Emma Thompson reveals her teen daughter was the victim of a sex assault

Emma Thompson reveals her teen daughter was the victim of a sex assault. Actor Emma Thompson has revealed that her daughter, Gaia Wise, was once sexually harassed on public transport. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Thompson, 59, said the incident happened last year when the teenager was travelling on the London Underground.

“She said the thing that upset her most was not the act itself but the fact that she felt cowed enough by it not to call him out. And I think that what we suffer as women most from our shame at not being able to say ‘Why are you doing this?’,” Thompson said. “We’re so shocked and undermined by these actions that we can’t turn around and take the action that we want and that’s the thing that sits with us and sticks with us. Which is so unjust,” she added.

The Love Actually actor also said that victims tend to be “unkind, to themselves too, whether they were able to defend themselves or not”.  “I think that, generationally, if we can move towards understanding ourselves, understanding those reactions, being compassionate about those reactions and then saying, ‘Now, next time, would I be able to do it differently?’“ she added.

“My daughter had the experience of being felt up on the tube and felt very nervous about going out on the tube for a long time afterwards,” Thompson said. The Oscar winner said her daughter, now 18, initially blamed herself for the incident and was too scared to speak out.

Wise, now 18, is the daughter of Thompson and actor husband Greg Wise, 52 — who met while filming the 1995 film, Sense And Sensibility. She has taken to acting herself, having appeared in the 2015 film A Walk In The Woods, starring Nick Nolte and Robert Redford. Wise also appeared alongside her mother and Dustin Hoffman. Thompson has been vocal about the ongoing #MeToo sex abuse scandal engulfing Hollywood, calling the actions of shamed producer Harvey Weinstein “endemic of the system”.