WHEN Rowena Chiu was offered a job at Miramax, in 1998, she thought her dream of a career in the film industry was finally coming true.
Less than a month later, she was fighting off her naked boss, serial sex offender Harvey Weinstein, in a Venice hotel room.
The Brit – aged 24 at the time – was left suicidal by the alleged attack, was forced into signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), and was too afraid to speak out against Weinstein for over two decades.
But in 2019, she became one of over 100 women who accused the once-powerful predator of rape or sexual assault, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Salma Hayek and Rose McGowan.
Last week, Weinstein – who was initially jailed in 2020 – was sentenced to 16 additional years for the rape and sexual assault of another victim, known as Jane Doe 1, in a Los Angeles court.
Rowena appeared as a supporting, uncharged witness in the trial — meaning that the charges Weinstein faced in the case did not stem from her account, which he continues to deny.
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Now Rowena says a “second wave” of the #MeToo movement is needed to bring down “enablers”, including the lawyers who helped cover up his vile crimes.
“It is my fervent hope that the fresh 16-year sentence continues to provide Weinstein’s 111-and-counting survivors with a measure of peace,” she says, adding that there is "still much work to be done".
“The first priority was putting people like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and R. Kelly on the stand and convicting people who have preyed on young women and, in some cases, young men.
“But as well as putting away the predators, I would have liked to see the dismantling of the system that protected them.
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“That doesn't necessarily mean – although it could mean – that his lawyers and accountants and the Weinstein Company board would stand trial, but they should be held accountable.”
'Wandering hands'
Rowena, born in Hong Kong and raised in Welwyn Garden City, was an English Literature graduate from Oxford when she landed the role of a personal assistant to Weinstein, in 1998.
Although feted in dozens of Oscar speeches, Weinstein had a fearsome reputation for being difficult and Rowena says he yelled and swore at her during their first encounter, at a screening of his Oscar-winning hit Shakespeare in Love.
She says her predecessor Zelda Perkins, who also employed her, warned her not to sit on the same sofa as Weinstein and suggested he had “wandering hands”.
“Zelda said that he was very difficult to handle and I knew his temper was legendary,” she says. “But neither Zelda nor I were aware he was a serial rapist and I was reassured by the fact that so many bright young women worked with him and seemed to be thriving.
“I thought he might have wandering hands but in the 1990s, in the film industry, sexual harassment was normalised.”
Vile attack
Despite the warnings, nothing prepared her for the horror that would unfold at the Venice Film Festival, where Miramax unveiled Shakespeare in Love.
Told she would need to share a hotel suite with Weinstein, as he habitually worked until 2am, Rowena says she was so wary of his behaviour that she wore two pairs of tights over her underwear.
As soon as they arrived, she claims that Weinstein changed into a bathrobe which he left open, and over the next four hours he repeatedly cajoled her, asking her to take off her clothes, begging for a massage and asking her for oral sex.
She says she finally she agreed to give him a massage but he then pushed her on to the bed, tore off her underwear and told her: “You could have a great career if you just give me five minutes.”
Rowena says she finally escaped by telling him Zelda would be worried about her before confiding in her colleague, who pulled her boss out of a meeting to confront him.
“We thought once people knew what Harvey had done, he would get reported to the police, get arrested and be tried for sexual assault,” she says.
“We didn't realise how difficult it was for young women to be believed. We were naïve and didn’t realise our seniors would do nothing and perhaps already knew what Harvey had done to other women.
“I was fearful and traumatised and Harvey was a very powerful man.”
We didn't realise how difficult it was for young women to be believed.
After agreeing to discuss an NDA she claims the pair were “made to feel like criminals” by lawyers, who bullied them into signing and accepting a £125,000 settlement in exchange for silence.
“The meetings at the law firm were late at night because Harvey was terrified that we would be spotted during daylight hours,” she says.
“We weren’t fed, we were escorted to the bathrooms, we weren't allowed a pen and paper, we were kept there until five in the morning.
“It made us feel like criminals and that we didn’t have any power – which of course we didn’t.”
Among the astonishing clauses in the contract, she says, were a ban on the two women contacting each other and talking to a therapist.
Lawyers also allegedly took the names and addresses of friends and family members, threatening to come after them if they exposed the attack.
“That was terrifying,” says Rowena.
“I was terrified for my personal safety but the thing that kept me bound into silence more than anything else, was the idea that my friends and family would come to harm because of what had happened to me.
“It's common for sexual assault survivors to blame themselves, and I blamed myself for not being tough enough and not standing up to him, and I thought my friends and family could potentially suffer as a result. That’s a tremendous burden of guilt for a young person to carry."
Suicide attempts
After leaving Miramax, Rowena, who was still desperate to work in film or television, attended hundreds of interviews, but the spectre of Weinstein’s influence loomed large.
“I was blackballed, either consciously or unconsciously,” she says.
“Such was his power that he didn't need to call anyone and tell them not to employ me.
"If you have a short period of time working for Harvey on your CV, interviewers are going to ask you what happened. I couldn’t tell them so I looked cagey.
“One interviewer told me: ‘We called you in because you worked for Harvey Weinstein but we aren’t going to employ anyone who worked for Harvey briefly and then left abruptly because we can't afford to offend him.’
“That was devastating to me, because my dream of working in film was over."
She adds: “I was so unhappy, I attempted suicide twice in Hong Kong.”
Speaking out
Eventually Rowena went back to business school and forged a new career as a business consultant.
Even after meeting husband Andrew Cheung, with whom she shares four children, she didn’t reveal what had happened in that Venice hotel room until 2017, when she was approached by New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor, who was gathering stories from Weinstein’s victims.
Now a fierce advocate for the #MeToo movement, and the banning of NDAs to gag survivors of sexual assault, she is keen to add diversity to the debate.
“I want to speak up for all the other women that can't because the #MeToo movement often centres on the white narrative and the famous victims,” she says.
“I think it's really important that the so-called ‘ordinary’ people, the non-famous people, also speak up and, as a Chinese woman, I am a voice of diversity because women of colour are often more vulnerable."
There’s always going to be another Harvey Weinstein because there are always going to be monsters who abuse power
Rowena was portrayed by actress Angela Yeoh in the recent movie She Said, which centres on Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s fight to bring the Miramax boss to trial.
Now the mum-of-four is determined the world her two daughters, now 13 and 11, inhabit will not allow history to repeat itself.
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“There’s always going to be another Harvey Weinstein because there are always going to be monsters who abuse power," she says.
“But while others are silent, turn their heads and enable him to do this, while there are lawyers that will take his money to negotiate horrific NDAs with young women, it’s possible for another person to come along and abuse power in the way that Harvey did.”
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