How #MeToo Shapes Motherhood

Hilarie Burton Shares How Her Sexual Harassment While Filming 'One Tree Hill' Affects How She Parents Her Daughter

Hilarie Burton is sharing intimate details on her time filming One Tree Hill, and expresses the sexual assault she experienced has shaped not only her view of Hollywood, but how she chooses to raise her daughter.

COVID-19 Fast-Forwarding The Cinema Industry

AMC Theaters Will No Longer Show Universal Studios Films After 'Trolls World Tour' Online Success

Hilarie Burton opens up on her #MeToo moment

Although it's been over a decade since Hilarie Burton appeared on One Tree Hill, the actress is sharing she still hold many memories from those days - not all of them happy.

In her new memoir The Rural Diaries, which came out on May 5, Burton shares her experiences growing up on a farm, and how vastly different that life was compared to when she starred in the teen drama.

“I had such strong relationships on the show and I still do,” Burton said. "There was so much good. But there was bad too.”

Burton was on the show for six years before she left in 2009. The actress came forward about sexual harassment and abuse allegations toward the drama creator, Mark Schwahn in 2017. She was not the only one to come forward.

Burton reveals that Schwahn would touch her inappropriately, kiss her against her will, and would often be verbally abusive. Although Schwahn was never fully convicted, he has lost his job on another TV show project.

Despite happening in her early 20s, the actress never fully came forward about her boss saying, "I was told that if you speak up, your career is over. You’ll be labeled a troublemaker.”

The actress shares a son named Gus, 10, and a daughter, George, who is 2, with fellow actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan of The Walking Dead.

“I didn’t say anything for a decade,” says Burton. “And as a result of that, people were abused after me. The guilt that comes with that is really difficult.”

“It affects how I parent George,” she continued. “She will never be a pleaser. If my daughter tells someone to f— off, awesome. I wish I had had the ability to do that.”

Along with her daughter, Burton also shares she talks about these experiences with her son Gus as well.

“He knows something bad went down on that set and he asks me, ‘Why do you still do conventions for it? Why do you still talk about it?’ But I am making a decision as an adult to focus on the good, to focus on the fan base and the crew and the fact that I got to learn my craft every day,” she said.

She hopes in the future that kind of behaviour is being flushed out of the industry.

She concluded, however, that “there is still a lot of work to do.”