Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, Harvey Weinstein accuser, on her Philippine #MeToo campaign
- Model moved to Philippines amid a backlash over her sexual misconduct claim, and admits it’s a hard place to promote female empowerment
- Gutierrez does not want #MeToo to be used by women as a mere soapbox
Life over the past three years has been a roller-coaster ride for Filipino-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez.
She was one of the first women to publicly accuse disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct in 2015, filing a report with the police , then wearing a wire to her meeting with him the next day, when she recorded him trying to get her to go to his room and she asked him why he assaulted her. Despite this the District Attorney didn’t press the case due to lack of evidence.
This was widely covered by the press and led to the birth of the #MeToo movement. Gutierrez was called a prostitute and attacked by the media for being a publicity seeker; she also engaged in a lengthy legal battle in Italy, claiming damage to her reputation for her association with former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi when she was 18 years old.
In 2010, she attended a “Bunga Bunga” party hosted by Berlusconi, where he was accused of having sex with prostitutes. A much bigger volley of negative publicity followed in 2015 when she went to a police station in New York to file a report against Weinstein.
The subsequent waves of negative publicity were so great that she could not find modelling work and went back to the Philippines, her mother’s country, to rebuild her life.