Hello Donna Rottuno,

Yesterday I wrote a fairly objective piece about you. About your father who told you to do what your heart desired, about how you devoured lawyer series as a child, about how good you are at your job, how you dress nicely, and that I can relate to your justification for representing Harvey Weinstein. Everyone has the right to defense regardless of race, gender, religion, or sex.

I agreed with all of it.

But this morning I decided to throw my piece in the shredder. Because despite the fact that everyone has the right to defense, I simply cannot relate to yours. You say that a victim should not complain about a possible rape because she sent emails to Weinstein months later and also had sex with him. But isn't that precisely the psychological vise that completely constrains your mind and makes you do things you abhor? Isn't that why girls fall prey to the practices of pimps? And isn't that also what causes the mental struggle years later?

You also argue that if you have a ‘meeting’ in a hotel room at a seemingly odd time, you should understand that you won't just be reviewing the minutes of the previous meeting but that something else is on the agenda? But if you are the assistant to the big film boss in an industry that is moving 24/7, dealing with actors who are on location in other parts of the world with different time zones, where the workday doesn't end at 6 PM and you are trying to prepare for the next day in the evening, then you can't just say: I'm not coming to you. It's not that simple, and you know it. I assume you and Weinstein also have after office hours meetings.

Anyway, you want to win and throw everything into the fight. Have you also considered that Mr. Weinstein (something in me says you can call him Harvey) could have entered the courtroom better with a walker? Did you both think it would look extra ‘real’ if you tied tennis balls under it? And did you practice walking extra crooked so that the image of a fierce rapist was at least visually negated?

As a clever thinker, did you already dress your plan B with that? That things are not going well for poor Mr. Weinstein and that he could not possibly go to prison but had to go straight to the hospital because otherwise he wouldn't have good medicine and could even go blind.

And something in me says that you arranged a nice private room for him there in the hospital. Perhaps even with a careful bottle of champagne. As a comfort.

You know, Donna, I respect that you do your job. But the leg with which you go in is just a bit too stretched for me, and the shine in your eyes is a bit too gleaming. I hope you also think a little about the courage it takes to stand up as a victim, about the suffering that a rape and sexual harassment causes.

As a lawyer, many means are permissible in my opinion, but dear Donna, not all?