Me Too.
For the Epstein & Trump survivors.
In my eternal respect for Virginia Giuffre, Katie Johnson and the brave survivors of Epstein and Trump’s rapes and sexual assaults, I am compelled to tell the full narrative of my own sexual assault.
I tell this story not for sympathy, but simply because I genuinely love telling it now. Trigger: Mentions of rape, graphic description of assault.
So here’s my #MeToo.
In 2003, I managed to climb the voice over ladder astonishingly quickly for a kid of 23 years old, very new to New York.
Somehow, I got an agent quickly, a lovely, kind man who sent me on voice auditions around Manhattan several days a week. (This was before home studios, of course.)
Right off the bat, I booked a radio spot for Kroger grocery stores and an internal Listerine promo.
The Kroger recording session took maybe 30 minutes and a few days later, I received the paycheck for it.
It was the most money I had ever seen in my entire life.
In 2003, that check paid my $550 a month rent five times over.
This was it, I remember thinking. This was how I wanted my life to be. I would perform in plays at night and record voice overs for commercials by day. I would pay my own way in New York City on my own terms.
Shortly after booking those gigs, and for reasons I cannot recall now, I found myself in the office of another agent at a different voice over agency.
This agent was more powerful and highly revered in the voice over world. He told me I clearly had potential and that he might be interested in signing me.
“However,” he said, “first you should get some sessions with a voice coach named Peter Rofe.”
He said that Peter Rofe was the gold standard in commercial voice coaching, that everyone went to him.
Then—- and this is the part burned into my memory forever—- the agent pulled open the top drawer of his desk and handed me Peter Rofe’s business card from a stack.
Although this agent later denied that he did this, I remember this card hand-off like it was yesterday specifically because I clocked it as odd that he had another man’s business card at the ready.
But I was new to show business. Maybe this was normal.
Peter Rofe’s voice coaching sessions were obscenely expensive, something like $300 per session and you had to buy them in bulk, like 5 at once. Kroger money gone, I made a plea to some family members in a position to help. It was an investment in my future, I argued. With their help, I bought a bundle of Rofe’s coaching sessions.
Peter Rofe’s office and recording studio were located right above New York’s iconic Strand Bookstore, on the corner of East 12th and Broadway. The Strand was (and still is) one of my favorite places on earth. This is a good sign, I thought.
Peter Rofe had 2 rooms up there: one was a sound-proofed office/sound booth hybrid which contained a sofa, a desk and mic set up for coaching sessions. The next room was right across the hall—- a state-of-the-art recording studio, where the actor stands inside a glass booth and the engineer (or coach) sits outside the glass.
In our first session, Peter Rofe was friendly-perky in that over-the-top Hollywood way. Everything I did was fabulous, according to him. He was supportive, enthusiastic, complimentary and encouraging. He gave me sample commercial copy and we worked on reading and recording it together. We experimented with different interpretations, tones, characters, pace and vocal qualities.
Toward the end of the session, Peter Rofe said:
“Soon, we’re gonna work on some ‘sexy copy.’ That’s really important because sex sells!”
Sure, I thought. At the time, I genuinely didn’t think it was unusual for a man in his position to say that. However, I did clock it.
The second session was much like the first: sample copy, guided choice making, tonal read shifts, etc…
And again, toward the end of the session, Peter Rofe said:
“Get ready, Sara! We’re gonna do ‘sexy copy’ soon! Because remember: sex sells!”
I remember clocking it again, “sexy copy” and “sex sells.” Does it? Maybe. I mean, what do I know? After all, I am new to show business. This is all probably normal.
On the third session, Peter Rofe decided that today was the day: Sexy copy.
The following account is everything I remember from that session. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway—- nothing has been added, embellished or exaggerated.
I entered Peter Rofe’s office and he welcomed me in. He then rose from his desk, walked by me to the office door and locked it.
I remember that he locked it because I clocked that the lock was installed in a weird place— the upper half of the door—- as opposed to the knob.
“Today is ‘sexy copy’ day!” He said, excited. “Are you ready to go there?”
Dedicated actress that I was, I told him yes.
He handed me a page of copy for chocolate pudding— although it may have been for chocolate candy or chocolate ice cream— I am not 100% sure of the product, but I do remember reading the words “chocolate” and “decadent.”
Peter Rofe sat on the couch. I stood at the mic. He was about 3 feet away from me.
I read the copy.
“Not sexy enough.” He advised.
I read it again, more breath-y this time, more sensual, more decadent.
“Nope. Come on, Sara. Let’s go there.” He urged.
I read it again.
As I read, I looked over at Peter Rofe sitting on the couch. His pants and underwear were down at his ankles, and he was stroking his fully erect penis with one hand.
“Keep reading.” He insisted.
I had only been in show business a short time. Maybe this was normal.
I vividly remember willfully ignoring him masturbating and focusing on the copy. I kept reading.
“Now,” he said, dick in hand and now more vigorously masturbating, “take off your shirt as you read.”
I knew this wasn’t right or necessary. I knew this wasn’t acting. I knew this wasn’t coaching.
But I also knew that the door was locked, that no one knew I was there, and that I was alone with a large, masturbating man. As I learned later, when women perceive a threat, their bodies will often choose for them: fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Mine chose freeze.
So, I took my shirt off.
“Read it again,” he demanded, “and really go there.” By then he had pulled his shirt up, over his belly, which was now exposed. A bulbous, fleshy, white belly.
In deep-freeze mode, I read the copy again.
“Good.” He said. “Now take your bra off and grab your tits.”
And I did.
That’s the part of the story I’m most ashamed of. I sometimes leave that part of the story out for fear of people’s judgement. As if they’ll say, “He said take your shirt off and grab your tits and you did it? Why didn’t you grab the scissors off his desk and slice his dick off? Why didn’t you gouge his eyes out with your thumbs? What’s wrong with you?”
No, I did not do any of those things. I could not. I was physically and mentally frozen. Signals were not making it to my brain. I simply did as I was told, took my bra off, grabbed both tits and finished reading the copy.
Right then, I watched him ejaculate onto his stomach.
I only remember 3 more things after that:
First: Grabbing my shirt off the floor (a blue and green, plaid short-sleeved button-down, I remember it exactly) and throwing it on.
Second: Cramming my bra into my pants pocket.
Third: I remember the following exchange—
“Let’s keep this between us, Sara ok?” Peter Rofe said, now zipped up. “Because the thing is, my wife is due to have a baby this week.”
As he said that, he wiggled his wedding band finger, close to my face.
“Yeah, sure.” I agreed, my body moving from freeze mode to fawn mode.
Peter Rofe then unlocked the door and I left.
After that, scene missing.
I do, however, remember my decision-making process in the days that followed.
I remember distinctly deciding that although Peter Rofe was the one who scared me into undressing, jerked himself off to completion while I read about chocolate and then coerced me into silence, it must have been my fault that he did all that.
I must have caused it.
I didn’t know how I could have caused it, but I knew it—- I caused it. 23 years of internalized misogyny is a magical thing.
The other thing I distinctly remember thinking was: “that isn’t going to be part of my resume.” That was how I mentally phrased it. Like a defective auto part, I plucked that memory from the conveyor belt and tossed it into the garbage.
I told no one, said nothing, and somehow managed to never think about it again.
But in the weeks and months that followed, a weird thing started to happen.
I blew every audition my agent sent me to (the original agent, not the agent who sent me to Rofe.) I couldn’t bear to be in a sound booth anymore. I couldn’t read copy anymore, let alone perform it with feeling. I couldn’t act like I gave a fuck about Sunkist or Quaker Oats or Bank of America or Windex.
Sometimes I would even flub words— like, the actual reading part eluded me.
I remember once attempting to say “Amazing tuna!” about 40 times in a row before the engineer gave up and told me to leave.
I never booked another commercial.
Maybe a year later, around 2005, I told my agent to stop sending me out on auditions. My excuse was that I needed to focus on my theater career, particularly playwriting, and that I was planning on applying to grad school soon. This was all true, but also bullshit. I simply couldn’t do voice work anymore. He was sorry to see me go, but understood.
Fast-forward to 2017.
Rose McGowan had given Ronan Farrow her account of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, and the piece runs on November 14th in The New Yorker.1
As I read it, the memory of that day with Peter Rofe 14 years earlier broke through my consciousness like the Chestburster that kills John Hurt in Alien.
Rose McGowan’s account was so much worse than mine, so much more destructive and traumatizing. But yet… she was actually talking about it? In The New Yorker? I couldn’t believe how brave she was.
I did nothing for a few days.
I continued to not tell my husband, friends, family—- as if I had done something wrong. More about Weinstein was coming out and more and more women online were starting to say me too.
Soon, the vivid memory of Rofe became too heavy for me to carry around all day—- I was carrying that shithead to work, to day care, to bed at night.
So finally, impulsively, I texted my friend John DeSilvestri, a successful voice actor.
ME: “Hey John: Do you know Peter Rofe?”
JOHN: “Oh yeah he’s a voice coach.”
ME: “Do you know if he’s still working?”
JOHN: “Pretty sure he is.”
ME: “Can I tell you what he did to me?”
I told him everything.
John, horrified beyond words, connected me to a female voice actor in LA who he thought may have also trained with Peter Rofe.
She and I had a phone call.
It was like meeting a long-lost sister. The call was crazy, hushed, shocked. The words “I thought I was the only one” were repeated again and again.
She and I soon found another woman and the three of us then went digging around in earnest.
We found another.
And another.
And another.
We became 6.
We found another woman from a negative review she wrote on Peter Rofe’s coaching business’s Yelp page.
We went from 6 to 9 to 16.
Their stories are not mine to tell, but the similarities between all of our accounts were staggering.
One of the voice actors had a connection to a reporter at CNN, Brynn Gingras.
Brynn decided to do a feature on us. This is it, please read and listen to the accounts. (Note: throughout this, I used my unmarried name Sara Asselin. That’s who I was then and also, I didn’t want the new me forever attached to the name Peter Rofe.)
After the CNN feature dropped, the roof blew off.
For weeks, I got emails, Facebook and Instagram messages from women also sexually assaulted by Peter Rofe. I scheduled calls with every single one of them. Not because I’m an expert or a saint or a psychologist, but because I knew how good my first call felt—-my first “I thought I was the only one.”
Soon, we grew to 60 women. The earliest case of sexual assault at the hands of Peter Rofe was in 1999 and the last one around 2016. It also came out that he raped several women.
Whenever I tell this story— and I tell it at the drop of a hat, it’s my favorite story to tell— people’s first question is: Why isn’t he in jail?
We tried.
The same NYPD detective who hauled Weinstein in was assigned to our case.
He was a tough, hard, steely guy—- a “just the facts, ma’am” type, straight out of central casting. I admired and trusted him instantly, for many reasons.
He interviewed all of us, one by one.
I soon learned that my assault could not be prosecuted because it occurred in 2004 and so fell outside the statute of limitations in NY State. Had he raped me, which he did not, that would be a different story. Rape, he told me, is a criminal offense and does not have a statute of limitation, but it’s still very hard to get someone on rape. Aside from the world’s tendency to blame women for rape, the survivor also has to be willing to speak about it, which upends their lives and families and re-opens horrific trauma. Rofe’s victims chose not to speak. And I understood that completely. I am sure I would not have been able to speak either, were I them.
So, since we were unable to get him in criminal court, we tried a new tactic: civil court.
This was a much more successful bid for justice and the case actually went to trial.
It’s a long story, but we lost on a technicality— even the judge expressed her disgust at Rofe in the courtroom. You can read her judgement here.
Peter Rofe currently walks free. I hear from people who see him on the street from time to time, even people who live near him.
But it’s ok. Truly.
Because we spoke and acted, the predator Peter Rofe lost everything.
He lost all his money, his voice coaching business and his reputation.
Everyone, including the agent who sent me directly to him, denied even knowing him— or at least claimed they “always knew he was a creep.”
When the news dropped, Peter Rofe was run out of his fancy neighborhood via an angry pitchforked mob of parents at his kid’s middle school (that same kid his wife was about to have the day he assaulted me.)
And in addition to the CNN piece, countless more articles were written about him and what he did. They will always be on the internet, if ever Peter Rofe tries to get a job or sell something on Craig’s List.
Here are some of the articles, if you would like to read more:
I know that my story pales in comparison to the Epstein survivors, like the late Virginia Giuffre and the courageous Katie Johnson, whose harrowing account of when Trump raped her at 13 years old can be read online.
I think about Gisele Pelicot and how brilliantly she turned her abuse around, bravely stating, “It is not for us to have shame—it’s for them.”
I hope that one day society abides by Mary Pipher’s enlightened concept from her book Reviving Ophelia, where she said: “Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism.”
This week, I see people in power acting like they care about Epstein and Trump’s crimes. Congresspeople, Senators, MAGA, Democrats, Republicans, news media. They clutch their pearls now, some because they don’t want to look bad, others to deflect from their own twisted crimes.
Even The New York Times didn’t bother to investigate the reprehensible photos they were handed of Trump with teenagers when he ran for president the first time in 2015— so preoccupied were they with unraveling the Hillary Clinton email debacle and other pointless larks.
If people in power actually cared, if what Trump did was viewed as the equivalent of cannibalism, he wouldn’t be president, he’d be some hairy guy’s girlfriend in federal prison.
But I got my monster as best I could.
Years after all this, in 2021, I was at school pick up. Another mom and I struck up a convo. She mentioned that she was a VP at a major audiobook company. And for some reason, I told her my entire story—- the one I just told you.
She was gob smacked. Speechless.
“Do you still do voice over work?” She asked.
“Oh no, those days are long over for me. In fact,” I said, “the thing I hate Peter Rofe for the most is not that he sexually assaulted me in a locked room. I hate him mostly because he robbed me of a career as a voice actor.”
My fellow mom paused for a moment, thinking.
“Do you have a demo?” She asked.
“God no,” I laughed, “I haven’t had a demo for like 20 years.”
“Can you pull one together?” She asked.
“Uh…I guess?” I was confused. “Why?”
“If you can make one, I will send it to our casting guy. No guarantees, but it’s worth a try.”
It took me a while to decide whether I wanted to. But I did. And since I told that story to that mom, my voice career has returned to me.
I am once again signed with a commercial agent, this time at DDONY’s Voice Over Division, an absolutely amazing and supportive team of advocates who send me out for commercial auditions almost every day. (Listen to my demo here!) I built a tricked-out studio in a closet where I record. I’ve been cast in many audiobooks.
Even though my 2-decade voice over hiatus has rendered me a newbie, I work at it every day, pay annoyingly close attention to voice trends on TV and radio ads, take classes when I can afford them and record constantly. I tend to my young, burgeoning voice acting career like I would a kitten. I treasure it.
As a staunch atheist, I don’t believe in god, heaven or hell. So although Peter Rofe sleeps at night, with his wife (the same one) and his inexplicable freedom, I know there will be no real retribution for him in this life.
But there is one silver lining:
It is all but certain that the world will forget that Peter Rofe ever existed.
And for someone in show business, that’s a fate worse than death.
Theater is Hard.
Thanks for reading.
Which happens to be today’s date.
Dude is trash.
i adore you and you are brave as hell. i read this with tears in my eyes. YES to your bravery and taking back your pride and your strength. YES to outing that POS- i remember when that story broke.