility.”]
PHOTO: Frederick M. Brown
Mark Halperin
“It was time for this story to be told”
ARONS: The minute the Harvey Weinstein story broke I texted Friend G:
ME: W Weinstein news I keep thinking about fucking Mark Halperin.
HER: I know. What were we all thinking? We just talked about it amongst ourselves. I should have gone to [name withheld] about it.
ME: We were so naive, and that’s what men like that count on.
Although our group had gone their separate ways—most still in news but in different capacities and outlets—we’d kept in touch. And we started rehashing everything that had happened 13 years ago. A few days later, I was watching all the Me Too stuff, and I posted on Facebook, “Me Too…though the most disgusting examples I know happened not to me but to several female colleagues by one man in particular when we were 20-somethings coming up in news.” Little did I know, it would go weirdly viral in the news community. I got all kinds of comments—“everyone knew,” “it was an open secret.”
COLLEAGUE 2: When I saw that post from Mel, I thought, Thank God. I can put my stamp on this now, my anger, my sense of injustice. It enabled us to take what we were all thinking and come together again.
ARONS: We all started talking. We felt it was finally time for this story to be told. We never thought, “Let’s get Mark;” we talked about how the whole newsroom culture has historically encouraged and tolerated this kind of behavior. And then, individually, we started hearing from reporters. We grappled because none of us felt we could go on the record [some are still at ABC; others are in the industry or have family considerations], and yet we assumed that without women willing to use their names, the story wouldn’t get published. So we made sure the people we knew who’d been harassed were in touch with the reporters, and corroborated what we could. It was like we were this group of female journalists working together again on a story, but this time we were the story.
COLLEAGUE 2: The same women who leaned on each other for support 13 years ago leaned on each other for support now
ARONS: At one point we started a group messenger chain with constant conversation ….
“it happened 14 years ago and feels like just yesterday when we’ve been forced to revisit it…really crazy how this sticks with you”
“Yes indeed”
“It never really goes away”
“ I’ve hated seeing his face plastered all over everywhere”
“ His face has always made me sick… I can’t imagine if I were you guys”
“[the best part] is getting back in touch with the loveliest women in my life—I swear”
All this, interspersed with hearts and thumbs ups, “how old is your kid now?” and hilarious girl stuff. All of us ended up speaking on background to reporters. And to our shock, even without a named source, on October 25, CNN broke the story. It was incredibly gratifying. It felt like a huge weight had finally been lifted.
After speaking out, “I felt peace”
ARONS: Two days after the CNN story, our colleague, Lara Setrakian, decided to out herself. I hadn’t even known Mark had harassed her—it happened two years after our “off air” group had moved on.
LARA SETRAKIAN, COFOUNDER OF NEWS DEEPLY: I was initially reluctant to speak publicly but after talking to CNN on background, but I realized I had so much more to say. There were bigger issues. For example, the pressure you feel to be physically perfect in order to have a future in TV. I don’t know if it’s better or worse now, but across all cable networks, we have seen necklines get lower, hair get bigger, and more of “is she going to a club?” So I decided to write an op-ed [link to it here] and put my name on it.
In my case, I was 24 years old and assigned to cover the 2006 midterm elections. Mark was the boss and invited me to come talk about politics over a Diet Coke. I don’t know why I remember the Diet Coke, but I got to his office, and hardly two or three minutes into the meeting he came up to me and kissed me—on the lips with tongue. Pretty invasive. I was like, Whoa whoa, whoa. My mind froze. My body froze. He touched my breasts and I felt his erection. I somehow slunk out of there. I felt really guilty, like maybe I spoke wrong or shouldn’t have gone up there.
When my op-ed ran [in The Washington Post October 27], it felt like a deep exhale. I felt at peace like I’ve never felt since that incident. I felt my idealism restored.
ARONS: After she wrote that amazing piece, Lara connected us all on Facebook—the women from what we’d now call a whisper network, and the other women she’d heard from who suffered harassment years before and after us. She called it The Silver Lining.
“We’ve Got Your Back”
ARONS: Mark’s professional life has unraveled. [NBC and MSNBC severed ties; HBO, and Penguin Press cancelled projects with Halperin after the allegations came out.] And it’s sad to watch. It’s also ironic: In our group, we all spent a lot more time agonizing over what would happen to his career than he ever spent thinking about the careers of women he harassed. But The Silver Lining has since grown. As other women have come forward about Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer, members from the group reached out to them, and our private message thread has turned into Press Forward, a non-profit organization committed to supporting women in news.
SETRAKIAN: The silver lining was that we all found each other. And now we are brainstorming ideas for ways to work collaboratively with newsrooms not only to improve the gender balance but also to empower women.
ARONS: There has to be a clear reporting system for harassment, which we didn’t have—and many companies still don’t. There has to be a roadmap for what to do if and when this happens. Because while you benefit emotionally from talking to other women, you need tools to take action.
COLLEAGUE 1: Meanwhile, for any woman being harassed right now? Find anybody you work with whom you trust. And tell them. Tell somebody. Even a friend. Talking about it can help you figure out how you really feel about what happened and come up with a plan.
SETRAKIAN: There is no one path. Women rely on their income and may feel can’t rock the boat. You’re not a hero if you speak up and you’re not a wimp if you don’t. Just don’t sit in silence.
ARONS: When it all broke after 13 years, I felt that this thing we’d all subconsciously held onto was finally out in the world—that was cathartic. But it breaks my heart that my friends had to go through this.
COLLEAGUE 3: We got each other through it.
COLLEAGUE 2: And we’re doing it now. When the topic of sexual harassment and sexual assault is in the headlines and you know that back when it was happening to you, you felt better speaking to your girlfriends about it, the same thing comes into your being again; you just want to hold hands.
SETRAKIAN: I feel we were all going to find a way out of this. I see an industry that needs our talent and needs our ideas—and I think we’re going to do great things. And for women coming up, don’t worry, we’ve got your back.