Kate Beckinsale Tells Story Of Being Victimized By Weinstein At 17

Kate Beckinsale told her own story and expressed her support for other victims

As more and more women come forward with stories of being victimized by serial sexual assaulter Harvey Weinstein, it’s becoming clear that he was indiscriminate when it came to who he would abuse. Not even teenagers were off-limits.

Actress Kate Beckinsale took to Instagram today to share her own incredibly disturbing account of Weinstein making sexual advances at her when she was just 17 years old.

“I was called to meet Harvey Weinstein at the Savoy Hotel when I was 17.”

Beckinsale assumed the meeting would take place in one of the hotel’s conference rooms, but she was mistaken.

“When I arrived, reception told me to go to his room. He opened the door in his bathrobe.”

Anyone else already sick to their stomachs?

“I was incredibly naive and young and it did not cross my mind that this older, unattractive man would expect me to have any sexual interest in him. After declining alcohol and announcing that I had school in the morning I left, uneasy but unscathed,” she writes.

Or so she thought. “A few years later he asked me if he had tried anything with me in that first meeting. I realized he couldn’t remember if he had assaulted me or not.”

Not only that, but Weinstein made sure that Beckinsale would pay somehow for rebuffing his advances. She writes, “I had what I thought were boundaries – I said no to him professionally many times over the years – some of which ended up with him screaming at me, calling me a cunt and making threats, some of which made him laughingly tell people oh ‘Kate lives to say no to me.'”

Beckinsale knew that telling him no could mean a lack of support from the Hollywood community. “It speaks to the status quo in this business that I was aware that standing up for myself and saying no to things, while it did allow me to feel uncompromised in myself, undoubtedly harmed my career and was never something I felt supported by anyone other than my family.”

The actress makes clear her support for the women who have already told their stories of Weinstein abusing them, and expresses hope for better in the future. “I would like to applaud the women who have come forward, and to pledge that we can from this create a new paradigm where producers, managers, executives and assistants and everyone who has in the past shrugged and said ‘well, that’s just Harvey/Mr X/insert name here’ will realize that we in numbers can affect real change.”

Beckinsale also acknowledges that for every time a powerful man is outed for this kind of deplorable behavior, there are “thousands” where a person who was assaulted or harassed by someone high-ranking in the business decided to stay quiet out of fear. She explains that after telling a male friend about what Weinstein tried when she was a teen, he then told another young actress who had dinner plans with him.

“He received a phone call the next day saying he would never work in another Miramax [Weinstein’s production company] film; the girl was already sleeping with Harvey and had told him that my friend had warned her off,” she says.

She ends on a resolute note. “Let’s stop allowing our young women to be sexual cannon fodder, and let’s remember that Harvey is an emblem of a system that is sick, and that we have work to do.”