“I think about young girls today … I don’t want my future daughter, your daughter, or any person to be afraid that they will be punished if they speak out about being abused. Especially if their abuser is in a position of power. I was lucky in that I have a powerful mother who supports me, and that support negated much of the leverage my attacker had over me.
“Even with that support, I was forced into a room, and I absolutely believe that if my friend hadn’t been with me, I would have been raped. When he was thwarted, he thought he could do even more damage, and attempted to kill me and the people I was with. Unfortunately, my close friend David A. Dawson was injured when our car was rammed by Zander Lewis’s bodyguard. The coward then fled the scene,” Halle said as she became overcome with emotion.
If I could’ve gotten up without almost passing out from the pain, I would have gone to her. I was glad that her mother stepped up and give her a hug of comfort.
“Mark my words. Zander was just doing what he assumed from prior experience he could get away with. In the coming days, others will come forward and share their experiences of this predator,” Halle concluded, then collapsed into her mom’s arms.
I was impressed. I’d never seen this many people from the press sit that quietly before. Their usual MO would be to start shouting questions. Frank had one of his people begin showing the videos. He ran through them all before having the rest of us comment on them.
I hadn’t seen the whole thing before.
Brook and Halle were pushed into the room by Zander’s security, and then Zander walked in and made a big show of locking the door.
“Finally, we’re alone. Have you had time to figure out what’s best for you?” Zander asked.
“I thought I made it clear. I’m not sleeping with you,” Halle said.
You could tell that Zander was losing his self-control. I had no idea why Halle seemed to be trying to reason with him.
“Look. I’ve been patient, but if you ever want to work in this industry again, you might want to reconsider. Plus, I will be the best you ever had,” he said with a leer.
“I said, ‘No!’” Halle barked.
“Calm down. I thought you wanted a threesome,” Zander said.
“No, you and your goons dragged us in here,” Brook said.
“Listen, bitc …” was all he got out as he grabbed Brook and Halle, and tried to throw both of them onto the bed.
Halle looked completely shocked as she stumbled backward onto the bed from the force of Zander’s shove. Brook winced with pain and then gave Zander a glare of pure hatred.
That was a look I never wanted to see on her face when she looked at me.
Brook bounced up from where she’d been thrown, rubbing her arm, and punched him in the throat. He’d started to unbuckle his belt. Zander’s smirk instantly changed to an expression of disbelieving pain. Brook then kneed him where it counts, and he curled up in a ball.
Halle scrambled up and watched as Zander uncurled and started to get up with a look of pure murder on his face. She kicked him in the side, he went back down, and she and then Brook kicked him a few more times.
A couple of seconds later, Fritz and I burst in. I scooped them up to keep them from killing him and almost got my own beatdown. As soon as they figured out it was me, they both broke down crying and clung to me, visibly shaking. It was like all the adrenaline left them, and all that was left were two scared little girls.
I was impressed by Brook’s handling of Zander. He was completely surprised when she didn’t just cower in fear. Cassidy would be proud of her. I cringed when I saw Halle and Brook start to kick him in the sack and the side. You would have guessed they thought he was a piñata full of chocolate. He was lucky when I rushed in and snatched both girls up before they could do any more damage.
Then again, seeing how the girls broke down as soon as they realized they were safe made me realize just how traumatized they were by Zander’s actions. I looked around, and it seemed like most of the reporters were having the same thoughts as me.
In the van, Fritz had set up two cameras, one pointing at all the passengers and one straight ahead. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits, and then suddenly, they were being tossed around like rag dolls. I said a silent prayer of thanks that they all had their seat belts on and wondered why the airbags didn’t go off. I guess we were hit at a weird angle when Fritz swerved. When I saw what happened to me, I had to close my eyes. From the way I hung in my seat belt, it was clear that I was out cold.
They then showed the video from the forward-pointing camera. The SUV suddenly appeared at the edge of the screen on the passenger side and crashed into us. Shortly after, we came to a stop, the passenger doors of the SUV opened, and the video caught the other security guard and Zander running from the scene. If Zander had run back the way he came, he wouldn’t have been visible, but he hadn’t. He’d run in front of our van and turned to see what had happened. Frank froze the video so everyone could see for themselves that it was, in fact, Zander Lewis.
The next-to-last video was of Fritz talking to the driver and him admitting that Zander had ordered him to ram our car. The last video almost made me sick. It showed the paramedics having to pull my apparently lifeless body from the van. They couldn’t open my door, so they’d taken the back off my seat in order to get a backboard under me and slide me out. I would have to seek them out and thank them for how professional they were and how much care they’d taken to make sure I wasn’t further injured.
Fritz was up next and described what had happened. He also reported that the police had found cocaine in Zander’s SUV. Then he conveyed that the security wasn’t Zander’s, but that they worked for the studio. With that last little tidbit, I was confident that Halle wouldn’t be seeing any overt backlash from the studio’s executives. They would be far too worried about being sued by everyone involved to risk inviting further repercussions by harassing her.
Ask any lawyer; they say you should sue everyone and see what money shakes out. The studio had much deeper pockets than Zander did. If Zander and the security people were convicted of anything, I would bet that civil suits would soon follow.
Lexi talked next and described what she had seen. Then I spent a few minutes adding my perspective. Next, it was Rita’s turn. She went into full mama-bear mode and let the world know what she thought of what had happened. You had to remember that her son had survived a terrorist attack this last summer, and now her daughter could have died from an attack by her costar.
When she was done, the press found its footing and was back to normal.
“Halle! Did you ever report Zander’s misconduct to anyone associated with the film?”
“I talked to both Susan Woodley, the director for Love Letters, and Charles Conte, our studio liaison. They brought me in to complain about my performance, and I explained what had happened in my trailer with Zander. I told them about him making unwanted advances and groping me. They said they understood, but I needed to be more professional and work through it.”
“Do you know what the studio did with your complaint?”
“You’ll have to ask them. I’m sure they will be open about what steps they’ve taken to protect me and other women from Zander on this and future films,” Halle said.
I barked out a laugh, and Rita gave me a look. We all knew they had patted Halle on the head and told her to be a big girl and suck it up.
“What do you plan to do when you go back on set?”
“Nothing, because I am sure this will never happen again,” Halle said.
There had been a heated discussion about how she should handle that question. Halle wanted to get on her soapbox and let her justified indignation fly. Rita had explained the facts of life to her. If she did, she would be labeled a problem child and would be quietly blacklisted. The good old boys were still in power, and if you threatened their world order, you would never work there again. She had come right up to the line when she said that Zander was only doing what prior experience had taught him he could get away with. The implication was clear, but she hadn’t said out loud that Zander wasn’t the only sexual predator in Hollywood.