Actress Julia Ormond has filed a lawsuit to get to the “root cause” of systemic assault in Hollywood.
The “Legends of the Fall” star is suing CAA, The Walt Disney Company, and Miramax for allegedly being complicit in mega-producer Harvey Weinstein‘s assault on her. Ormond is also suing Weinstein for battery.
“I am coming forward with my story now publicly because I feel as if we still need systemic change, and I feel that we need accountability from enablers, in order to get there,” Ormond told Variety, who first reported the news. “I feel that this is what happened with me.”
Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year sentence for rape convictions in New York, and is facing an additional 60 years in prison after being found guilty of three rape charges in Los Angeles. Ormond’s lawsuit is filed under the Adult Survivors Act, which operates outside the statute of limitations. The lawsuit was filed in the New York Supreme Court, with Ormond alleging that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 1995, asking her for a massage during which he masturbated on top of her and forced her to perform oral sex.
“Obviously, Harvey Weinstein is in jail and is going to be in jail for a very long time,” Ormond said. “I personally don’t believe that Harvey could have done this without enablers. And for me, that is the layer that you have to get down to, in terms of the root cause.”
She continued, “If there had been best practices and Harvey Weinstein had been called out at the start after his first sexual harassment or his first sexual assault, he could have learned different behaviors, and potentially all of the people that followed wouldn’t have been harmed. But he wasn’t. And there’s a reason for that.”
Ormond added, “There’s no way that Harvey did this without people knowing. If people knew, they were either too afraid to step up, or they allowed the profit that they were making from their relationship with him to justify a cover-up.”
Ormond met Weinstein in 1994; her team later inked a two-year production deal with Weinstein’s Miramax. Ormond’s CAA agents Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane negotiated the deal with Weinstein, with Ormond’s lawsuit alleging they were aware of “Weinstein’s propensity for sexually assaultive and exploitative behavior, particularly as to young actresses whom Weinstein was meeting for business purposes. On information and belief, Huvane and Lourd also had knowledge of confidential settlements that Weinstein reached to keep his conduct hidden from public exposure. But they did not disclose these circumstances to Ormond or otherwise warn her about Weinstein’s propensity for sexual assault.”
Lourd and Huvane are the co-chairmen of CAA today, though not named as defendants. CAA is being sued, and both are mentioned in the lawsuit filing against the agency for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.
The lawsuit adds, “That sexual assault on Ormond could have been prevented if Miramax or Disney had properly supervised Weinstein and not retained him while knowing that he was a danger to the women he encountered at work. Likewise, had CAA fulfilled its legal duties to Ormond to look out for her well-being, to not place her in danger, and to warn her about Weinstein’s predations, Ormond would not have been in a position to be victimized by Harvey Weinstein.”
Weinstein’s Miramax and owner The Walt Disney Company are being sued for negligent supervision and retention.
“The men at CAA who represented Ormond knew about Weinstein. So too did Weinstein’s employers at Miramax and Disney,” the lawsuit reads. “Brazenly, none of these prominent companies warned Ormond that Weinstein had a history of assaulting women because he was too important, too powerful, and made them too much money.”
IndieWire has reached out to The Walt Disney Company and CAA for comment.
Read Ormond’s full lawsuit here.
