The six and seven-figured settlements that Harvey Weinstein paid out to his accusers in the focus of the latest New Yorker expose from Ronan Farrow.
These payments span the course of 20 years, with the most recent being the $1 million Harvey paid to model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez in 2015 after she accused him of groping her in his office and managed to record him as he begged her to join him in a hotel room.
In exchange for that money, Battilana agreed to delete that recording and hand over the passwords to all her email accounts and her electronic devices while also signing a non-disclosure agreement.
That was not the case for Rose McGowan, who after receiving a $100,000 settlement in 1997 following her alleged rape by the executive signed a contract that sad she would not sure Harvey but that included no NDA.
One year later, a sexual assault allegation brought against Harvey by two of his assistants resulted in his brother Bob paying out £250,000 from his personal bank account, the equivalent of $600,000 today.
And yet when news of his brother’s decades of assault broke, Bob said he was ‘shocked and dismayed’ by the allegations.
Bros before victims of sexual assault: The money for one settlement came from the personal bank account of Harvey’s brother Bob in 1998 (brothers above in 2015)
Settlements: Harvey Weinstein paid model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez (left in 2015) $1 million in 2015 after he allegedly groped her in his office and Rose McGowan (right in 1997) $100,000 after an alleged rape in 1997
It was revealed last month that Weinstein was just moments away from possibly being cuffed and thrown in jail back in 2015 when the NYPD set up a sting operation with Battilana after she accused him of groping her during a business meeting.
She had agreed to record her conversation with Weinstein on March 28, 2015 when the two met at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, one day after she accused the movie mogul of groping her breasts and sticking his hand under her skirt.
The audio recording of the sting captured Weinstein apologizing to Battilana and telling the model: ‘Listen, come up to my room.’
Detectives were on the scene at the time hoping to catch Weinstein in the act so that they might be able to arrest him on the spot.
At the last second, however, Battilana could not go through with it out of safety fears and the pair returned downstairs, where Weinstein was soon picked up by the detectives and taken in for questioning.
Soon after she signed her agreement, sating she felt ‘pressured’ at the time.
‘I said no at first,’ admitted Battilana.
‘I was forced by the fact that newspapers completely bashed me, by the fact that I was alone, by the fact that I was 22 years old.’
She then added: ‘I knew if he could move the press in this way, I couldn’t fight him.’
In addition to handing over her passwords and devices, Battilana signed a statemet which said that all the behavior and offenses she had accused Harvey of never occurred on the days in question.
It was to be released in the event that she ever broke the confidentiality agreement.
McGowan meanwhile never had an NDA, a fact that she appears to have not been unaware of given her hesitation in the past to name Harvey while making allegations about a Hollywood producer who sexually assaulted her at the beginning of her career.
She wanted to pursue charges instead of taking a settlement, but says her lawyer convinced her to take the money.
‘That was very painful,’ said McGowan.
‘I thought a hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money at the time, because I was a kid.’
The other lawsuit that was paid out went to Zelda Perkins and her assistant at the time.
Perkins was the first person to break her NDA last month when she went public with her story about Harvey.
One of Weinstein’s three assistants in his London office at the time, Perkins revealed that her boss appeared in her underwear and offered her a nude massage the first time the two were alone in a hotel room.
He would also parade around naked and force her to sit beside the tub as he bathed according to Perkins.
She split the settlement with an unnamed colleague who also claimed to have suffered at the hands of Weinstein.
That woman, whose name she does not reveal, told Perkins at the 1998 Venice Film Festival that she had been raped by Weinstein.
One of Weinstein’s three assistants in his London office at the time, Perkins revealed that her boss appeared in her underwear and offered her a nude massage the first time the two were alone in a hotel room.
He would also parade around naked and force her to sit beside the tub as he bathed according to Perkins.
She split the settlement with an unnamed colleague who also claimed to have suffered at the hands of Weinstein.
That woman was ‘shaking and crying’ as she told Perkins at the 1998 Venice Film Festival that she had been raped by Weinstein.
She said that she immediately went and confronted her boss.
‘He stood there and he lied and lied and lied,’ said Perkins.
‘I said, “Harvey, you are lying,” and he said, “I’m not lying; I swear on the lives of my children.”‘
When she returned to London she told Harvey’s Shaekspeare in Love producing partner Donna Gigliotti, who said the she could not do anything about the incident because she was not an employee at the company.
Perkins then resigned and informed the company of her decision to file a lawsuit.
That is when she started getting increasingly desperate voicemails from her former boss claims Perkins.
In one, Weinstein pleaded: ‘Please, please, please, please, please, please call me. I’m begging you.’
After finally signing the agreement, Perkins was asked ‘to tell people to shut up’ about the allegations she claims.
She also said that she has no idea that the money came from Bob.
‘Regarding that payment, I only know what Harvey told me, and basically what he said was he was fooling around with two women and they were asking for money,’ said Bob.
‘And he didn’t want his wife to find out, so he asked me if I could write a check, and so I did, but there was nothing to indicate any kind of sexual harassment.’
‘He had a need to annihilate and humiliate men, but with women it was all about seduction and submission,’ explained Perkins in a previous interview with the Financial Times.
‘Harvey made you feel in an honorary position of trust and influence which he then used as a tool to exert control.’
That was on display the first time she ended up alone and away from home with her boos.
‘He went out of the room and came back in his underwear. He asked me if I would give him a massage. Then he asked if he could massage me,’ said Perkins.
She then went on to speak about the fact that Weinstein was always naked and having to join him for his baths by sitting in the same room.
‘But this was his behavior on every occasion I was alone with him,’ explained Perkins.
‘I often had to wake him up in the hotel in the mornings and he would try to pull me into bed.’
She got the job when one of Weinstein’s other assistants suddenly disappeared, and secured her spot when she told her boss off soon after starting in her new position.
‘I remember taking a call in the room when another call came through on another phone. He swore at me to “pick up the f***ing phone,”‘ said Perkins.
‘I said: “I’m already on the f***ing phone!” It sealed my fate as someone who could stand up to him.’
She then explained: ‘It wasn’t bravery, it was naivety.’
Nineteen years later – almost to the day – she finally got to share her story with The New York Times.
It has left her still hurt, and after the lawsuit she felt ‘broken’ in the wake of what she was forced to endure.
‘I want to call into question the legitimacy of agreements where the inequality of power is so stark and relies on money rather than morality,’ said Perkins.
‘I want other women who have been sidelined and who aren’t being allowed to own their own history or their trauma to be able to discuss what they have suffered. I want them to see that the sky won’t fall in.’
It is unclear meanwhile if her colleague is the unknown Weinstein employee who shared her story with The New Yorker but then asked to be kept anonymous for fear of legal repercussion or a new reported rape case, which would make her the seventh person to accuse Weinstein.