I Fought Two Monsters: James Toback and Shame

For the past 17 years, I have borne a tremendous weight. When I was 22, a powerful man three times my age and three times my size took advantage of my wit and burgeoning sexuality. He told me I was beautiful, muse-like, and movie star material. Our first encounter was benign. We were standing in line at a Starbucks on the Upper West Side. He was with his nine-year-old son. He didn’t say much but shared that he was a film director and confessed that he couldn’t help but notice my profound sexual energy. “I know we just met, but I need to write a script for you.” Pulling from a stack of papers in his back pocket, he tore off a piece of the Village Voice, scribbled his name, number, and the titles of two films he had made, When Will I Be Loved and Two Girls and a Guy. He told me to call him. Intrigued by his proposition, I did the next day. Since then, I have carried the gravity of my secrets.

Secrets kept from family and friends are heavy, but the accumulation of shame that prevents such secrets from being shared is the most oppressive. By now, his name is no secret and I am no longer ashamed. His name is James Toback, and for five years, he strung me along while demanding sexual favors. For those five years, I kept the details of our meetings to myself. Until I told my therapist about them in 2013, I had believed these interactions were my fault and the result of my stupidity. What’s most shocking is that I had never considered his manipulation tactics as a form of abuse. I was so fixated on my own poor choices that I never entertained the part he played in my shame. The biggest blow to my ego, however, was that this movie never materialized. Not only had I performed sexual favors for this man, but I had truly believed that this script he was writing for me would eventually emerge. I had convinced myself that if I just continued showing up and doing what I was told, he would make me a star, and all my financial woes would vanish.

I remember mentioning Toback in passing during one of my therapy sessions. I felt so embarrassed to admit that I massaged his nipples that I hid inside my sweater while sharing this secret with my most trusted listener. I remember my therapist then asking how massaging his nipples made me feel, and without hesitation, I responded, “Disgusting. He was disgusting. I am disgusting.” As I replayed the image in my head, I remember this feeling of repulsion taking over my body almost instantly. I wanted to vomit. And that’s when it hit me. For the past five years, I had unconsciously forgotten the details of my encounters with Toback, not because they were insignificant but because they were so impactful that I had to repress all of them.

I chose to work on other parts of my less-than-perfect self during therapy rather than confront what had happened with Toback—until the world confronted it for me, that is. When the #MeToo movement broke out in the fall of 2017 and people started posting their stories of assault and abuse, I felt insincere in not acknowledging this skeleton in my closet. I realized that this problem was more pervasive than I had ever imagined. Reading others’ stories made it nearly impossible to ignore my past encounters with sexual assault and difficult not to feel a set of mixed emotions: sadness, shame, and rage were just a few. As other brave women started coming forward about Toback, I felt empowered to face this head-on. I contacted Los Angeles Times journalist Glenn Whipp, who was actively investigating Toback’s abuse. He put me in touch with at least a dozen other women who had also been subjected to the director’s grooming.

Lucky for me, I have always been a woman of many words and found great comfort in journaling. I wrote down every conversation, every sexual act, and everything I felt as a result of that very first meeting with Toback in November 2008 up through my last meeting with him in the fall of 2013. Ironically, the last time I met him in New York was also at an uptown Starbucks, though this meeting was a little less benign. I cry for the younger version of myself who didn’t have the courage to scream then and there.

About two weeks into the #MeToo movement, I revisited the four journals I kept during my time with the director. When I kept these meticulous records, I convinced myself that the sole purpose of these journals was so that one day I could write a book: These meetings were too extraordinary not to record. Revisiting them in 2017, I realized that there was another reason I kept them: I needed to process a set of colossal emotions. Because I kept almost all parts of my relationship with Toback a secret, these journals became a series of confessions, a way to try and process feelings that felt bigger than me.

What I found in these journals shocked even me, but as I read, visceral memories—smells, sounds, textures—all began flooding back. For better or for worse, I began to relive these encounters. I remembered them, grappled with them, and began the work of sharing them, first with my therapist and then with my most trusted friends. While it had taken me several years to accept that Toback’s sexual demands were abuse, these journals made it completely obvious that the process he put me through was a textbook case of grooming.

In rereading these four journals (more than once), the thing that kept returning to haunt me was the level of disgust and shame I experienced throughout those five years. Toback was this abject human who simultaneously fascinated and repulsed me. Touching him made me feel, momentarily, special and immediately revolting. The ways in which he used his power to feed off my preexisting insecurities are obvious in retrospect. In the moment, however, my anxiety got the best of me.

During our first meeting, he requested that I masturbate for him. When I declined, he lectured me about how my refusal was representative of a lack of trust and how he had failed me as a director. “You see, what I need to get you to understand is that I will never ask you to do something that you are going to say ‘no’ to, because if you say ‘no,’ then I have failed. I have failed as a director, and therefore, I have failed as a person.” He gave me this lecture on more than one occasion. On the surface, it seemed like he was being respectful of my choices, when, in reality, he was a manipulative monster.

During one of our meetings, he requested that I get naked for him. When I refused, he told me I had a prepubescent attitude toward my body and there was only one way to fix it: point out each one of my bodily flaws to him as I perceived them; he would show me that my body was beautiful. Never mind that I struggled with some body dysmorphia. James Toback had the final word.

I could process the various acts I engaged in, the reasons why I kept returning, and the layers upon layers of manipulations he served me. Yet a part of me still felt stupid for falling for his bait. I wasn’t an actor. Why did I think it was even remotely realistic for me to go to bed one night as a graduate student and wake up the next morning a movie star?

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By 2018, I had processed all I needed to process and could process. I moved on. Fast forward to 2022, when the Adult Survivors Act was enacted in New York state, which extended a one-year window for victims of sexual abuse to file lawsuits in civil court, regardless of when the abuse occurred. One of the women Whipp had put me in touch with, Mary Monahan, galvanized as many Toback survivors as she could get in touch with and started the arduous process of finding a lawyer who would take on our case pro bono. Nix Patterson welcomed us with open arms.

Whipp ultimately heard from nearly 400 women who had accusations regarding Toback. Of those 400, 100 were game for this trial. Of that number, 45 met the specific criteria for pursuing Toback legally, and 40 agreed to testify.

The lawyers were fantastic from the get-go, and if anyone could help us win this case, it was them. But Toback proved to be evasive, and the discovery process was complicated. Almost three years in, it felt like Toback might get off scot-free. An update in early 2025, however, surprised us. By the end of January, we had a trial date set and were making arrangements for in-person testimonies.

Married and two kids later, I revisited my journals in preparation for the trial. Many of the issues I had struggled with during the time I met with Toback—and continued to struggle with at the time of the #MeToo movement—were now problems of the past. My self-esteem had greatly improved; the way I purged my anger and disgust found new outlets; the gratification I derived from controlling every morsel that entered my body had become a burden. Motherhood no doubt changes you.

Even though it had lightened somewhat, however, I still carried the weight of my shame about what had transpired with Toback. I would receive an email from my lawyers with good news, and without fail, the self-flagellating question would emerge: How could an intelligent, assertive, no-nonsense kind of gal fall for Toback’s lies and manipulations? Could I really take the stand as myself and verbalize—to a room full of strangers—all the horrible things he did and the ways he treated me?

Motherhood has made me a much braver version of myself, especially if something is at stake for my two girls. Of course, I would take the stand, no matter how nervous or humiliated I felt. From the day I chose to bring life into this world, my life ceased to be about me.

I flew to New York because that is what I would have wanted my girls to do. Of course, I hope they never come across another James Toback, but if they should cross paths with a disgusting human, I hope they have a million more role models than I and my millennial crowd had. There is nothing shameful about being manipulated. There is nothing embarrassing about being groomed. I wish everyone understood that shame lives in our secrets, and its burden evaporates the moment you use your voice.

The most liberating part of my testimony was forming a sisterhood with the women I met while in New York. The other plaintiffs are beautiful, intelligent, successful women who, like me, fell prey to Toback’s empty promises and beguilements. During the trial, we laughed, we cried, we supported each other in all sorts of ways. We connected instantly and joked about the irony of bonding over our core commonality: knowledge of Toback’s sexual proclivities.

Five days after I returned from New York, the verdict came in: “The Supreme Court of the State of New York holds Toback responsible for a sprawling pattern of sexual assault, false imprisonment, coercion, and psychological abuse.” The jury awarded a total of $280 million in compensatory damages and $1.4 billion in punitive damages to the plaintiffs. That’s $42 million for each of us. Well, in theory. Toback claims he is so financially destitute that he couldn’t even afford to hire legal representation for our trial. But I don’t think any of us did this for the money. A verdict like this speaks loud and clear. As many news sources have articulated: This is not just a legal victory. It is a cultural reckoning.

I no longer bear the weight of my shame. I feel light. I feel whole. I feel like I have just proved something to the world about bravery. I’m telling the truth when I say I no longer feel shame about any of the things I did with Toback, which is why I share this story today. Toback is a monster, but shame is also a beast. I’ll probably never see a cent, but I feel like 42 million bucks.

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Brynn Shiovitz is a writer and scholar based in Los Angeles. She is the author of Behind the Screen: Tap Dance, Race, and Invisibility During Hollywood’s Golden Age (Oxford 2023) and is currently finishing a memoir about her experiences with James Toback.