Woman: Am I Safe? Are We Safe? Has Anything Changed Since the Me-Too Movement?

Trigger warning: This article contains discussions about abuse and sexual violence, which may be difficult, distressing or triggering for some people. Please look after yourself and have safety plans in place if you decide to read this article.

All human beings hold a range of differing political ideas and opinions. Regardless of political beliefs, the fact remains that a man found liable for sexual abuse currently holds the highest office of power in the US, and some would argue, the world. Donald J Trump has been accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women, one of whom included E Jean Carrol. Trump was held legally liable (in a civil case) for sexual abuse and defamation and ordered to pay Carrol approximately $5m in damages in 2023 and then $83m for defamation of Carrol in 2024. This is a man who has previously boasted in public about grabbing women by their genital parts, suggesting he has rights over any woman’s body as he pleases. Such misogynistic beliefs about women, likely had a role in his motivation to reverse their abortion rights in America. Trump has essentially utilised his political hands to get inside women’s reproductive bodies and systematically removed women’s agency and rights to their own body. Yet, in spite of the uproar against the rollback of women’s reproductive rights and the impact of the global Me-Too movement, someone of his predatory nature was elected and entrusted again to be the President of the United States.

When men in public life can commit sexual harm against women and still be regarded as electable for high office, it raises the question of the priority and social consciousness of women’s safety.

It also raises questions about men’s psyche as well as ordinary men’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviour towards women in simple towns and cities across the world.

During the lead up to Christmas in 2024, the world witnessed the sentencing of an ex-husband who had orchestrated the mass rape of his wife for almost ten years. During that time, he not only drugged and raped his unconscious wife, but he also invited men from chat rooms (many of whom were complete strangers and some from their local community), to come into their home and sexually violate his wife, all while she continued to be unconscious. There have been reports that around seventy to eighty men were involved in sexually abusing and raping Gisèle Pelicot. These were not powerful men with fame, celebrity or public status. They were in many ways ordinary men across generations, across society, and from many different occupational backgrounds (farm work, nursing, law, journalism, prison services, and a councillor in local government, are to name a few).

Gisèle Pelicot, a person, a woman, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother, had no idea of what had been happening to her for almost a decade. She would wake up each morning and have no recollection of the night before. Due to the drugs, she was unknowingly being given by her husband, she was struggling with memory problems and headaches, which led her to worry that she may have Alzheimer’s disease or a brain tumour. The depravity of this organised group sexual crime led to the largest rape trial in France. Dominique Pelicot, Gisèle’s ex-husband, was sentenced to twenty years in prison, the maximum conviction for aggravated rape in France. Alongside him, fifty men were also convicted of sexual offences and rape. According to Garratt and Robbins (2024) at Sky News, Gisèle was raped as many as a hundred times, while unconscious. She was married to this man for almost fifty years, and news correspondents stated at the time that she considered the marriage good and happy (although there were difficulties over the years).

With the multi-dimensional and political harm that President Trump has inflicted on women and may carry on inflicting on women if he continues to criminalise abortion in all fifty states, indicates that girls and women’s safety, agency, civil liberties and rights are undermined in the political discourse. However, the physical, sexual, and psychological violence orchestrated against Gisèle Pelicot, begs the question, whether a woman is safe in the private domain, with her own husband, and in her own home. Essentially, are women ever safe, anywhere? The narrative of sexual violence and rape still presents the image in many minds that it happens in a dark alley with the perpetrator being some strange man, even though data has clearly shown for years that rape and sexual violence is often perpetrated by a known person. Gisèle Pelicot’s case has reminded us that it's not just the outer world, on pavements, in car parks, and dark alleys, it’s in her own home that a woman is in danger.

There is a quiet assumption that a woman is safe in her own home, and it is born from the idea that behind closed doors in the warmth of a locked home, a woman is safer than when walking late at night on the streets. However, this notion discounts how women and girls have experienced harm and violence in the home for years, centuries even. It overlooks the disturbing cases of domestic abuse suffered by women across cultures and throughout history.

Refuge, a UK domestic violence charity for women and children, have launched a campaign this year ahead of International Women’s Day, called “Home is Where the Hurt is”. The charity states that one in four women will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime, it can begin or escalate during pregnancy, and every 30 seconds the British police answer phone calls concerning domestic violence. The charity supports thousands of women and children on any given day.

Statistics and stories of home-life abuse demonstrate the violation of dignity and rights within a space we all assume a woman or child will be safe. The meaning of home is so much more than just bricks and water. The image of home conjures up for many, warmth, safety, joy, family, fun, a place to build memories, to rest, relax, and unwind. But when abuse and violence (all manner of abuse and violence) happen in the home, it shatters how we view home. It can lose its symbol of safety and security, in which it is no longer a base we can exist in, breathe in, and thrive in. Instead, what once might have been a place filled with lots of warm memories (if ever), can become a symbol of threat. With this, our nervous system lives in a perpetual state of danger, keeping us feeling psychologically unsafe and emotionally dysregulated. Home essentially becomes fused with the narrative of trauma.

During the last ten years, a catalogue of sexual abuse and harassment allegations against high profile public figures, have come out in the UK, as well as abroad. On 5th October 2017, The New York Times published an article reporting sexual harassment claims against the once-powerful film producer Harvey Weinstein, which spanned decades. Over eighty women came forward and accused Weinstein of a mixture of sexual assault, sexual harassment and rape. Weinstein was a serial sexual predator who used his powerful position in Hollywood to coerce, manipulate, and assault women. Megan Twohey and Jodi Cantor, who were the investigative journalists behind The New York Times article, unknowingly initiated the global #MeToo movement, where not only public figures came forward, but women across the world shared accounts of their own sexual harassment and violence experiences via social media. There was a global outcry demanding change.

We know sexual crimes and sexual trauma, especially where systemic abuses of power have been entrenched, can bring with it a silent terror. Women often don’t come forward about their experiences of sexual violence as societies and institutions (for example, judicial systems) across countries and cultures, are not open or prepared to hear women talk of their victimisation. Even people in their life, their relational circle, may not be prepared or open to hearing about their sexual trauma. This is a colossal issue because as Judith Herman wrote in her landmark book: Trauma and Recovery, how others in life and society respond to the victimised individual, in the aftermath of trauma, is of paramount importance. One’s relational world, in the aftermath of trauma, has a significant role in helping victimised women find safety and security again; in addition, reconnection with others will be critical to the healing process. But if the very people you need to lean on, who you need to see you and hear you, cannot provide a soothing function, then this only serves to retraumatise the individual.

Women often fear social persecution and damaging repercussions for speaking out. A-list female Hollywood actors (Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, and Salma Hayek), who presumably have more of a voice and therefore (supposed) power than others in the film industry, were terrified of Weinstein, as the film producer would utilise intimidation to control and coerce them, and so many other women, into silence.

Hollywood industry enablers of Weinstein and his serial harm against women fostered a culture of silencing. For example, there are claims that many journalists knew about Weinstein’s predatory behaviour, but they would often trade this story for salacious gossip about other members of the film industry. Weinstein would share these scandalous accounts with the journalists, in exchange for their silence of his own predatory story.

Fear of repercussions, systemic issues rooted in corruption, combined with the often-pervasive experience of shame that is internalised when one is sexually abused or assaulted, creates the perfect storm of victim silencing and the protraction of male predatory crimes.

Nobody will ever truly know the number of women who were abused, assaulted, coerced, harassed, or raped by Harvey Weinstein. But in March 2020, he was finally sentenced by a New York City judge to twenty-three years’ imprisonment for sexual offences. This prison sentence is only three-years longer than the rape and group sexual crimes orchestrated by Dominique Pelicot, in France. The judicial sentences for Weinstein and Dominique Pelicot, speak to how the different legal systems across countries regard women’s safety and welfare. Is two decades (or just over in Weinstein’s case) really justice for such harrowing crimes, given the powerlessness and potential lifelong harm women are left to carry?

Before his conviction, in December 2019, Weinstein gave an interview to the New York Post claiming that he had supported more woman‑centred projects by female directors than any other producer in the film industry. He described himself as a pioneer, which he claimed had all been forgotten because of these accusations against him. This illustrated his motive to refocus the narrative on his talent, and his [patriarchal] power in the man-made world of Hollywood, where only he could supposedly help advance women’s creativity and status. There is another side to his defensiveness in this interview though, which shows that sexual predators can at times engage in behaviours that elevate women in public, while simultaneously denigrating and dehumanising them in private. This is part of the strategy of hiding in plain sight.

How often have men accused of reprehensible sexual abuse and assault cried “I have daughters”? Brett Kavanaugh (an American lawyer and currently an associate justice of the Supreme Court in the US) tried to deflect attention from the story of him as a sexual perpetrator and instead tried to amplify the narrative that he is a family man, a father of daughters no-less, when the psychologist Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexually assaulting her in the 1980s.

Sean Combs (known as Diddy) who is currently in prison and serving a sentence of 50 months,

also hid in plain sight. He had an extensive history of engaging with philanthropic causes and serving underprivileged communities, with a special focus on education, youth, and supporting Black owned businesses. Yet the global community witnessed this man’s violently rageful attack of his – then girlfriend – Cassie through a video clip that had been released.

In 2025, Cassie testified in court that Combs had coerced her into sexual acts called “freak offs” and that he had abused her for years, including raping her in 2018. Combs was identified as a music mogul, a successful Black man, who also contributed greatly to the disadvantaged community. But beneath this public image lay a harmful man and sexual abuser, a dangerous persona that was masked by status, influence and power.

Bill Clinton abused his power as President of the United States, by having an affair with a 22-year-old female graduate, Monica Lewinsky (between 1995-1997). By 1998 the affair was exposed, which resulted in a global media storm. After being impeached in 1998–1999 (the second President who was impeached in USA history at that time), Bill Clinton’s popularity was soaring, with 73 percent public approval. When he left the presidency in 2001, his approval rating was 66 percent, the highest of any leaving President since World War II (Gallup, n.d.; Suresh, 2020). Bill Clinton went on to complete post-presidential tasks, such as writing his memoir and engaging in public speaking events. He also created the Clinton Foundation and generally maintained his reputation as one of the most politically astute members of the Democratic Party (Riley, 2016).

Monica Lewinsky’s identity, on the other hand, was branded as the ‘the Lewinsky scandal’.

At the time, she was a young woman who attempted to move forward in life, after she stood at the centre of a globalised political and sexual scandal, and she was unable to get a job anywhere. Her financial survival, along with her personal and social identity, was decimated through her so-called affair with Clinton, which brought her relentless public bullying, humiliation and shame. Since that time, Lewinsky re‑entered the public domain and raised awareness of the impact of shame and the extent to which the Clinton scandal was entrenched in misogyny.

According to the US National Archives, Bill Clinton’s record portrayed him as a champion of women and an ally to women. He had advocated for women’s rights and hired more females in politics than any other President. However, Clinton also abused the power bestowed on him and took advantage of a young impressionable woman (not to mention the cascade of women who have accused him of sexual assault at various points). Monica Lewinsky might have looked adult and within herself she might have felt like an adult at that time, but her brain development still would not have reached adult maturity when she became entangled with Bill Clinton.

Recent studies indicate that human brain development does not fully mature until we reach our early 30s (Mousley et al., 2025). So, questions concern how she could have had the adult capacity, competence, sound reason and judgement to consent to an affair with a much older man in a vastly differential power position. Clinton’s faux display of being a “champion of women”, is a demonstration of how powerful men, yet again, hide in plain sight.

Later on in 2004, once he’d left office, Dan Rather interviewed Bill Clinton on 60 Minutes, during which, he was asked “why?” (why did he engage in this sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky), to which Clinton answered: “I think I did something for the worst possible reason — just because I could” (Hancock, 2016).

Statements like this from a man who was once the leader of the free world, leave us wondering how girls and women are constructed in the minds of men. Clinton’s revelation “because I could,” demonstrates the inner workings of his psyche. This abuse of power, alongside the explosion of sexual abuse cases over time, reveals how many—especially powerful—men, such as the King’s brother, continue to view girls and women as objects or property.

Virginia Guiffre’s story is case in point. When she was a young vulnerable adolescent, she became a victim of sex-trafficking and horrific sexual abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and they’re ‘high-profile’ contacts. Multiple elite and powerful men were involved in sexually harming many underage girls and women, and yet majority of these high-profile figures have not been held accountable by the law.

As an adult, Guiffre reported that she was "being passed around like a platter of fruit among his [Epstein’s] powerful associates” (BBC News, 2022). She revealed that during the early 2000s, when she was 17 years old, she had been sex-trafficked to the former, Prince Andrew-Mountbatten Windsor. She described that Andrew acted as though having sex with her (feeling entitled to her body essentially) was his “birthright”. A male life born and rooted in royalty, which exudes wealth, status, power and privilege from the first breath of life, also tends to birth entitlement and misogyny, which exists in a mutually reinforcing cycle. This combination of factors serves to further cement an innate ability to dehumanise girls and women and turn them into personal property or playthings.

When male privilege and entitlement is enshrined from birth, the inner psyche holds the idea that they have a right to access women’s bodies as they wish. Remember in the UK until 1991 rape within the marital relationship was not a crime. In the USA marital rape became a crime in all fifty states from 1993. In France, the process of criminalising marital rape began in 1990 and was solidified in 1992. Alarmingly, there are still countries which continue to decriminalise rape within marriage, leaving women’s rights to bodily autonomy, safety and dignity in a fragile state within the system of matrimony.

Many men convicted of raping Gisèle Pelicot, contested during trial that they believed the “husband” (Dominique Pelicot) had given consent and permission to carry out sexual acts on his wife. This kind of defence implies that their access to Gisèle’s unconscious body to engage sexually (without her official and explicit consent) was not a problem, because they had been given those rights by the husband. This epitomises how the male psyche still perceives women to be the personal possession of men, which seems to be rooted in historical and systemic gender-based inequalities. After all, the institution of marriage is centred around a father giving away the daughter to the man, who then becomes her husband. A woman traditionally was expected to change her legal name, her identity, and take on her husband's name. In India, the term for husband is “pathi”, which also translates to owner. When the institution of marriage is based on patriarchal values and ideologies, it infers that a husband can have supreme rights and ownership of his wife, and such foundations give opportunity for misogynistic and harmful behaviours.

Tracee Ellis Ross gave a TED Talk that has been viewed by over twenty-five million people on YouTube. She presented the story of how a friend of hers was at the Post Office and was physically moved by a male stranger as she was in his way. Ross’ TED talk focuses on how men hold the internal belief that they can just put their hands on women’s bodies and have access to it, even if it’s in a non-sexual context, which creates a lifetime of fury within women.

As a psychologist I have seen this fury play out in multiple ways, at times it's stifled and repressed and at other times poured outwards, and raging (and of course there are all the complex layers of emotions in between too); but one thing is clear, this fury is almost always pathologised.

Women are more likely to use mental health services than men and more likely to be diagnosed with common mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression (Mental Health Foundation, 2022). That’s not to say men do not suffer from psychological difficulties, clearly from the harm carried out against women’s bodies and minds, something is going on internally for the male psyche. But women’s psyche is constructed as “madness” when perhaps what they are left with is the unfair responsibility of treating the infection that is injected into them through the madness of men, which hasn’t been fully explored in a society that is designed by and orchestrated around the male psyche.

Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew-Mountbatten Windsor, Mohamed Al-Fayed, Robert Kelly (known as R Kelly) Sean Combs, Brett Kavanaugh, and Donald Trump, are some of the public figures that have been identified as dangerous sexual predators in modern society. When men have historically and systemically been given supreme rights over girls and women’s bodies and identity, I can’t help but wonder whether the harms being played out against women’s bodies and psyches is rooted in intergenerational gender norms, laws and discriminations. This in turn raises the subject of whether the Me-Too movement was a call to action, not a fixed moment in time, but a timeless calling, until men recognise and internalise the belief that they do not have supreme rights over, and nor are they entitled to, the female body, mind, and soul.

Statistics and Data:

The charity Rape Crisis England and Wales latest statistics identify that one in two women are raped by a partner or ex-partner. One in three adults are raped in their own home, six in seven rapes against women are carried out by someone they know, and one in six children have experienced sexual abuse (Rape Crisis England and Wales, 2024).

References

BBC News. (2022, January 12). Virginia Giuffre: What we know about Prince Andrew’s accuser. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59974220

CNN. (1998, December 20). Poll: Clinton’s approval rating up in wake of impeachment - December 20, 1998. Cnn.com. https://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/20/impeachment.poll/

Gallup. (n.d.). Presidential approval ratings -- Gallup historical statistics and trends. Gallup.com; Gallup. Retrieved March 1, 2025, from https://news.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx

Garratt, S., & Robbins, S. (2024, December 19). Married to a monster: How Gisele Pelicot went from victim to feminist hero. Sky News; Sky. https://news.sky.com/story/married-to-a-monster-how-gisele-pelicot-went-from-victim-to-feminist-hero-13274974

Hancock, D. (2004, June 16). Clinton cheated “because I could.” Cbsnews.com; CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-cheated-because-i-could-16-06-2004/

Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and recovery. Pandora.

Kantor, J., & Twohey, M. (2017, October 5). Harvey Weinstein paid off sexual harassment accusers for decades. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html

Mental Health Foundation. (2022). Men and women: Statistics. Mental Health Foundation. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/statistics/men-women-statistics

Mousley, A., Bethlehem, R. A. I., Yeh, F.-C., & Astle, D. E. (2025). Topological turning points across the human lifespan. Nature Communications, 16(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65974-8

Rape Crisis England and Wales. (2024). Statistics about sexual violence and abuse. Rape Crisis England & Wales. https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence/

Refuge. (n.d.). Facts and statistics. Refuge. Retrieved March 4, 2026, from https://refuge.org.uk/what-is-domestic-abuse/the-facts/

Riley, R. (2016, October 4). Bill Clinton: Life after the Presidency | Miller Center. Millercenter.org. https://millercenter.org/president/clinton/life-after-the-presidency

Roos, D. (2019, October 21). How many US Presidents have faced impeachment? History. https://www.history.com/news/how-many-presidents-impeached

Rosenberg, R. (2019, December 15). Exclusive | Harvey Weinstein: I deserve pat on back when it comes to women. Page Six. https://pagesix.com/2019/12/15/harvey-weinstein-i-deserve-pat-on-back-when-it-comes-to-women/?_ga=2.54887081.348412504.1576485060-2128029503.1575461506

Suresh, P. (2020, November 3). US Presidents who left office with the highest approval ratings. CNBCTV18. https://www.cnbctv18.com/photos/politics/us-presidents-who-left-office-with-the-highest-approval-ratings-7383691.htm

TED. (2018, May 16). A woman’s fury holds lifetimes of wisdom | Tracee Ellis Ross. Www.youtube.com; TED. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoUZ929qoLk

The Clinton Presidency: Building one America. (n.d.). Clintonwhitehouse5.Archives.gov. Retrieved March 2, 2025, from https://clintonwhitehouse5.archives.gov/WH/Accomplishments/eightyears-11.html