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“Just my friend Oliver.”
Mr. Ericsson scratched his notepad with his pen. “Oliver’s last name?”
“Bradley,” she said, sure that she’d just earned one of her best friends a trip to HR.
“And why haven’t you come forward in formally reporting Mr. Jenkins’s behavior earlier, Ms. Green?”
The million-dollar and most infuriating question, and Lucy had to answer it.
“Because I was honestly afraid of what would happen. In case you haven’t noticed, people don’t generally believe women when they come out against powerful men. Case in point, this meeting.” She folded her arms and frowned.
Mr. Ericsson sat back in his chair. His mustache twitched.
Amanda leaned forward and pressed her hands into the table. “Lucy, we are following the necessary protocol given the allegations. That doesn’t mean we don’t believe Annie—or you. There is just a system in place—”
“To protect Jonathan,” Lucy finished for her. “He gets all the benefits of the doubt. And yes, I know we live in a due-process world where you’re innocent until proven guilty, but his behavior is the kind that evades evidence. The touching and the comments and the private meetings don’t leave physical marks, so it comes down to he said, she said, and forgive me for having lost faith in the chances of being believed as a she.”
Amanda sat back in her chair. Her hand slowly curled into a fist, and Lucy knew she agreed with her but wasn’t in a position to say so.
Mr. Ericsson’s mustache twitched again, and she wondered how accustomed he was to hostile witnesses. He’d surely had plenty of work since the MeToo movement swept Hollywood. Someone must have lost their cool on him during all of that; she couldn’t have been the first. “We’re just trying to gauge if the behavior spread beyond the individual who reported it, Ms. Green.”
“Well, I’ve confirmed for you that it had.”
“Indeed you have, and we thank you for that. Now, you said that you have previous experience with Mr. Jenkins behaving in a similar way. Can you please describe these experiences?”
Lucy took a long, deep breath. She worried she’d have to construct a complicated and exhausting account of it all, but the honesty curse—that maybe wasn’t a curse in this case?—took over for her. “Over the years, Jonathan—Mr. Jenkins—has made me feel uncomfortable on multiple occasions. He has invaded my private space, touched me inappropriately, and made suggestive comments.”
“Has he ever solicited you sexually?”
Lucy’s face warmed, and she thought of all those closed-door meetings in Jonathan’s office, of all the opportunities he had to pull one of the vulgar stunts she’d read so many headlines about. What he said that morning was the closest he’d ever come, and even that could be argued as ambiguous.
“Not explicitly, no.”
Mr. Ericsson nodded. “Has he ever performed sexual acts in your presence?”
“No,” Lucy said, and wondered what Annie had told them. She couldn’t fight the guilt roiling inside her over not having spoken up earlier.
“When you say Mr. Jenkins touched you inappropriately, what does that entail?” Mr. Ericsson asked.
A rush of rage filled her like a hot balloon. She wanted to forget the details, but there she was explaining them to a stranger.
“I mean that he frequently touched my shoulder or knee during private meetings like he did today. He sometimes asked for hugs at holiday parties.”
“Did you ever ask him to stop?”
Mr. Ericsson carried on like he was reading from a list—he probably was—and it felt so dehumanizing. His question stripped the context out of every encounter and left her answer sounding inadequate.
“Until today, no.”
He nodded and scribbled on his notepad. “Ms. Green, do you have any evidence of these interactions with Mr. Jenkins? Perhaps text messages or emails? A photograph even?”
“Of course not. Jonathan is entitled, not stupid.”
Her sharp tone appeared to pop him. He let out a deflated breath. “Look, Ms. Green. I’m just trying to do my job. I appreciate your cooperation so far, and I understand this is not easy.”
She calmly folded her hands and leveled him with her gaze. “Mr. Ericsson, I appreciate that you are just trying to do your job, but I just try to do my job every day here. I try to do my job to the best of my ability, and I’ve had to do that in the shadow of Jonathan Jenkins for years. I don’t think you understand what it’s like to come to work worried every day; dreading being called into a private meeting; feeling unsafe and unable to speak up about it. Wondering if your outfit or makeup will be deemed too suggestive. Or if today’s the day he locks the door and fully crosses the line. If you can promise to do your job in a way that removes those factors from my job and the jobs of others in a way that is safe for us, then I’m happy to be forthcoming.”
Her words hung heavy in the air, and she was glad it was all on record because that was quite the speech.
