How Saying #MeToo Changed Their Lives

We know what became of the men, the alleged perpetrators, swept aside in the wake of accusations against Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. But what happened to the courageous people whose harrowing accounts prompted the global #MeToo movement?

Posted 4:28 p.m. Jun 28, 2018 — Updated 4:28 p.m. Jun 28, 2018

The New York Times

, New York Times

Here, 20 women and men speak, in their own words, about what came after they revealed their long-secret stories in The New York Times. There was emotional fallout; careers were on the line. Yet there were few regrets. Instead, many were emboldened: At last, their voices matter.

— Melena Ryzik

Ashley Judd, 50, became the first actress to go on the record about Harvey Weinstein, in the article on Oct. 5 in The Times that broke the story of allegations of his sexual abuse of women. Judd, along with the reporters, were uncertain of what the reaction would be.

Eight months later, Judd has received waves of accolades and thanks. She is still busy with acting. But her longtime role as an activist has expanded. In April, Judd filed a lawsuit against Weinstein over the earnings she lost when Weinstein, whose unwanted advances she had refused, allegedly told “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson that she was impossible to work with. Weinstein has previously denied trying to derail Judd’s career.

Judd has also been flooded with queries from survivors of assault and abuse. To address their common questions and concerns, she wrote an open letter that she read at a Time’s Up event recently. “It was not our birthright to be sexually harassed or assaulted or raped,” she wrote. “Healing is our birthright.”

As told to Jodi Kantor: The first two emails I received on Oct. 5 were from executive assistants from the heads of studios. I thought that was very telling because they were women who worked for men who were gatekeepers. They were the first and the quickest to send me notes of thanks, support and admiration. As far as I knew that could have been the end of it, the validation.

Turns out it was just the beginning. People passed me notes on airplanes thanking me. Men and women. I actually just reread three notes that I kept on my bedside table. The themes are similar: thank you so much, I’ve had my own experiences with harassment and sexual assault, you’ve been so brave, you made it easier for me.

One woman was on her way to her sister’s college graduation. The sister was graduating with her rapist. On one flight, I had my Time’s Up T-shirt on, and when I got off the airplane people had lined up to thank me.

(On her lawsuit) Sexual harassment in the workplace damages economic opportunity. The power dynamics at play are revealed in a worker’s trajectory and in her paycheck. Being able to have the legal basis for remedy is crucial. The promotion that doesn’t materialize, the shift that’s reassigned, the opportunities for advantageous overtime ... those are all ways that women are punished. Bringing that to light and having economic and legal remedy is an integral part of the strategy of moving the American work force forward.

A few months ago, I was driving in rural Tennessee, listening to a report on #MeToo in the Russian Parliament. I had such wonder, knowing that in some way it started with our conversation. I did what I did because it was the right thing to do and I trusted that things would fall into place.

Now I want joyfully to shout from the rooftops, everyone come forward, everyone come forward. Everyone has to make their decisions, but I think we can safely say millions of others are here to offer support and hope. Nobody can do it for me, but I don’t have to do it alone.

—

Suzette Wright, 48, a factory worker at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant in the 1990s, sued the company two decades ago for sexual harassment. After learning of new federal action and a new lawsuit against Ford, she told her story to The Times for an article in December 2017 that examined how and why sexual harassment persisted there despite attempts to end it.

As told to Catrin Einhorn: It has been an emotional roller coaster. It resurfaced a lot of emotion for me that was difficult to fish through. And then at the same time, having so many people reach out to me for help in a time where I was fishing through my own emotions, it was hard for me to balance. I sought out mental health support. I knew I needed it in order to continue.

I think my favorite responses have been from men who say hearing my story inspired them to make company changes. That has made it really worth it for me.

My phone has been ringing off the hook. I had an invitation to close out the Women’s March in Chicago, which was phenomenal. I take every opportunity that comes my way because I know right now, in this moment, there are women who are still working in the plant and across other industries that are fearful of speaking.

The apology from Ford was important because it is a recognition, but now the work has to happen.

—

Wendy Walsh, 56, was the only woman who spoke publicly about her sexual harassment allegations against Bill O’Reilly in the April 2017 investigation in The Times, which exposed millions of dollars of settlements involving that former Fox News host and led to his ouster from the network. (Six other women had been locked into ironclad confidentiality agreements totaling $45 million.)

Walsh, who had been a guest on “The O’Reilly Factor,” said O’Reilly broke his promise to make her a contributor after she declined an invitation to his hotel suite in 2013. O’Reilly has vehemently denied the allegations of sexual harassment against him. Walsh now works as an adjunct professor of psychology at California State University, Channel Islands, and as a radio host for KFI AM 640 with iHeartMedia.

As told to Emily Steel: The afternoon The New York Times posted the article with my photo on the front page, I received a single private message on Twitter from Gretchen Carlson telling me she believed me. I exhaled, feeling that I wasn’t alone. Next came a threatening letter from O’Reilly’s attorneys and I was flat-out frozen with fear again. Would these powerful men try to sue me? Would they push my children and I into poverty under the strain of legal defense fees?

I was stunned by positive messages that came at me on social media. The best part is that I received an enormous amount of support from men. They told me awful stories of having to watch lecherous men manipulate women and because of the male code or their rank, they were powerless to complain.

Although I worried that this would hurt my business (I work in radio and sponsors are everything), somehow this increased my credibility. Suddenly all kinds of ethical companies wanted me to represent their brands.

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Natalie Saibel, 41, was the first of more than a dozen women who went on the record with The Times in December 2017 with complaints they were harassed by Ken Friedman, one of the most influential restaurateurs in the country. A longtime server at the Spotted Pig, his popular New York City restaurant, Saibel made a formal complaint in 2015, when, she said, he ran his hands over her buttocks and groin in front of customers. She was fired soon afterward. (Managers said that her long-established schedule no longer conformed to restaurant policy.)

In a statement at the time the article was published, Friedman apologized for “behavior that can accurately be described at times as abrasive, rude, and frankly wrong.” He took an immediate leave of absence from the restaurant group he ran with chef April Bloomfield. That partnership has since been dissolved.

As told to Julia Moskin: In the years after I was fired, I had so much anger and rage that didn’t have an outlet. There was no recourse. I had the sense of biding my time. I thought: I have my documents and I also have my rage, and I want to put it to good use. When the opportunity came to share and help be a catalyst or a buffer for other women, I was ready.

I didn’t want it to be just about me and my validation and my revenge. I wanted others to have a sense of resolution and relief from the trauma, the harassment, the fear and the blame and the self-shaming. These are vulnerable young women who depend on him for their paycheck.

It was really about power and domination of women. There were women who really liked him and were flirty with him. A lot of women did love him back. I think he would call himself a feminist, if you asked him. It doesn’t really shock me any more. It fills me with sadness.

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Drew Dixon, 47, is a one-time music executive at Def Jam and Arista Records, who worked with Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Santana and Aretha Franklin. In a December 2017 report in The Times, she said music mogul Russell Simmons raped her at his downtown Manhattan apartment in 1995, after months of aggressive sexual harassment in and out of the Def Jam office. (Simmons, who has been accused of rape by multiple women, has denied all instances of nonconsensual sex.)

Dixon said she was later sexually harassed repeatedly while working under another record label boss, L.A. Reid, subsequently driving her from the music industry. Reid did not respond directly to Dixon’s claims, but apologized generally in a statement for ever saying “anything capable of being misinterpreted.”

As told to Joe Coscarelli: The day that story was posted online was one of the most surreal moments of my life.

It was like a bomb going off.

These are incredibly powerful men. They’re cultural icons, they’re business icons. So just the idea that I was kicking the hornet’s nest with these two really huge people, I didn’t know what was going to happen.

At the very same time, the second I read it, I felt relief because I was done: However scary the reaction and fallout is — even however hard this is for my family to process — I am done carrying this heavy load. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t know how heavy it was until I put it down.

It’s very hard as a black woman to call out powerful black men because we have no heroes to spare. We are always, still, fighting this uphill battle, always trying to overcome this myth of the predatory black man. So the last thing you want to do is contribute to that in any way. It’s complicated as a black woman — do you take it for the team? Which is what I did for 22 years. Or do you insist that you, too, deserve dignity, physical safety and respect? That was very hard for me and it’s literally why I kept the secret for all these years. I didn’t want to tear down a black man, let alone two. But what they did was wrong.

On the other hand, I didn’t want black women to be left out of the #MeToo moment. And I did not want to miss this opportunity to be heard and believed.

I would say that it certainly has been an impetus for me to make music again. It’s a huge source of joy and personal satisfaction for me. And I think I’m good at it. So it’s been a loss for me not to be able to make records. Because of the article I’ve been contacted by aspiring artists, one of whom I’m signing to a label I am setting up specifically to make her record. That would not have happened if I hadn’t resurfaced and reminded myself — and have others reminded of — what I do.

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Deborah Harris, 64, the managing director of the Armory Show, in 2017 reported being “berated and humiliated” by Benjamin Genocchio, the executive director, after chastising him for “frisky behavior” that she said included making “lewd comments about the bodies and dress” of staff members.

Although Vornado, the Armory Show’s parent company, acknowledged at the time in a letter to Harris that Genocchio had “referred to another female employee as arm candy and previously referred to others as sweetie,” the company said that Genocchio had apologized and ceased his behavior; it also eliminated Harris’ job. Genocchio, who denied acting inappropriately, was ultimately removed from his position and has since become a partner at Galerie Gmurzynska.

As told to Robin Pogrebin: We went back to them (Vornado) — my lawyer and I — determining a package for me and they were really stubborn and did not want to negotiate, so we filed with the EEOC for hostile work environment and retaliation. It could take six months to a year to resolve.

I couldn’t really say what had happened when I left; I just kind of slipped out. I did not want to say anything because I did not want to jeopardize any negotiation.

You do what you have to do just to get out of a situation. I didn’t have anything to lose at this point. I’m really not looking for a big full-time job. But let’s say you’re in your 30s, you’re still in the business and you don’t want to be ostracized, there is that stigma. The worst thing for me was I didn’t get the support from other women in the office, even though they had come and complained to me. They didn’t want to lose their jobs. I get it.

After the article, my daughter posted on Facebook: “My mother, social justice warrior.” I really kind of got elevated in her eyes. I’m proud of myself.

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Gwyneth Paltrow, 45, the actress and entrepreneur, was known as the “first lady of Miramax” for her career-making and Oscar-winning performances in Harvey Weinstein’s films in the 1990s. In an article in October 2017, Paltrow described how she was expected to keep Weinstein’s unwanted advances a secret. Months later, she described her reaction to his arrest.

As told to Jodi Kantor: I still feel like I haven’t processed it. I’m still completely in shock. I grew up in a world where these kinds of systems remained intact. To see somebody like Harvey Weinstein, who in my professional world was omnipotent and the person who held so much of my career in his hands, in handcuffs ... it is just stunning to me.

This is a system that has existed for thousands of years, and now you cannot behave that way. The psychological implications for those of us who have been exploited by men in power are so much to process, because we’ve built our identities and defense systems and strength out of protecting ourselves against this kind of system. For a mother of a 14-year-old girl, it’s overwhelming to know we’re living in a culture where ramifications exist for this kind of thing.

There’s a veil of shame that’s been lifted off this whole thing. There’s this amazing feeling of knit-togetherness in the female community. (Many) women don’t have anything to leverage to protect themselves. That’s why it felt so urgent and upsetting and I felt naïve for not having gone through the mental exercise of postulating what the version was for a single woman trying to make ends meet.

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Julie Ruvolo, 36, a contractor and freelance writer, signed a nondisclosure and nondisparagement agreement with AngelList, an employment and fundraising network for startups, after she attended a company pool party where, The Times reported in July 2017, the company’s mostly male staff partied with bikini-clad women, many of whom were not employees.

In a story about the use of nondisclosure agreements to resolve harassment claims, Ruvolo was on the record about the fact that AngelList had denied her request to be released from the contract. AngelList would not say whether it had a legal agreement with Ruvolo and said “any implication” that it silenced people “is mistaken.”

As told to Katie Benner: You could hear a pin drop after The New York Times story came out. Almost nobody reached out to me.

I was not prepared for what it would feel like to feel silenced, especially once I saw structurally how that’s actually the problem.

I can’t talk about what happened, I can’t tell you if it happened more than once, I can’t tell you who else was there when it happened or if I was alone. I can’t tell you how it made me feel, I can’t tell you about the power dynamic between myself and the person or persons the incident happened with.

I can’t tell you who I reported it to at the company, nor what their response was. I can’t even tell you if or how their response changed over time. I can’t tell you who I asked for advice, or what they told me. I can’t tell you what conditions I signed the agreement under, and I can’t tell you what was said to me before or after I signed the agreement.

I would love to share with other people out there, men, women, whoever, encourage everyone to view NDAs with care. Because when you sign one, you’re signing away your constitutional right to free speech.

The question is maybe less about, should we expect humans to behave perfectly, and more about, what are those mechanisms in place when things don’t go perfectly and when someone has their rights infringed on?

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Chris Brown, 67, played principal bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for more than three decades. In a December 2017 report in The Times, he said that he had been sexually abused at the age of 17 by conductor James Levine, who was on the faculty of the residential summer program where Brown was studying. His was one of several accusations that prompted the Metropolitan Opera, where Levine had been music director for four decades, to open an investigation into Levine’s behavior and then to fire him. Levine has denied the accusations and is suing the Met.

As told to Michael Cooper: Almost all the responses I got were supportive. There were family members who rallied around me, some wanting to crush the abuser. I did get a sense at times that there were those that just couldn’t deal with so much truth, they needed to call it something else — like isn’t there something we can blame him for? After all, so many more people gleaned satisfaction from Levine’s artistry than his decadent impulsiveness to humiliate and destroy others; couldn’t I have been satisfied being a sacrificial lamb?

Some who wrote me said they had been abused at home or elsewhere, the article motivating them to want to share their own experiences. I have gained a lot of satisfaction from the grown men that have come up to me, resonating, because men need so badly to do just that — resonate together, to express their feelings.

Though the article provided a deep sense of relief and brought more closure to the abuse I went through, it has in the meantime opened up other issues that were exacerbated by the abuse, though not directly related. Issues such as my own sense of confidence and why I was one of the ones chosen.

The aftermath has provided a new search, one where I am learning to forgive myself for all that I have not accomplished and instead be thankful for what I have done.

—

Lindsay Meyer, 32, an entrepreneur, described in a June 2017 Times article how an investor named Justin Caldbeck, who had pledged to invest $25,000 of his own money in her first startup, sent her harassing messages, groped her and tried to coerce her into a sexual relationship. In that article she said, “I felt like I had to tolerate it because this is the cost of being a nonwhite female founder.”

Caldbeck left his investment firm, Binary Capital, after multiple harassment allegations. He declined to comment on the record to The Times, but he publicly apologized and thanked women who had accused him of harassment for providing “a sobering look into my own character.”

As told to Katie Benner: One of the things that made my decision to share the story incredibly complicated was that I was literally just weeks away from having my new company funded, and most people don’t get second chances, or even have the courage or the appetite to want to take that amount of risk again. And so here I was on the verge of getting my big second chance and what was I going to do? I was going to run straight at something that was just saturated with reputational risks for myself.

It’s been about 10 1/2 months now, and I’m finally for the first time starting to come around and understand the role that I was able to play.

Now I walk around being able to look people in the eye and acknowledge a sincere compliment. A few days, weeks and even months after these stories were written I carried a lot of shamefulness around. I couldn’t have predicted that it would take this long. My voice and my story helped to ignite what became this global cause and movement, and it took on such a life of its own that I really didn’t have time to breathe, or think about it, or come up for air.

In my case, there was really overwhelming evidence and whether I knew it at the time, I would be able to eventually do something with all of the text messages, the emails, the voice messages.

I was sure glad that I had that paper trail because it made me realize as I looked back to see that yeah, what I had gone through was not just in my head.

—

Karin Bruckner, 57, a printmaker and artist, spoke to The Times in April about her experience working at the firm of the architect Richard Meier in 1989, after earning a postgraduate degree, and having Meier rub his body up against hers at a copy machine. After the initial Times report in March on harassment allegations against him, Meier apologized “to anyone who was offended by my behavior” in a statement and took a six-month leave of absence.

As told to Robin Pogrebin: I would say that 98 percent of the input I got was very positive. Most people expressed that I was very brave in coming out and saying what I did. This is somehow a good exercise in standing up for what you believe in or speaking up against things you don’t condone. In the scheme of things it feels like a relatively small thing to be doing. It’s great if people think I’m brave, but if I can’t do this, how can I ever stand up against anything bigger? I think I also had an advantage that I’m not going to be losing a career in architecture, because I’ve left the field.

One of the most satisfying things was to see my daughter’s reaction, because she was just like, “Wow, Mom, this is so cool, this is so badass, you did the right thing and more power to you.” She is 23 now and she just started to work. The young women today have a different attitude. They are much less willing to put up with things.

Back then you said, “I don’t have anywhere to go with this and that’s just the way guys are,” but now things are different. Now people will finally listen to these stories instead of dismissing them. Now we talk because now the culture is listening to us.

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Helen Donahue, 27, is a writer and social media director. In a December 2017 report in The Times, Donahue, a former Vice Media employee, said that a company executive had grabbed her breasts and buttocks at a Vice holiday party. She said that when she reported the incident to the head of human resources, she was told that it was not sexual harassment but rather someone making a move on her. She left Vice in 2016.

As told to Emily Steel: I’ve felt more isolated since speaking out, in part because the article strained several of my remaining relationships with people in media. It was the holidays and I was with family. My parents knew it was happening — they were proud and somewhat amused at seeing my tweets on CNN. I went off a few times on social media, which was cathartic, like, finally people are paying attention.

When the article dropped, my anxiety skyrocketed. Strangers recognized me from the internet and people I hadn’t spoken to in years texted me. But I have fewer friends at Vice than ever. Only one man I worked with at Vice reached out to me in the days following and it was expected — a good friend who knows me very well. The rest were women. And even then, far fewer than I’d hoped. It was incredible because all of these people I’d considered family at one point just … weren’t there.

A few other former co-workers reached out in time, but even so, it was like every straight man I’d worked with at Vice was terrified that perhaps they, too, had harassed me at some point, so best to not say anything at all, best not to apologize lest it looks like an admission of guilt, I suppose. I think men are so used to the office-place power dynamic they don’t realize what they’re doing is permanently damaging to women.

I choose not to have even moderately close relationships with co-workers now. I go to work, do my job and go home. The last time I made my work my home and my colleagues my family, I lost everything. And I lost myself. That’s not happening again.

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Kim Rubinstein, 63, alleged sexual misconduct by Gordon Edelstein, the prominent artistic director of the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Connecticut. She had been the education director and then the associate artistic director at the theater when, she said, Edelstein groped her, masturbated in front of her and made sexually explicit remarks. He did not respond to requests for comment, but was fired in January after The Times reported her allegations, and those of other women who also complained of unwanted sexual contact or remarks. She is now a theater professor at the University of California, San Diego.

As told to Michael Paulson: Afterward, I just wept all the time — a combination of relief and sadness, but also grief that this had to happen at all. I received so many emails of support, people who had been in place with me at Long Wharf who knew a little about it confirming me and that was really helpful, and I also got a couple of emails from people from Gordon’s past, saying “What you described was almost exactly what he did with me.”

I just finished directing this new play, called “How to Defend Yourself,” at a new play festival here (in San Diego), about a college student who has been raped by a fraternity member and one of her sorority sisters starts a self-defense class. It’s been amazing to work on it and ultimately it’s healing, but there were times when I’d have to take a break and go outside and cry or be mad.

Long Wharf did get in touch with me, after a long time, not to say, “How are you doing?” or “Sorry this happened,” but to ask if I was willing to talk to a law firm they hired to look into how this happened and why this happened. I talked to the lawyer and it was great — she said this is not a conversation about you trying to prove anything, because everybody believes you. So we talked about what can be done.

It feels like this was a moment where a huge veil came off and when we have been able to see what we could not see before. I’m really grateful for that. It’s hard, but it’s the way we evolve.

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Vanessa Carlton, 37, a former student at New York City Ballet’s School of American Ballet, is now a singer-songwriter. In a January report in The Times, she said a teacher at City Ballet’s summer school threatened to expel students who spoke to reporters about the arrest of Peter Martins, ballet master in chief, who in 1992 was charged with assaulting his wife, Darci Kistler, then a principal dancer with the company. Carlton said this silencing approach was emblematic of an entrenched culture of fear at City Ballet.

That culture was challenged recently by allegations of emotional and physical abuse by Martins. He has denied any misconduct and retired from the company before City Ballet completed an investigation that the company said failed to corroborate the accusations.

As told to Robin Pogrebin: It was almost like there was this collective catharsis for a lot of us. The thing that’s unusual about ballet is this culture of silence. You start becoming conditioned when you’re 11 or 12. I had no idea how others had been suffering. It’s so insular that you’re really only living in your own experience and then this blows the whole thing open.

It feels terrifying to speak on the record. Once you jump off the cliff and you say it, you realize that actually there is no cliff. It turns into a door that’s open and there’s all these people standing on the other side and they’re literally saying, “Me too.”

I was absolutely shocked by some of the stories I heard from ballerinas I thought were untouchable. That floored me. These were queens. You’re conditioned to not complain. You’re conditioned to accept a certain style of communication and a certain way of being treated. Now that company is going to turn into something we never thought it could be. We all want to change it; it needs to change.

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Trish Nelson, 40, was among the women who spoke to The Times in 2017 about being harassed by Mario Batali and Ken Friedman at the Spotted Pig in Manhattan’s West Village. Batali was a regular and an investor at the restaurant, which was co-owned by Friedman and chef April Bloomfield. A longtime employee, Nelson said she resigned in 2012 after Friedman tried to kiss her and touch her breasts in his car, pinning her against the passenger-side door.

She said it was the final act in a long string of incidents with both men that included attempts by Batali to touch her breasts and engage her in lewd conversation. Batali said at the time of publication in December that he didn’t remember specific incidents, but “there is no question I have behaved terribly.” In a statement, Friedman acknowledged behavior that was “abrasive, rude, and frankly wrong” but also said that “some incidents were not as described,” without responding specifically to any woman’s account.

After waiting tables for 26 years, Nelson is now focusing on her other career, producing shows and performing. Inspired by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, she created “The Secret Society of the Sisterhood,” a storytelling show, which she has staged in Los Angeles and New York, with notable female writers, actors and comedians.

As told to Kim Severson: I just want to open up the conversation and hopefully heal as a culture.

Before this happened I’d invested five years in seeing a therapist on a weekly basis and now it’s become clear that what I really needed to do in order to heal myself was end the oppressive silence that I’ve been shaming myself with and speak — more like, shout — my truth.

I feel like I’ve finally been given permission to hang up an extremely worn-out pair of tap dancing shoes, the shoes I used to dance around the bloated egos and salacious behavior of power-driven men for decades. I finally feel like myself again.

I’m very close with the other girls now that have come forward and we’ll talk about how it’s affected us. We’ve just been nameless, faceless people. And that’s what most blue-collar workers are to this society with the division of the wealthy over the working class. It’s been great to finally be heard and not be disposed of.

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Kenny Sale, 27, is a model. In March he told The Times about allegedly being assaulted by photographer Mario Testino one evening in California in 2015. He was part of a second wave of accusers who came forward after a January report in The Times about the way Testino and another photographer, Bruce Weber, used their positions as gatekeepers of the fashion industry to harass models and assistants, and Testino’s lawyers attacked the characters of the men who initially spoke out. Weber denied the charges and in the March article, Testino said, “I continue to deny any wrongdoing.”

As told to Vanessa Friedman: I was definitely stressing when this thing was coming out. I was concerned my family would see it. It feels kind of shameful, like I let my dad down or something. I was not sleeping well. I have bad sleeping habits anyway, so it didn’t help. There’s been a lot of insecurities with the whole process.

The general consensus I’m seeing with everyone is they don’t want to pry into it. They don’t want to make me uncomfortable with things I’m not comfortable disclosing to them. I talked to one of my friends before I talked to you and she was really supportive. She felt really bad in a good way. She just wouldn’t want that to happen to anybody and she let me know she was really happy I was talking about this and coming out with this, because if we’re not standing together these same kind of people are going to keep doing what they are doing over and over.

The thing that’s most weird for me is that I don’t think it’s garnered enough attention of famous people. People who claim to be activists in the community and are part of the #MeToo movement still associate with this person. I think it’s really weird. Maybe they don’t know, maybe they don’t believe it. I’m not sure.

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Tina Baker, 62, a singer, performed with Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, among others, in the 1980s and ‘90s, and released her own albums as a major label recording artist known as Tina B. Russell Simmons was at one time her manager. In a December 2017 report in The Times, she was one of three women who described being raped by Simmons in his Manhattan apartment. (Simmons has denied all instances of nonconsensual sex.)

The experience stalled her career and led her to quit singing pop music for decades. Baker is now a tech industry lawyer leading a 45-person firm in London. Her account was published on the day of her company’s holiday party.

As told to Melena Ryzik: It was actually very weird having to call people up to tell them what happened, just because I knew they were about to see something. I didn’t want them to be blindsided. So I sent the link (to the article) around and told everybody that I did this because I felt it was important that this kind of behavior not be tolerated. But that I didn’t want to discuss this at the Christmas party, it was a celebration for everybody, and I’m OK. (laughs)

A couple of people emailed me and said, “Oh my god, I can’t believe you had to go through that,” but most people didn’t say anything. And then at the party, one of our male associates said he was very upset and he felt very bad for me. And he was also upset because he loves hip-hop.

A very good friend, a man, I told him about it and he looked upset. He said: “I need to ask you this question: I don’t understand how such a strong woman like you, how this could have happened to you? Like, how did you let this happen to you?”

So I think that there is a lot of education that still needs to be done. This person loves me and he needed to understand. Anyone can get raped.

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Rachel Renock, 27, and her co-founders at the employment startup Wethos told The Times in June 2017 that an investor made a series of lewd and sexist comments — including that he liked it when women fought back because he would always win — while offering them $500,000 in financing. Since that time, she has testified about workplace harassment issues before Congress.

As told to Katie Benner: The amount of strangers that reached out surprised me. I got emails from women who were in college at the time who were afraid of entering tech. I got emails and LinkedIn messages from moms, from professionals in other industries.

I think also I had a very special bond with the other women who have come forward. That circle has only gotten bigger for me and going on NBC (with five other female tech executives, to talk about harassment issues with Megyn Kelly) afterward, I’m still very close with a lot of those women. I don’t know that I quite expected or understood what kind of bond would come from that. That’s been really an incredible force, having that support system and being able to call people and say, “Congress wants me to go testify. What do you guys think of this?”

That bond has led to larger opportunities, because building out that network of powerful women — they are very much willing to help.

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Abby Schachner, 46, is a writer, illustrator and performer. In November 2017, Schachner detailed how comedian Louis C.K. audibly masturbated during a business phone call with her, one of five women who came forward with stories of inappropriate behavior involving masturbation, all of which Louis C.K. later admitted to. In January, in a stand-up special on Netflix, Dave Chappelle addressed the women, calling them weak and not cut out for the entertainment industry, and singling out Schachner’s experience, saying she had a “brittle spirit.” Schachner did not watch the special.

As told to Melena Ryzik: I stayed on my Facebook — that community was an onslaught of love. I had to clear my feelings with the Dave Chappelle thing. You become a symbol; it’s not you. It’s bigger than me. For my sanity and health, I had to stay small — that’s where the love was. I decided I was not a victim, I was an unfortunate recipient. I forgave him (Louis C.K.).

Schachner moved away from the comedy world. She took the suggestion that she was not cut out for the industry as a challenge rather than an insult.

I was called out. I was hiding. (Now) I better get over myself and start sharing. You have your own voice and you can use it as you see fit. Just because you’re not in the business doesn’t mean you stop creating; if you’re an artist that’s what you do. I think that’s the empowering part. It’s not about tearing someone down. Stopping people earlier, cauterizing the problem with people who are chronic or compulsive, that’s important. Hearing people’s experiences so they don’t have to sit with shame, that’s one of the most powerful aftereffects.

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Toni Sallie, 59, a music journalist and promoter, was one of three women who said music mogul Russell Simmons raped her in his Manhattan apartment. (Simmons has denied these allegations.) In the days leading up to the publication of The Times investigation, Sallie grew increasingly anxious about how Simmons might respond. On Dec. 13, the day the story was published, she was admitted to an emergency room; her blood pressure had skyrocketed.

Sallie soon recovered, but she could not bring herself to read the published article for days. Given the risk to her health, Sallie’s family did not want her to participate in another interview. Still, she said that she felt validated by speaking out and by the impact that her story had. She gave us permission to share the conversations. This is an excerpt from a text message Sallie sent in January.

As told to Melena Ryzik: I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes. I was just contacted by a lady that I know. She told me she was raped 6 months ago. Because of her reading my story, she had the strength to report him to the police. For the rest of my life ... Thank you! (heart emoji)

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