Eight decades ago, during Hollywood’s Golden Age, Patricia Douglas made headline news. She got more national attention than the king of England and the American double-divorcee Wallis Simpson. Then, just as suddenly, she disappeared as she was pushed into exile by Hollywood’s most powerful men.
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Why? Because she did something that had never been done before. For the first time, a sexual assault survivor didn’t just refuse to keep her mouth shut; she took the entire situation to court to reshape the crime into a civil rights issue. She was fighting the system all on her own, before the modern age of collective outrage and hashtag campaigns.