SAG-AFTRA Develops Mobile App To Identify Workplace Serial Sexual Abusers
SAG-AFTRA has developed a mobile app that will collect data on serial sexual abusers and allow members to report sexual harassment in the workplace. A beta version will begin limited testing with members later this month, and a full version is expected to be made available later this year.
“It has been three years since a group of brave women came forward with stories of sexual harassment, assault and rape perpetrated by Harvey Weinstein, at the time one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry,” SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris and national executive director David White said Monday in a message to their members. “Since then, countless women and men have come forward to expose the industry’s pervasive sexual harassment problem, to bring perpetrators to justice and to work for real, lasting change.”
“SAG-AFTRA has been there right alongside them,” they said, “creating safer working conditions for our members and the industry as a whole.” Touting the union’s record on combatting sexual harassment, they noted that SAG-AFTRA has:
• Negotiated stronger provisions into our major contracts with studio and network producers that guarantee our members significant rights in intimate and highly exposed production scenes;
• Developed and released the definitive code of conduct to prevent harassment and assault in the industry;
• Put a stop to improper private meetings in hotel rooms and personal residences;
• Built internal and external programs and retrained our staff to provide support to survivors who wish to report an incident or who need therapeutic resources or other assistance.
To help familiarize members with the contracts’ provisions governing the filming of nudity, semi-nudity, simulated sex and intimate scenes, actors Michelle Hurd and Kate Riggs have created a guide called “Sex, Nudity & You.” The guide (read it here) notes that actual nudity and simulated sex in auditions “is always prohibited,” and that “No last-minute requests for nudity and simulated sex” are allowed on set.
A more detailed review of these provisions can be found at SAG-AFTRA’s new “Quick Guide for Scenes Involving Nudity and Simulated Sex,” which can be seen here.
Carteris and White said that the union is also “promoting the on-set safety and dignity of members by helping to build and empower the intimacy coordinator profession. Over the next few months, the union will be working with top intimacy coordinators on standards for training and certification, building on the release earlier this year of its landmark ‘Standards & Protocols for the Use of Intimacy Coordinators.’”
“Unfortunately, there is still much to do and sexual harassment remains an all-too-common occurrence,” Carteris and White said.
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