Reese Witherspoon, why have you protected this man for a quarter century and why do you still protect him?

The 41-year-old movie star said this at ELLE's Women in Hollywood event:

I have my own experiences that have come back to me very vividly, and I found it really hard to sleep, hard to think, hard to communicate. A lot of the feelings I’ve been having about anxiety, about being honest, the guilt for not speaking up earlier or taking action. True disgust at the director who assaulted me when I was 16 years old and anger that I felt at the agents and the producers who made me feel that silence was a condition of my employment.

And I wish I could tell you that that was an isolated incident in my career, but sadly, it wasn’t. I’ve had multiple experiences of harassment and sexual assault, and I don’t speak about them very often, but after hearing all the stories these past few days and hearing these brave women speak up tonight, the things that we’re kind of told to sweep under the rug and not talk about, it’s made me want to speak up and speak up loudly because I felt less alone this week than I’ve ever felt in my entire career.

The answer to the question in my post title seems to be: I wanted the job. It sounds as though she was made to understand the conditions of employment, when she could have gone to the police, and that she decided to join a conspiracy of silence.

She was only 16 years old, which makes the crime worse and her failure to report it more forgivable, but if she was 16, she was surely represented, and there was someone there on her side, someone with much more experience and understanding of how the business works. Yes, I see the word "agents" in that first paragraph. Did the girl's own agent participate in grooming her into the Hollywood life?

You haven't been a girl for a long time, Ms. Witherspoon. I appreciate your confession to "guilt for not speaking up earlier or taking action," but you are saying this after reaping rewards for 25 years, while other girls entered the system and faced a man you could have exposed in 1991. You say you feel "less alone" now, but had the power all this time to help other women feel "less alone." What held you back? Somebody else had to go first? Some reporter (like, today, Ronan Farrow) needed to build a substantial structure around you and others to make it safe?

Why was there no Ronan Farrow in 1991?

1991 was the year that the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded that America understand sexual harrassment, as it grilled Clarence Thomas on charges of sexual harassment. There, the allegations were not about any physical assault, but pressure to go on dates and some remarks about pornography and pubic hair, and the person on the receiving end was no teenager but a Yale-Law-School-trained adult. Once those allegations were taken seriously as sexual harassment, why were there no journalists looking to break stories?

Why wouldn't someone have talked to the Women of Hollywood?

I hear my readers yelling at the computer screen: Because of politics. Sexual harassment was only taken seriously in 1991 as a means to an end, to defeat the conservative Supreme Court nominee. And the Men of Hollywood were liberals and donors to liberal causes and therefore the journalists had no motivation to go looking. Looking the other way was the means to what was the same political end. That's the obvious hypothesis. (It could also be that the knowing, sophisticated journalists understood the desire for sex and didn't want to blow up the whole game. Perhaps they themselves or their loved ones would be vulnerable if rampant exposure got going.)

This has been one hell of a conspiracy of silence. It's full of so many people — people we like, such Reese Witherspoon.

Behind the glossy, smiling faces of the Women of Hollywood, I see a crowd of women's faces. I sense the ghostly presence of all of the women who no to the conspiracy, who didn't want the job enough to go along with a system that victimized them and victimized and would continue to victimize other women.

There's a long way to go to extract yourself from the harm, Ms. Witherspoon. Feeling guilty for not speaking up earlier is a good start. Now, how about naming the man you just referred to? You were 16, and I can look at your IMDB page and see what directors you worked with in 1991. I should think you'd name the man if only to avoid casting suspicion on the 2 or 3 other names from that time.

And what about all the "multiple experiences of harassment and sexual assault"?

It's not enough to stand up at the Women in Hollywood event and spout generalities and say you feel empowered. If the truth doesn't pour out now, the conspiracy of silence will have won.