‘Me Too’ Campaign Brings Stories of Sexual Assault, Harassment

Women around the world posted “me too” as their status on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on Sunday, following the lead of “Charmed” actor Alyssa Milano, who urged the two-word update to spread awareness of sexual harassment and sexual assault amid the snowballing Harvey Weinstein scandal. Milano tweeted that “if all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might get a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”

By early Monday morning, more than 20,000 Twitter and 80,000 Facebook account holders had published the “me too” status, bringing a flood of personal stories about assault and workplace harassment, according to reports. The trend was expected to continue through the day Monday and beyond.

Watch: The '#MeToo' campaign demonstrates how many people have been sexually harassed

Milano co-starred with Weinstein rape accuser Rose McGowan in “Charmed” and also is friends with Weinstein’s wife, Georgina Chapman. When Chapman said she was leaving the Oscar-winning film producer, Milano broke her silence on the growing scandal in a blog post in which she wrote she was “sickened and angered over the disturbing accusations of Weinstein’s sexual predation and abuse of power.”

She wrote, though, that she is “happy — ecstatic even — that it has opened up a dialogue around the continued sexual harassment, objectification and degradation of women.”

“Sexual harassment and assault in the workplace are not just about Harvey Weinstein,” Milano wrote on the “Patriot Not Partisan” blog. “We must change things in general. We must do better for women everywhere.”

More than 30 women have publicly accused Weinstein in the escalating scandal, which has also put a spotlight on the famed Hollywood casting couch culture, as well as harassment in other industries. Earlier this year, accusations of sexual harassment swirled around Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and one-time CEO Roger Ailes.

The problem is pervasive outside high-profile film and media industries, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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In its most recent report, in 2016, the agency said that during 2015, it received 28,000 complaints alleging harassment from employees working for private employers or state and local government employers — almost a full third of the 90,000 charges of employment discrimination the EEOC received that year.

Additionally, according to the report, about three-fourths of those who experience sexual harassment don’t report it to supervisors, managers or union representatives, “because they fear disbelief of their claim, inaction on their claim, blame, or social or professional retaliation,” the agency said.

Of the complaints filed in 2015, the EEOC investigated 6,822 of them but dismissed more than half of them because, the agency said, it had “no reasonable cause to believe the discrimination occurred,” The Guardian reported.

Photo of Harvey Weinstein by Drew Angerer/Getty Images News/Getty Images