Actress Kristina Cohen shared her personal experience with Ed Westwick, former star of Gossip Girl, on Monday night in a long Facebook post, accusing him of rape.
According to her post, Cohen, along with an unnamed producer she had been dating at the time, had visited Westwick at his house. She described the beginning of the encounter as overall uncomfortable, as at one point, the actor blatantly stated, “We should all f**k.” Cohen’s boyfriend, despite her visible discomfort, convinced her to stay to avoid making their host feel awkward. Westwick allegedly suggested for the actress to take a nap in the guest room after Cohen expressed her fatigue as means to escape the situation, and Cohen obliged.
Cohen then recounted how she awoke with the actor on top of her, forcibly performing sexual acts. She said how she had struggled to fight him off, but he was stronger than her. “I was paralyzed, terrified. I couldn’t speak, I could no longer move. He held me down and raped me.”
The actress explained how afterwards, her boyfriend at the time who had accompanied her to Westwick’s impressed guilt upon her, referring to her as an “active participant” and telling her that Westwick would “destroy” her if she were to say anything about it.
“I didn’t have the support system or time to process and deal with the aftermath of the rape. I buried my pain and guilt to make space for the onslaught that came after my mom’s death, just three months later,” she shared in the post. “I’ve grown considerably in the three years since my assault, so to revisit (it) is painful. To dig in and relive this night in order to accurately share the events, feels like a continued violation. My stomach is in knots, scared … to share this publicly, as even fully reconciling with myself has been a tough process.”
Cohen expressed how the stories of other victims of sexual assault who had been silenced and are now refusing to be quiet inspired her to come forward with her own story.
On Tuesday, Nov. 7, Westwick took to Twitter to deny the claims made against him, saying, “I do not know this woman. I have never forced myself in any manner, on any woman. I certainly have never committed rape.”
https://twitter.com/EdWestwick/status/927940546382913536
If the allegations are true, Ed Westwick is another one of the many male figures in Hollywood who utilize their power to suppress victims of their heinous crimes.
“I now realize the ways in which these men in power prey on women and how this tactic is used so frequently in our industry, and surely, in many others,” wrote Cohen.
