A British former assistant to Harvey Weinstein has said she has broken a confidential agreement to speak out about alleged sexual harassment by the disgraced Hollywood producer.
Zelda Perkins said in an interview with the Financial Times that she was breaking the non-disclosure agreement (NDA), said to have been made in October 1998, to shine a light on the workings of the secretive legal arrangement.
NDAs have come under increased scrutiny after allegations made against not just Weinstein but also Roger Ailes, the founder of Fox News, and others.
In Perkins’ case, she was said to have shared a £250,000 settlement with another woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein.
Perkins, who has waived her right to anonymity, alleged that Weinstein repeatedly sexually harassed her when she worked for Miramax in London, starting when he asked her to massage him while he was in his underwear.
“I want to publicly break my non-disclosure agreement,” she told the FT, running the risk of legal action against her. “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.”
Among the clauses designed to curtail her future behaviour were directions on what to do if she were asked to provide testimony.
One stated that if “any criminal legal process” involving Weinstein or Miramax required her to give evidence, she would give 48 hours’ notice to Mark Mansell, a lawyer at Allen & Overy, “before making any disclosure”.
She told the newspaper that she endured days of questioning at Allen & Overy’s London office to draw up the NDA, finishing with a 12-hour session in front of Weinstein’s lawyers.
“I was pretty broken after the negotiation process,” she said. “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.”
Perkins, who now works for the Robert Fox theatre production company, claimed that her first experience of harassment was when Weinstein asked her to massage him while he was wearing just his underwear, which she declined to do.
“But this was his behaviour on every occasion I was alone with him,” she said. “I often had to wake him up in the hotel in the mornings and he would try to pull me into bed.”
Weinstein, who denies allegations of non-consensual sex, has been accused of sexual harassment and abuse by dozens of women.
The 65-year-old is the subject of criminal investigations in the UK, Los Angeles and New York, as well as a civil rights investigation in the US state.