Karla Souza denounces sexual abuse by a “charismatic” director
The scandals of sexual abuse do not stop shaking and sullying the Hollywood industry. As several actresses have done in recent months, the Mexican actress Karla Souza, one of the protagonists of the successful series "How to get away with murder", has denounced that she was raped and "violently" assaulted by a director of cinema of certain prestige.
In an interview with the Spanish section of CNN, Karla Souza confessed the hell she lived a few years ago, when she was "beginning" her career and was introduced to a group of producers. «The manipulation begins with: "You owe me one”. Then, they start to put that in your head while adding: "I have to push for you. You do not have a name, but I know you're very good and you're going to show me something”, said the 32-year-old actress. "Those are seeds, red lights, but at that time I did not have the training to know what that person was doing," she explained about his assailant, whose name she did not want to disclose, but whom she has defined as "a very charismatic" person who "is doing very well in his career and does his job very well".
After that, she proceeded to tell her experience in greater depth during the filming of a project. «I came to a set where we were going to film (for) a month. But all the actors were in another hotel. And I ask: "And who else is in this?". "Nobody else, only you and the director". I naively thought: Oh, I got the nice hotel!". I thought so, but this is not normal for the rest of the cast. Everyone realizes that I am staying in a hotel where I am alone with the director. It starts to happen that I go to breakfast, and there was this person. And to dinner, just the same. Alone with him. "Suddenly, at two in the morning, this person feels that he has to come knocking on my door and says he has to talk to me about some scene. That he needs to talk, because he's exhausted and he's filming all day. This at two in the morning. It is not appropriate, nor something that should have happened. Me, with my flannel pajamas, as a child. And he enters the room and does not leave».
The worst thing for the actress is that she felt she did not have the option to refuse. She recalls that, during the first days, the conversations were bearable. "He starts talking about the performance, making me feel special, telling me that I was going to show why he had cast me ... There is a rapprochement, a flirtation that I feel I do not have the option of rejecting. On the night I decided not to open the door ... the next day I was punished. He decided not to shoot my scene, or it took two seconds. He began to humiliate myself in front of others. It was his psychological control”, explained Souza.
The actress said that after a month of this total abuse of power, she ended up yielding to him in ways that she “did not want him to touch her". "In one of the instances ... he assaulted me violently and raped me," she said, wiping away tears. «It costs me. It's hard for me to say this. After that, CNN announced that, although Souza had declined to "identify" his assailant, they had investigated through to find "other details" to it. A line that also followed Televisa, the Mexican entertainment giant, which, after the confession of Souza and after "a preliminary investigation" has expressed in a statement his decision to "immediately break all relationship" with the Mexican director of film and series Gustavo Loza, although the actress did not give his name at any time.
