HOLLYWOOD—Adult performer Brett Rossi penned an op-ed piece published Friday by Vice's women's interest sub-site Broadly in which she looks back upon her headline-generating 2015 abuse allegations against actor and former fiancé Charlie Sheen and ponders how they would be received in the current social climate of the #MeToo movement.
Coming at a particularly apt time, in light of yesterday's guilty verdict against comedian Bill Cosby on all three counts of aggravated indecent assault for which he was standing trial in Pennsylvania—widely considered the first celebrity sexual assault case of the #MeToo era—Rossi's piece asks in its headline "When Will Sex Workers Get Our #MeToo Moment?" and later notes that at the time she made her accusations against Sheen (which included assault and battery, emotional distress, false imprisonment and negligence), "the backlash against me was atrocious. I felt immediately categorized as a gold digging, lying whore who couldn't possibly be telling the truth simply because I make money taking my clothes off."
Rossi goes on to muse, "Today, I wonder if the media might have reacted differently if I had come out about my abuse during this #MeToo moment. Would my voice have been heard like everyone else currently claiming abuse by a Hollywood A-lister? Would I have received the same public support?"
She adds, "I'd like to think that perhaps I would have, but the fact that violence against women working in the sex industry continues to occur mostly unchecked, leaves me highly skeptical of the #MeToo movement in its entirety. There is one thing that's for sure: If this movement is going to be truly effective, it must be truly inclusive."
Early in the piece, she points to the just signed-into-law FOSTA/SESTA measure as a prime example of how sex workers' rights to protection from violence continue to go largely ignored, citing the many who've "publicly argued [it] will hugely compromise their safety while they work by shutting down online services that facilitate their safety and forcing them onto the street."
As punctuation of that point, Broadly published a separate op-ed just after Rossi's by a sex worker named Laura LeMoon, headlined "SESTA Won't Stop Sex Trafficking, But It Will Kill Sex Workers." In it, LeMoon writes, "Because of FOSTA/SESTA, sex workers are now in an incredibly vulnerable position—something those who wish to exploit them are well aware of. ... What happens when we create a climate of desperation by driving sex workers even further underground? Will people be able to keep themselves safe? The answer, as sex workers have been saying this whole time, is clearly no."
Read Rossi's piece in full here.
