#MeToo accusers, 5 years later: 8 survivors who catalyzed the movement and where they are now

In an April 2022 interview with Variety, comedian Rebecca Corry said she's tired of being called a "victim," "accuser," or "one of the five women" who accused Louis C.K. of sexual misconduct.

In a shocking turn of events, C.K. won a Grammy for best comedy album, five years after The New York Times reported in 2017 on allegations of sexual misconduct against him from five women, including Corry.

In a statement, C.K. responded to The Times report saying his behavior in the allegations were "true" and that he was "remorseful" for his actions.

"At the time, I said to myself that what I did was okay because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true," C.K. said in the 2017 statement. "But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn't a question. It's a predicament for them."

He continued: "The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.

Insider reached out to representatives for C.K. for response to our #MeToo coverage.

Previously, Corry has been reluctant to publicly address the accusation, but in light of C.K.'s recent Grammy win, the comedian reflected on the situation, saying she's not sorry for speaking up.

"I'm now able to process it and find some of the funny in what is a disgusting and absurd circumstance," Corry told Variety at the time. "I think it just takes time to process trauma into humor."

In light of Harvey Weinstein's fall and the rise of the #MeToo movement, Wallin, a Swedish writer and actor, took to Instagram in October 2017, accusing prominent Swedish-Finnish journalist Fredrik Virtanen of drugging and raping her in 2006.

The writer also penned and self-published a memoir detailing her experience, though she doesn't name the man in the book.

Four years later, Virtanen, who denied the allegations, has not been charged with any crimes related to the accusation.

In the same amount of time, however, Wallin has been charged and convicted of defamation on social media. On March 17, she was acquitted on charges of gross libel related to publishing her memoir.

Though if she were convicted, she could have faced jail time, and the government would have sought out all unsold hard copies of her book and destroyed it, The New York Times reported.

Actor Kevin Spacey is on trial this week after Rapp sued the actor in 2020, claiming Spacey made an unwanted sexual advance towards him at a party in 1986.

In 2017, prompted by the onset of the #MeToo movement, Rapp publicly spoke about the 1986 incident — when he was 14 and Spacey was 26. In the lawsuit, Rapp claimed Spacey "intentionally and voluntarily and without plaintiff's consent engaged in an unwanted sexual advance with a 14-year-old and grabbed then infant plaintiff, Anthony Rapp's, buttocks, lifted him onto a bed and laid on plaintiff's body."

Rapp said he came forward out of fear that similar assaults could "keep happening" if he said nothing and wanted to do his part to "change the culture."

Spacey has denied all the allegations against him.

During the trial on Wednesday, Rapp testified that he was "frozen" in fear during the encounter.

"I was this 14-year-old child and I had no desire to have any kind of experience like that in my life," Rapp said during his testimony. "It was incredibly frightening and very alarming."

"It was antithetical to anything else I had ever experienced in the theater community. It disrupted a sense of belonging in this community," he continued. "I'm fortunate that that 14-year-old boy had the wherewithal to move on ... but I would argue that he should have never gone through it in the first place."

Rapp also testified that he knew he "was not the only one Kevin Spacey had made advances to," creating an uproar in the courtroom as Spacey's legal team objected to the statement. The presiding judge sustained the objection and moved to strike it from the record, Variety reported.

Chase Scolnick, an attorney for Spacey, did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.

Alongside his legal troubles in the US, Spacey is also facing criminal charges in the UK, including four counts of sexual assault and one count of "causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent." He pleaded not guilty in June 2022, and his trial is expected to start next year.

In 2017, Haleigh Breest sued Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis, accusing him of raping her when she attended a 2013 movie premiere as a film publicist.

Haggis countersued Breest, claiming the encounter was consensual. He is set to face trial later this month over the encounter.

A former high-ranking member of the Church of Scientology, Haggis won a pre-trial motion last month allowing him to argue that the Church of Scientology was behind Breest's lawsuit as a means of retribution for leaving the church in 2009.

A spokesperson for the church previously told Insider's Ashley Collman that it "has nothing to do with the claims against Haggis nor does it have any relation to his accusers."

"The claim is absurd and patently false," Scientology spokesperson Karin Pouw wrote.

Breest's lawyers also slammed Haggis' claim, saying it was an "outright lie" that the church prompted her to file her suit.

After Breest filed her suit in 2017, three other women also came forward with similar claims against Haggis, and a judge in the case ruled that her legal team will be able to use their testimonies.

Attorneys for Haggis did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.

McGowan was one of the first women to publicly accuse Weinstein of sexual assault, which she said happened during the Sundance Film Festival in 1997.

She initially spoke about the incident in 2016 without naming the producer behind it before she openly reflected on her experience following the #MeToo movement.

"You know, nobody talks, but to me, the truth isn't revolutionary. It's just the truth and I figure if other people — I'm not that unique," McGowan said during a 2018 interview with Good Morning America. "So if I'm thinking it I'm pretty sure other people are thinking it, but a lot of people are like 'maybe this isn't real' because there's such gaslighting in this culture."

In a statement to ABC News at the time, Ben Brafman, an attorney for Weinstein denied the allegation.

"Mr. Weinstein denies Rose McGowan's allegations of non-consensual sexual contact," Brafman said, "and it is erroneous and irresponsible to conflate claims of inappropriate behavior and consensual sexual contact later regretted, with an untrue claim of rape."

Insider reached out to representatives for Weinstein for response to our #MeToo coverage.

Weinstein's sex crimes trial kicked off this week in Los Angeles. He faces up to 140 years in prison if convicted. The disgraced studio head is already serving a 23-year sentence after being convicted of rape and sexual assault two years ago.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles wanted to call 15 women to testify against Weinstein in the upcoming trial, but a judge excluded 10 of them, including McGowan, Variety reported.

Last year, a judge threw out a racketeering lawsuit she filed against Weinstein in October 2019 after McGowan reportedly missed a filing deadline, NPR reported. She had been representing herself in the lawsuit, in which she accused the former media mogul and his legal team of obtaining a copy of her memoir and publicly discrediting her, according to NPR.

Like McGowan, Italian actress Asia Argento was among the first women to accuse Weinstein of sexual assault after her testimony was included in a bombshell New Yorker article detailing the accusations against the former producer.

She publicly addressed the incident during a powerful speech at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, which was met with applause.

"In 1997, I was raped by Harvey Weinstein — here at Cannes. I was 21 years old," Argento said. "This festival was his hunting ground."

At the time, an attorney for Weinstein issued a statement accusing Argento of a "stunning level of hypocrisy," according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.

Insider reached out to representatives for Weinstein for response to our #MeToo coverage.

But in the months that followed the revelation, The New York Times reported that Argento quietly made a $380,000 settlement with her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, 22, an actor and musician who once played her son in a movie.

Bennett accused Argento of sexually assaulting him in a California hotel room when he was 17 and she was 37. The age of consent in California is 18.

In a statement to journalist Yashar Ali, Argento denied that she ever had a sexual relationship with Bennett, saying she was "deeply shocked and hurt having read the news that is absolutely false."

She claimed Bennett was then "undergoing severe economic problems," and that her then-boyfriend Anthony Bourdain "personally undertook to help Bennett economically, upon the condition that we would no longer suffer any further intrusions in our life."

Last November, the 36-year-old Chinese tennis star made waves online with an explosive #MeToo accusation against a former top Communist Party leader.

In a now-deleted post on Chinese social media platform Weibo, Peng accused former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of pressuring her to have sex with him, according to screenshots of the post obtained by CNN. Insider couldn't independently verify the screenshots.

The post, which reads as an open letter to the former state leader, details an alleged intermittent relationship she had with him over 10 years.

"Why did you have to come back to me, took me to your home to force me to have sex with you?" she wrote, per CNN. "Yes, I did not have any evidence, and it was simply impossible to have evidence."

She continued: "I couldn't describe how disgusted I was, and how many times I asked myself am I still a human? I feel like a walking corpse. Every day I was acting, which person is the real me?"

Under China's strict media censorship, CNN reported that Peng's post detailing the allegations was down in under 30 minutes, with screenshots circulating chat groups before they, too, were censored by the government. Even a Weibo page about tennis was closed for comments at the time in the wake of the scandal, according to CNN.

Following the post on November 2, the tennis star prompted international concern after she disappeared from the public eye since her allegations were made public. Weeks later on November 17, the tennis star resurfaced, and Chinese state media later published an email purportedly from Peng saying "everything is fine."

In response to the international outcry over Peng's accusation, foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said: "I think some people should stop deliberately and maliciously hyping up, let alone politicise this issue."

In February, Peng, a former Wimbledon and French Open doubles champion, announced her abrupt retirement from the sport, citing her age, "multiple surgeries," and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

She also walked back the allegations made in the post in an interview with French publication L'Équipe, denying she had ever been sexually assaulted or disappeared.

"I'd like to say that feelings, sports, and politics are three very distinct things," Peng told L'Équipe. "My love life problems, my personal life, must not be mingled with sports and politics."

In a celebrity defamation trial that rocked the internet, Amber Heard and her ex-husband Johnny Depp made shocking allegations of abuse on both sides from their years-long tumultuous marriage.

In March 2019, Depp sued Heard for defamation when she published an op-ed for The Washington Post describing herself as a victim of domestic abuse. Depp denied the abuse. The suite stated that Heard "is not a victim of domestic abuse, she is a perpetrator."

In June, both Depp and Heard were both found liable for defamation by a Virginia jury following six weeks of testimony during a trial that captured audiences across the nation. Jurors in the case awarded Depp $15 million in damages, while Heard was awarded far less in damages with $2 million.

Insider reached out to representatives for Depp for response to our #MeToo coverage.

Some saw the drastically different defamation awards as a setback for the #MeToo movement, but #MeToo founder Tarana Burke said she believes it will persist, regardless of the verdict.

"The 'me too' movement isn't dead, this system is dead," she wrote in a statement on Twitter at the time. "This is the same legal system that y'all have been relying on for justice and accountability for decades to no avail. When you get the verdict you want, 'the movement works' — when you don't, it's dead."

Burke did not respond to Insider's request for comment.