Culture
16 Oct 17

Former Miss Ireland Had Her Own Scary “Harvey Weinstein Moment”

Amanda Brunker has told how a well-known and "powerful" businessman attempted to ply her with drugs in an sickening effort to get her to “strip off” naked to carry out sordid “sex acts”.

“Like Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow and millions of other young women, I too had my own Harvey Weinstein moment back in the early '90s,” Amanda Brunker told the Sunday World.
"I was newly crowned Miss Ireland and my casting couch predator lured me to a secure and secluded place and attempted to ply me with champagne and cocaine."
Amanda, who was once the focus of a major ‘Hot Press Interview’ back in 2009, explained how she was lured under false pretences by a so-called ‘friend of a friend’ from the modelling world to meet with the businessman.
"He told me a West End producer wanted to meet with me and I naively believed him,” she recalled.
“He was, after all, a friend of people I trusted. When I walked into the trap, I discovered my West End producer was merely a well-known Irish businessman. I recognised him immediately. He was joined by his gamey assistant – a woman who is no friend of other women.
"I soon learned that both of them wanted to strip off my clothes and perform sex acts. A situation very similar to Cara Delevingne."
She added: ““After I escaped they bought me off by giving me a £1,000 to buy myself some clothes for the Miss World competition. Talk about cheap. Looking back I feel sick by the whole thing."
Amanda explained that she was left completely “terrified” by the ordeal – so much so that she is only able to talk publicly now about it all, two decades later.
“Speaking out is hard to do. In hindsight I know I should have, I suppose I was terrified no-one would believe me," she said.
"I was also worried I would have been judged and chastised for freely walking into a dangerous situation. After all, I had been wearing a short skirt. I was probably asking for it right?
"I am angry at myself that I didn't report this man. But he was very powerful. I was just a kid from Finglas. I barely had the price of a bus fare, never mind a lawyer.
"All I can hope is that he has changed his ways and that my silence didn't put others at risk."

Today I write about rapists in @HeraldNewsdesk - at noon I'll be collecting for @DublinRCC at The Merrion Centre - pop by and say hi x pic.twitter.com/c2wMeXzuaw

— Amanda Brunker (@AmandaJBrunker) October 13, 2017

One woman and her bucket... please help all the @DublinRCC collectors today ? pic.twitter.com/4tbHqQ6xDw

— Amanda Brunker (@AmandaJBrunker) October 13, 2017