‘Our goal is to provide our patients with an opportunity for healing and recovery,” runs the literature of a certain high-end Arizona clinic. “The Meadows exists to heal your trauma.” Mmm. Even so, I do worry about the success of the programme for one current inpatient, as Harvey Weinstein breaks off from group acupuncture to issue another statement calling Rose McGowan a liar for saying he raped her.
As you may recall, the disgraced movie mogul has been holed up in The Meadows since early October last year. (Fellow something-or-other sufferer Kevin Spacey checked in a few weeks later.) Clearly, the facility remains preferable to the US penal system, where, I understand, you are not even allowed to keep the white towelling slippers, even if they are monogrammed with the crest of your remand prison. But one has to wonder whether rehab is making much headway with Weinstein, who has now clocked up more than three months residential care for his mystery illness, yet seems some considerable distance from what we might sarcastically term “cured”.
Taking the positives, he is no longer allegedly employing ex-Mossad agents to tail McGowan in a bid to silence her. Yet, it is difficult to feel entirely encouraged by this latest lawyer’s statement sneering at her “performance”, denying this and every single other claim of sexual assault made against Weinstein, declaring there is “a wealth of evidence that would demonstrate the patent falsity of these claims”.
No doubt, no doubt. Still, I wonder how Weinstein’s classmates on the Meadows programme for … sex addiction, is it? … feel about his progress, or the business of paying thousands of dollars a week to sit alongside him in group therapy while he explores his pain.
As for the movie producer himself, against whom allegations continue to mount, with the current tally standing at more than 80 women, perhaps he wonders why this keeps happening to him. I am rather disappointed that The Meadows has been unable to provide satisfactory answers, never mind a cure. According to the clinic’s own literature, the facility “allow[s] patients to disengage from distraction and focus on discovering themselves and finding healing”. And yet, here we have a patient probably sneaking out of equine therapy, patching himself through to his lawyer, and issuing a statement saying McGowan is a liar with whom he had consensual sex, even if he did secretly pay her $100,000 to “buy peace”, and he has some email from Ben Affleck to “prove” it.
Yes, it feels as if he should have progressed a little way further down the recovery pathway. Perhaps some people are really too “ill” to help, and even now there are white-coated clinicians surrounding Weinstein’s key worker, saying: “You did everything you could, buddy. You can’t save everybody.”
Or perhaps none of it matters, especially if the patient’s bill is being paid. After all, I don’t want to bandy about the word “shameless” in a faux-clinical context, but last week The Meadows blog did upload a post entitled Healing the Roots of Women’s Sexual and Relational Struggles. Guys, guys, guys … in the circumstances, you could have gone with “Healing the Alleged Perpetrators of Women’s Sexual and Relational Struggles” – but go on.
“The ‘Me Too’ and ‘Time’s Up’ movements of today are reflective of what many girls and women have long known,” explains the clinic of the movements sparked by the alleged iniquities of its most famous patient, “that it’s difficult to move through the world without having your body, sexuality, identity, and more be objectified or used in some way. These movements encourage individuals to step out of isolation,” the post continues, “into shared truth and support and are messages that are useful for all.”
To this end, the clinic is flogging “Journey of a Woman’s Heart: Finding True Intimacy”, which is “a five-day intensive therapeutic workshop offered at the Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows designed to cultivate this healing and recovery”.
Well, now. I hope there’s an exclusion zone around the Rio Retreat Center, otherwise the journey of a woman’s heart may cause her to bump into earth’s most recognisable alleged serial abuser of women, who presumably wanders the grounds screaming down the phone to his lawyer about some lying slut or other. Without being able to definitely establish the precise boundaries, though, all those of us on the outside can do is wish Weinstein better sooner rather than later, and suggest that any of his alleged victims who feel like they need care and healing select an alternative facility.
