"Why did people keep working with him? WHY DID WOMEN KEEP WORKING WITH HIM."

I can't speak for all of them - hell, I can't speak for any of them, I don't actually know them - but I'm going to go with the few data points I have and they're all economics.

I did a story for @AltaJournal a couple of years ago about why actresses seem to suddenly pivot into being Wellness Queens at a certain age and that age is often their early thirties. I did research and discovered that male and female movie stars get paid the same for a while.

Women's paychecks peak, on average, at 34.

Men's paychecks peak at 39.

This is a deceptively bland bit of data. Think of it the same way climate experts say climate change is going to increase the earth's average temperature 2 degrees and we think, "Okay, short sleeves."

Two degrees makes the majority of the currently habitable earth uninhabitable. The word "Average" is hiding a whole bunch of IEDs. Same with actor's paychecks. Watch the average tentpole movie, where the big salaries are paid. I promise you it's not half men, half women.

So women have a shorter lifespan to get to the highest point they can get, after which they are just sort of praying for an easy glide path to that fantastic Netflix limited series they do in their seventies, and fewer roles to get them to that height.

Add in that women, even now, are given fewer chances to screw up - Notice how talented and beautiful Winona Ryder lost, oh, nearly two decades because she shoplifted and I'm still pretty sure Armie Hammer will get another chance - and every ingenue is constantly doing math.

So if someone like, say, Scarlett Johansson is looking at the waning edge of the ride up and she's promised a "Great role" - which, to be honest, I think most of Woody Allen's women are just variations of "Bitches, they be crazy"- with an "Esteemed director," she wobbles.

"I've met him," she thinks, "He's funny and he let me do that scene the way I wanted and how can someone who looks like if a brine shrimp and an unmade bed mated be a demon? I can't possibly know what happened. I shouldn't judge. Wasn't he cleared?"

People rationalize.

They rationalize all the time.

I had an acting teacher, Gordon Hunt, who would remind his students you never play a bad guy. No one is a bad guy in their own story.

People will work harder than you can imagine to rewrite the story so they aren't.

Evil banks on that.

"What about Dianne Wiest? Diane Keaton? Women beyond the run-up curve who continue to support him, if only with their silence?"

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13097605/quinn-cummings-child-actress/

People don't want to believe that they have met darkness. They want to believe they'd see it. Evil can't be their friend.

"What you're saying is the entertainment industry is garbage PIZZAGATE."

No.

I'm saying there are predators everywhere. Even as I write, someone is having a fond text chat with someone they have no idea has raped and will rape again and wouldn't believe it if they were told.

But if you're a lion with low-blood sugar, you go to the watering hole. If you're a predator, you go where the prey is. The lack of equity between men and women in the entertainment industry means women will always have to make hard choices.

The human's inability to see the monster behind the familiar mask means there are men who have worked with him who will continue to defend him until "The evidence is there." *

* There will never be enough evidence for them.

I went to a fancy-pants prep school. Two of our teachers dated classmates. Sure, they didn't flaunt it but if we students knew, it's safe to assume adults knew something. We thought it was disgusting because THEY WERE OLD EW but only a decade later did it bring me up short.

To sum up:

Not everyone in a power dynamic based on inequity and power disparity is a predator, but the greater the gap, the greater the likelihood that someone nears you is a predator.