The Good Guys Who Enable Sexual Predators

And how men don’t understand why we would rather come across a bear in the woods than a man.

Earlier today I watched a male comedian talk about how a longtime friend of his had raped a female friend of theirs. He had seen warning signs for years and ignored them, or -I think- more accurately he did not know they were warning signs.  He will now feel guilty for the rest of his life. He goes on to say that men need to educate themselves on what women are dealing with on a daily basis, namely trying to avoid being assaulted at all times. 

I’ve watched countless videos this past week of women saying why they would rather encounter a bear in the woods than a man. Bears will not intentionally try to harm you, they will run away when you scream at them, people will believe you when you say you were attacked by a bear. The bear’s friends won’t defend him and say there was no way he could have done it.

In early 2016 I spoke up publicly about a colleague that had assaulted me. At the time, I didn’t even know that I had been assaulted, I just spoke up because I knew he had harmed about 25 other women and I wanted to make sure that people knew what he was. In the end, one journalist told me they had about 100 names of women who had come forward, although very few of them wanted to be named publicly.

During this harrowing time of my life, I was contacted by hundreds of people- men and women- who told me their stories of having been assaulted by various men throughout their lives. Most of these stories were from women - but there were stories from men too. In speaking up with my story, I unintentionally became a receptacle for others to share their trauma with. It was a waking nightmare that wouldn’t go away when I closed my eyes at night. 

I also received a tearful phone call from the Mutual Friend who had introduced me to the man who had assaulted me- the one he told me not to tell about what happened.

“I didn’t know,” my friend said to me on the phone, crying. “I didn’t know.”

In hindsight, the signs were there. Heathcliff (HC) was not an attractive man, yet our Mutual Friend (I’ll shorten his name to M.F.) was always so impressed by HC’s ability to go to bed with women, seemingly any time he wanted ( even when he was engaged and later married.)  M.F. had never felt confident around girls, or anyone really, and part of HC’s allure to MF was his confidence in that area. I never understood it because I found HC particularly unattractive.

What we found out later was that HC wasn’t exactly using his charms to take these women home with him. There were stories, like mine, of when “no” did not mean no to him. Then there were other times when women reported having been drugged by him. I personally think he drugged me at least twice, once at a Danny Brown concert at the Echo in 2012, then another time at a show at SXSW sometime earlier. That second instance sticks out to me because he brought me beer and introduced me specifically to a famous rapper from a historically influential famous west side 90’s rap collective. This rapper wouldn’t let me leave alone that night until I finally told him I had a boyfriend and I hightailed it out of there. The friend I was staying with said “I can’t believe you just made up a fake boyfriend to The G–” (because this is a very very famous rap group.)  Later at our apartment, I started acting crazy and then years later came to realize that was probably the effects of whatever drugs had been put in my drink. This stands out to me because after HC was named, a lot of stories came out privately about him acting as a pimp for The G–, with a lot of women not having the luck I did to get out of there. 

These are the types of stories I think about when I think about how there are red flags that you don’t know are red flags. Our MF was present for that event, and many others,-  like when HC took me with him to drop off drugs to a young popular rapper at his hotel room, and the man opened the door and said to me “wanna see my dick?” My friends and I thought that was a funny story, but now I realize I was one of the women that HC was bringing around for his clients to take advantage of. At the time my friends and I were just too young and dumb and drunk to see how disrespectful and gross it all was. We didn’t KNOW that HC was drugging women and bringing them to famous rappers' hotel rooms where “no” did not mean no. But were there warning signs? Yes, yes there were.

I’m not friends with the MF anymore but sometimes I wonder what his culpability in all of that was. He 100% enabled the career of HC, as in -HC would not have had his career without the endorsement and support of the MF. Everyone who knows these people and this story knows this, yet the MF has never been questioned or held accountable for his enabling. Without MF’s support, HC would not have been able to have high-profile clients. He would not have had access to the rooms he was in that gave him access to the situations I was put in, being presented to predators like a sushi plate on a looping track.

Without the support of the Mutual Friend, HC would not have been able to hurt 100 women.

I do not think that MF had any clue that HC was drugging women to get them to sleep with him. From what he said to me over the years, he just thought that HC was particularly charming to women and they liked him. But it was well known to everyone who knew him that HC was a drug dealer and that he got his clients by doing PR work for free while supplying them with drugs. Every band on his roster was a pretty well known “Drug” band. It’s not that far of a leap to believe the women (including myself) who said they were drugged and assaulted by him.

Were there red flags? Yes, yes there were.

It's been 8 years since the HC story came out. We told our story in early 2016 and it became such a whirlwind that some of the women and I were interviewed by most news outlets in the country, although many- like the New York Times- never ran their stories because of legal reasons. Our story snowballed into the greater consciousness and a few months later, Gretchen Carlson spoke up about Roger Ailes,  and Bill O’Reilly was forced to leave Fox News. Then Trump was elected, the Women’s March Happened, Ronan Farrow outed Harvey Weinstein and the Me Too moment seemed to signal that the time of sexual predators in power was over.

And yet. It’s 2024 and men still don’t understand why women would choose a bear over being alone with a man. Sexual assault cases are rarely brought to court, and even fewer rarely see a conviction. In the multiple times throughout my life that I have tried to speak up, starting with my first year of college in 2000, I have been told that it would cause more psychological harm than good and that the results would be the same. 

I’m hopeful by seeing this comedian telling men that they need to step up, because they sure as hell aren’t listening to women. Every. Woman. I. Know. has been sexually assaulted. And most men are completely unaware of this fact. 

My biggest takeaway from the whole HC situation wasn’t how big of a predator he was- I have known many violent predators in my life. It was how many “good guys” he was able to manipulate into thinking he was a good guy. He used these men’s ignorance against them. When you’re a good person, it’s often impossible to imagine the things that a manipulative person could be doing behind your back because the whole point of manipulation is that you don’t know it’s going on. But are there warning signs? Yes, yes there are. 

Men being ignorant of what women go through is what is allowing rampant sexual abuse to continue in plain sight. This comedian is right to say that men need to educate themselves and to ask their female friends about this. Because men are supposed to be the ones protecting us from the bears, not the reason we choose bears over them.