Molly Ringwald says director 'stuck his tongue in my mouth’ at 14

Molly Ringwald, the former teen star of movies like ‘The Breakfast Club’ and ‘Pretty In Pink’, has said that a director sexually assaulted her on a movie set when she was 14.

In an op-ed piece written for The New Yorker entitled ‘All The Other Harveys’, she details a predatory atmosphere pervading the movie business when she was young.

The former member of the influential ‘Brat Pack’ writes about appearing in one of Harvey Weinstein’s first movies in 1988, but says that while he was ‘volatile’ on set, the pair never had a run-in of the kind recently described by dozens on women in Hollywood.

“Thankfully, I wasn’t cajoled into a taxi, nor did I have to turn down giving or getting a massage,” Ringwald writes. “I was lucky. Or perhaps it was because, at that moment in time, I was the one with more power.”

However, she does detail two other incidents of sexual assault at the hands of others.

“When I was fourteen, a married film director stuck his tongue in my mouth on set,” she says, while during audition, another director forced her to let a lead actor put a dog collar around her neck, despite it having nothing at all to do with the role, leaving her in tears.

“When I was thirteen, a fifty-year-old crew member told me that he would teach me to dance, and then proceeded to push against me with an erection,” she adds.

In the article, she also recalls a crude comment made about her by Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, who has spoken out about the recent Harvey Weinstein accusations of rape and sexual assault with revulsion, calling him ‘a monster’.

Katzenberg remarked in a piece about Ringwald’s comeback to Hollywood in the magazine Movieline in 1995: “I wouldn’t know [Molly Ringwald] if she sat on my face.”

“Maybe he was misquoted,” she writes. “If he ever sent a note of apology, it must have gotten lost in the mail.”

The producer has since made an unreserved apology.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, he said: “That Molly Ringwald had to read those words attributed to me and believe I said them is horrifying, mortifying and embarrassing to me.

“Anyone who knows me now or back then knows I do not use language like that as a matter of course, or tolerate it. Ms. Ringwald, 22 years too late, I am deeply, deeply sorry.”

Ringwald goes on to say: “My hope is that Hollywood makes itself an example and decides to enact real change, change that would allow women of all ages and ethnicities the freedom to tell their stories — to write them and direct them and trust that people care.

“I hope that young women will one day no longer feel that they have to work twice as hard for less money and recognition, backward and in heels. It’s time.”

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