I as a society and as a culture, we protect harassers. If someone can tell me why. That is the 20 milliondollar question. Why do we do that. Its because were protecting our own job . Is it because were protecting a person in power . I think those are the two top reasons. Now that the floodgates have been open, i give so much credit to the women. Will. That doesnt mean theyre only eight people that were held assaulted or raped, there were other people who were raped who have come forward who have not reached settlements. Rape is a crime so that is a longer statute of limitations. With regard to Sexual Harassment, you dont have a lot of time to file a claim. Different in every state in the depends if its a federal violation or state violation. There are so many ways we should look into the law to help women come forward but especially with the issue of Sexual Harassment where you dont really switch on a light and say hey ill come forward. You dont have a lot of time. Its less than two years. You said power and jobs, but that doesnt excuse the men in the company and the lawyers and all of the people who were involved in the settlements. Why did they not say anything. I want their names on the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Is not just that company where its happening. Theyre covering it up in hundreds of thousands of companies in the world. The big question is why do we protect the harasser. This not always the most powerful company we protect. We sometime protect a lowlevel employee who is a harasser. Someone comes to a job and theyre warned be careful of joe, hes been here for 30 year years, he has a rude sense of humor. Sure enough, she finds out who he is and h they go to complain and who doe do they protect . Joe. They protect joe and that woman is phased out. With that every level. I was horrified by the Harvey Weinstein story but i was also thrilled came out, that he was outed and he got fired and he will take his name off the company. I think you should be shunned. I think this is a huge step forward for all of us. Its a step forward for the enablers who will be called out and they will feel shame that all of those women felt and shouldnt have. Those people will feel ashamed. Enablers are a huge part of this problem and a huge part of the solution. Sexual harassment training and company should focus more on enablers than most anything else. How do we give the courage to the enabler to not be the enabler and to also come forwar forward. I was i was reading your book i just got mad and madder and madder. I just kept thinking it cant be happening, and yet it is. The reason we are here is because your experience at fox news and your lawsuit against roger fails. I know you cant talk about it, but i can. I wanted to read in your complaint, he has unlawfully retaliated against her and sabotaged her career because she refused sexual advances complained about Sexual Harassment. He retaliated in various ways as described below including by terminating her employment on june 23, 2016 in prior thereto by a number of things, ostracizing, marginalizing and shunning her after making clear that these problems would not have existed and could be solved if she had a sexual relationship with them. When she discussed the criminal harassment to which she was being subjected he said i think we should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago menu would be good and better and id be good and better adding that sometimes problems are easier to solve that way. Nine months later she ended her career at fox news. First of all, he was so repulsive. The idea that roger ailes would even think he could get away with that, were it not for the outrage of what he was assuming, but one of the reasons you cant talk about it is you did resolve the lawsuit and you reached a 20 million settlement, and as far as im concerned, that was not enough for why cant you talk about it . Is that not part of the problem, in a way, that in order to reach a settlement you had to agree not to talk about it. In just two or caveat with regard to the revolutio resolution, i am giving a significant portion of that away of them all the proceeds of my book are going to the nonprofit. This is how they have decided to resolve the cases. Over 90 and up and settlement. What does that mean . That means the woman never works in her chosen career again and they can never talk about it. She is gagged. How else to resolve Sexual Harassment suits . We put in arbitration and Employment Contracts which make it a secret proceeding. No one find out about it. You can never talk about it, nobody ever knows what happens to you and in most cases you terminated from the companys and the predator is left to work in the same position in which he was harassing you so this is how our society has decided to resolve these, to gag women and fool everyone else that weve come so far in 2017. The reason we think weve come so far is because were not hearing about these cases, but the reason were not hearing about the cases is because the women are silenced, either through settlements or forced arbitration. Suppose you had said im bringing this case and i want to settle but i dont want the silence clause. Would they have said go away. They would have. I was given the benefit of being able to talk about this openly and share other peoples stories and talk about ways in which we should change laws and have this very conversation right now, that is rare. What do we do in order to change this from happening from someone else where you can file a Sexual Harassment charge and you can reach a settlement but that is not include silencing you. How do we go about changing that. Did the work im doing on capitol hill, you have to take forced arbitration out or at least take the secrecy out. Im working diligently to get a bipartisan bill on that. It is apolitical. Before someone harasses you, they dont ask what party you belong to. This is why republicans and democrats should care about this. Ive been meeting with many of them privately to get them on board to support this bill to take the secrecy out. How does it change the landscape . That means if youre sexually harassed, then you can file a public complaint and you can have a jury trial which is your seventh amendment right. The way it works now is if you file a complaint, its secret and you go to arbitration were only 20 of the time the victim wins and its not like in open court system. You cant call the same amount of witnesses, the depositions are different, there is no appeal and the people are retired lawyers and judges who may not be able to understand Sexual Harassment in this generation. Maybe they wont side with the victim is what im saying. We need to start there. If i can just get a bipartisan bill to pass that takes the secrecy out of this, thats a warning shot that you cant hide this kind of behavior anymore. Why is this a nobrainer. When you go to up the hill and you talk to congress and you say i want this changed, why would anyone say no . Give me a good reason what they will say to you. Number one big reason is because democrats are in favor of the Senate Republican support big big business. So they say to their little girl there supporting big business. Lets say this, they are taking the meetings with me and theyre listening and i think they are thinking long and hard about the ramifications of their own children. This is why i did this whole thing. Some of them have even told me their wives have been sexually harassed. I think this is why people are so frustrated with politicians in general. They speak out of the side of the mouth. On one hand, rationally, they look at this and they realize they should be on board but then they horror have another constituency. Lets talk about silence. So the big business guys will go into talk to the republican senators, they will lobby them and they will say you cant do this in the reason you cant do this is because we are sexually harassing these women and theyll sue us and will lose money. Thats the only reason they could be against it. The argument about arbitration is that its cheaper so you dont have to hire a bunch of lawyers and go through a long process of a trial. Thats not really true. There are a lot of costs associated. The biggest thing is companies will say we are doing a service to unclog the court because the courts are already overworked so this is a way to solve Small Business dispute by putting them into arbitration. Those are the arguments that are given to the employee. Heres the problem. When you start a new job, youre just happy to have the work and get the paycheck. Youre not thinking about an arbitration clause and youre not thinking youre going to get into any sort of dispute. I never thought i was going to be there. So then, when you do and you suddenly realize you dont have your seventh amendment right anymore, that is a daunting day because you realize you really dont have any option and your rights have been taken away. Thats what im explained to these members of congress. This was not your first experience. Tell me a couple of experiences you had before when you were 22, you had two or three experiences that were pretty disgusting. Unfortunately this is my first day at the rodeo. It was when i was. [inaudible] maybe the blessing of that was that i had built tough skin because when you accomplish Something Like that suddenly my resume of being a violinist, stanford grad, it evaporated and i was just a dumb blonde. I had built thick skin during that year but toward the end of the year. [inaudible] one executive was so nice to me all day long. He made so many phone calls and we went out to dinner and i thought this can be a great beginning for me. When we got into the backseat of the car service to bring me back to my friends apartment suddenly he was on top of me with his tongue down my throat. I remember being panicked and thinking how mike and get out of this and i screamed for the driver to stop i open the door and i got out not knowing at all where i was and got my friends apartment and just lost it and what so many women have gone through. What did i do, why would he do this to me, didnt he respect my brain, wasnt he really trying to help me, all of that goes away. And never ever spoke to him ever again so i guess he really didnt want to help me. Unfortunately, a couple weeks later i was in l. A. Meeting with a highpowered publicist, i was a gogetter, i was knocking on all the doors trying to get a crew started and unfortunately i was in a car again with him and he took my head with his hand and forcefully jammed my head into his crotch so hard that i couldnt breathe. I cant imagine what he actually thought heres the really fascinating part about this. I never really spoke openly about that story until recently, but more importantly , it was a friend, when i was telling her those stories who said to me you realize those were both assaults and i said what he talking abou about. She said that the assault, and i had never defined it that way before. I think it speaks volumes about how we normalize this, even as women, that we think we can overcome it and we just put it aside and we dont really acknowledge it for what it is. Thats a great story. She said what happened to her was assault. I tell her story because she was fierce. She is a People Magazine reporter. Yes, she was at mara largo, doing a birth about the impending, the president impending latest child with millennia and she said when millennia went up to change her close that he took her aside into a room and forcefully kissed her against her will. She actually took herself off of that premier beat and she told people, which is huge, thats my advice in the book. She told People Magazine. And im saying in general, women should tell people what happened because we live in a he said, she said culture. She is the one, when i was interviewing her for my book, she was the one who told me it was a salt. And then she came forward with her story. She came forward because she was listening to one of the debates where the president had said he had never forcefully kissed anyone against their will and she thought, i dont want to be silent anymore. So she came out with it and she had been friends with Melania Trump and she said we havent seen you in a long time, where be bad, and after she came out with the story, she denied saying that they iran into each other. What to say about the wives who are enabling their husbands to do this kind of thing. Melania trump is a perfect example. I dont know about Harvey Weinsteins wife, i cant say i believe she didnt have any inkling of this after ten years of marriage. I hope they can find it in the heart to be fierce and stand up for who they are as women and give themselves more respect. You mentioned jane fonda had have several experiences. What were her experiences. She just came out at 79 years old and said she was raped earlier in her career, and she is jane fonda. This is the culture we live in where these kind of stories are stuffed down and women are made to feel ashamed that something happened to them when, in essence, they were shamed and so we have to turn this issue totally in the opposite direction. Gwyneth paltrow came forward and so did angelina jolie, and i have to say god loved meryl streep for speaking out against Harvey Weinstein who she has worked with, but the issue of shame really fascinates me. Ive had, as you can imagine, as all women have, a number of experiences like this, one when i was 19 when senator john tower was supposed to take me to lunch and ended up with dinner, and i shouldve known better and then he took me to this bar which i shouldve gone, and then we got in the cabin he jumped in the cabin tried to rape me back cap. I was so ashamed, i cried for days but i didnt tell anybody for a couple years. Then later, when came up, i started telling people and when he came up as being nominated for secretary of defense, i have these two fbi agents come to the house and say weve heard about your experience and what checking on his resume and will you tell us about us and i said this is totally confidential and i said i happen to know that its not confidential because we work from the Washington Post and we get our stories from you guys. As it turned out, he was voted down and nancy, the only republican voted against them because she had heard my story. Then poor anita hill, who is a perfect example, didnt have mikes printer background, she didnt know better and she talked to the fbi and told her story and they subpoenaed her and she ended up on capitol hill in her life is ruined. I couldve been any to hell. Her life was ruined. She is now a punchline. Never mind that shes a distinguished lawyer. I had an experience where the producer hired me to be the girlfriend in the movie flipper about the dolphin and he said literally, you will have to sleep with me if you want to part and i said well have to ask my father and i didnt get a call back. I had the producer of 60 minutes send me over to london to cover princess and sweating and he said im in a make you a star he flew over to help me with makeup and everything and then took me to my room one night and threw me on the bed. These are stories i never told right away but then i did write a book about my cbs experience and mentioned the cbs one, but i never told the john tower story. Why. Because i was ashamed because i thought, like i just said to you, i shouldve had lunch, i was 19, addition of greed to go to dinner, i shouldve gone to the nightclub, somehow i shouldve managed to keep him out of the cab. It was my fault. I still feel that and i still feel the same way about the producer of 60 minutes. What was i thinking. He was can help me be this big star and i just started out on television and i had no experience, but i shouldve known better. It was my fault that i let him on. But it wasnt. But you see, the john tower thing, i still feel ashamed, even to this day. How do women get over the shame, we all want to look attractive. I wanted to look sexy when i go out at night and i do my hair and makeup and i want people to feel attractive, but wears the moment when you cross the line where youre coming on and youre asking for it opposed you just want to be an attractive woman. I dont think women are ever asking to be assaulted. What i say in the book as you can be wearing a short skirt, hospitals grubs or army gear. It doesnt matter. You should not feel any shame, but shaming is a potent force. How do we get over the shame part of it. How we get over it is that we talk about it. Ive even seen some people say on twitter, what paltrow didnt come forward right away so we should discount what she is saying now. No because this is how it starts. We should never shame a woman who comes forward at all. I dont care when she comes forward, ever. We should then realize that as these women come forward, even as these episodes happen, i dont care when it happened. You encourage other women to come forward when its happening to them now. Its a chain of inspiration one women at a time. Courage is not something you suddenly wake up with one day and say hey i think im in a do this monumental thing. It is a process of time. Its not a light switch. Thats a one of the greatest myth that ive seen on my social media. That is such a naive and ugly question. You dont realize where women are in society. We are still labeled troublemakers. Were still labeled the b word , we are still not believed, and the best one is that we just bring all these cases forward because we want to be seen. Oh, right. Like anita hill. But i have never met any of the women that ive spoken to who that was the reason i was on with Kerry Washington when i told the story in front of thousands of women, and i started telling the story and i thought i was going to lose it. I almost started to cry because i had never told that story before. And so, i can only imagine. I waited so long to tell that story. Does that make it less legitimate because i waited that long . No. But thats the point. Its shame, you dont want to talk about it, you feel embarrassed, its your fault, you dont want to bring that sort of attention on yourself, you dont want people to think youre a troublemaker or complainer or whatever, but i agree with you, i think the idea of people thinking about it when it happens and telling people, the feminist point of view, and i agree with this, if you say it happened, it happened. It should be done. However, there is this other side of the story and it happens on College Campuses and what happens if someone is falsely accused. I th