Meryl Streep Explains Silence Over Sexual Abuse in Hollywood

Los Angeles: Veteran actor Meryl Streep has responded to Rose McGowan's critical remarks against herself and other actors who plan to protest sexual harassment by wearing black to this year's Golden Globes.

McGowan had called out Streep on yesterday for working with producer Harvey Weinstein despite his reputation as a sexual predator and condemned their form of protest. In her response, Streep said she "wasn't deliberately silent" in Weinstein's treatment of women in Hollywood because she did not know it was happening.

"It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein's crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others. "I wasn't deliberately silent. I didn't know. I don't tacitly approve of rape. I didn't know. I don't like young women being assaulted. I didn't know this was happening," Streep said in a statement to the Huffington Post.

The 68-year-old actor added that not everyone who worked with Weinstein knew the depth of accusations against him.

"Rose assumed and broadcast something untrue about me, and I wanted to let her know the truth. Through friends who know her, I got my home phone number to her the minute I read the headlines. I sat by that phone all day yesterday and this morning, hoping to express both my deep respect for her and others' bravery in exposing the monsters among us, and my sympathy for the untold, ongoing pain she suffers. "No one can bring back what entitled bosses like Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, and HW took from the women who endured attacks on their bodies and their ability to make a living. And I hoped that she would give me a hearing. She did not, but I hope she reads this," Streep added. The actor said she was "truly sorry" that McGowan sees her as an "adversary".

"...We are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry.

"That's where the cover-ups convene. Those rooms must be disinfected, and integrated, before anything even begins to change," Streep said.

PTI