Rose McGowan Opens Up About Harvey Weinstein's 'Guilty' Verdict

A lot of women have come out praising the monumental judgment in the Harvey Weinstein case recently, believing that this will be a start of a new era in the “Me Too” movement. Rose McGowan, who was one of the first women to come out and accuse Weinstein of sexual assault, expressed her happiness toward the verdict by saying that she can finally “breathe” for the first time since 1997.

Expressing her feelings through an op-ed in the Hollywood Reporter, the 46-year-old actress revealed that it was hard for her to publicly call out someone as powerful as Weinstein at a time when she had her whole acting career before her. But she feels happy that Weinstein would get the punishment he deserves and noted that the world will be a better place if he was “not” in it.

“Hopefully, now this will be the first day of the rest of my life as I attempt to see what life would have been like without someone trying to kill me or paint me as an insane person. I had an entire career before. I just feel, energy-wise, that the planet would be better off if he wasn’t on it. That’s my hippie answer,” McGowan said.

The “Charmed” actress also thanked all the women who came up and testified against the disgraced movie producer and noted that the trial must have been “brutal” for them as Weinstein’s attorney Donna Rotunno came at them while using the same “trigger words” as every other “alt-right” dudes did.

“I can imagine what it felt like for them [women who testified] to be on that stand because, essentially, it’s like standing there naked in front of the world, allowing people to put tiny pinpricks in you as they try to pull the skin off. Donna Rotunno, Harvey’s lawyer, came at them with this kind of wink to the incel movement and by using the same trigger words as the alt-right dudes. There aren't enough words to describe how I feel for them or what I feel for them,” McGowan said.

The group of women who testified against Weinstein included the likes of Annabella Sciorra, Miriam Haley, Jessica Mann, Dawn Dunning, Tarale Wulff, and Lauren Young.

In 2017, Sciorra told The New Yorker that Weinstein violently raped her in the ‘90s and repeatedly sexually harassed her over the next several years. The Emmy-nominated actress also noted she was still really scared of him and that was the only reason why she had been struggling to speak about him for more than 20 years.

McGowan also shared her story of being sexually assaulted by Weinstein in the same year as Sciorra and revealed that she was “raped” by him in 1997. The “Me Too” movement started with a story published by The New York Times, detailing decades of allegations of sexual harassment against Weinstein . McGowan and Ashley Judd were among the women who come forward.

On Monday, the jury, consisting of seven men and five women, reached their verdict after five days of deliberation. Weinstein, 67, was found guilty of third-degree rape against former actress Jessica Mann and first-degree criminal sexual act against his former assistant Miriam Haley.

However, the 67-year-old producer was taken to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital Center after complaining of chest pains and heart palpitations, as per his representative. Page Six noted that Weinstein might remain in the hospital until the date of the sentencing, which is March 11.