One of the eight women known to have received a settlement from Harvey Weinstein broke her silence over the weekend in an interview with the Mail on Sunday, and is now speaking out again in the Financial Times.
Zelda Perkins, 44, split a settlement worth £250,000 (approximately $300,000 at the time) with another women after the two signed a non-disclosure agreement in 1998 following their decision to report the movie mogul’s behavior and hire a law firm.
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.
Vuctim: Zelda Perkins was just 24 when she and another employee of Miramax split a settlement of around $300,000 (Perkins above)
Speaking out: She signed an NDA in October of 1998 after receiving the payout, but is now breaking that contract to detail her time with Weinstein (above with Juliette Binoche in 1998)
‘He had a need to annihilate and humiliate men, but with women it was all about seduction and submission,’ explained Perkins.
‘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.’
The harassment was one thing, but after the rape allegation things shifted for her and she knew that it was time to take on the company.
‘She was white as a sheet and shaking and in a very bad emotional state. She told me something terrible had happened. She was in shock and crying and finding it very hard to talk,’ explained Perkins of her colleague.
‘I was furious, deeply upset and very shocked. I said: “We need to go to the police,” but she was too distressed. Neither of us knew what to do in a foreign environment.’
Three’s company: Perkins said Weinstein tried to give her a massage in his underwear (Weinstein, Paltrow and Clinton two months after the settlement)
Weinstein denied the incident, but Perkins said she saw right through it all at the time.
‘It was very clear looking at the state my colleague was in and then looking at Harvey that I believed her,’ said Perkins.
She arrived back in London early that September and immediately went to see a lawyer.
Her hopes of notifying Disney or trying to publicize Weinstein’s behavior was quickly shot down by lawyers however who said Weinstein would drag her name through the mud.
Perkins decided if that would not work she would try for the next best thing.
‘My driving motivation was to create safeguards to protect future employees,’ explained Perkins.
‘I gave [her law firm Simons Muirhead & Burton] a list of demands aimed at controlling his behavior, such as a commitment that he receive medical treatment and the creation of a proper human resources complaints procedure at Miramax so that people would be aware of their rights and could complain about harassment if they needed to.’
This proved to be a difficult time for the young woman however as she faced off against her powerful opponent.
‘At 24 years old in a room full of lawyers I felt unsupported by my legal team,’ she said in hindsight.
‘Looking back I understand they were following correct practice but at the time I felt totally isolated.’
Boss man: Perkins said she initially wanted to tell Disney, the parent company of Miramax, about the incident (Weinstein and Michael Eisner in 2004)
It was only one month after she approached lawyers that a settlement came her way, at which point she stepped away from the company.
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.
The six known cases involve an unnamed Italian model who claims she was raped in 2013 by Weinstein, actresses Rose McGowan, Asia Argento and Lysette Anthony, then-college student Lucia Evans and the aforementioned unnamed woman.
Westward bound: Weinstein fled NYC on October 6 (above)
The 2013 rape is currently being investigated by police in Los Angeles it was revealed last week.
Weinstein is also being investigated in the state of New York, where two criminal probes have been launched following allegations of sexual assault that date back over 10 years.
A law enforcement source told DailyMail.com that one of these complaints was filed by Lucia Evans, who told The New Yorker that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004 at his office. The identity of the other individual is not known at this time.
There is no statute of limitations on rape, criminal sexual act or aggravated sexual abuse in the first degree in the state of New York.
The state legislature signed a bill eliminating a statute of limitations for first-degree sexual offenses back in 2006, having previously had a five-year statute for all rape and sexual assault cases.
Weinstein’s legal problems are not just stateside either, with Scotland Yard currently investigating five allegations of sexual assault which have been made by three women across the Atlantic.
The earliest of these alleged assaults dates back to the eighties.
Perkins is hoping to make some legal waves of her own by speaking out.
‘I want to publicly break my non-disclosure agreement,’ she explained.
‘Unless somebody does this there won’t be a debate about how egregious these agreements are and the amount of duress that victims are put under.’
She then added: ‘My entire world fell in because I thought the law was there to protect those who abided by it. I discovered that it had nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with money and power.’
Weinstein is said to be in rehab but there has still been nothing to prove this claim, and now over 60 women have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault.
‘Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances,’ said a spokesperson for Weinstein.
‘Mr. Weinstein obviously can’t speak to anonymous allegations, but with respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr. Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual.
‘Mr. Weinstein has begun counseling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path. Mr. Weinstein is hoping that, if he makes enough progress, he will be given a second chance.’