The once celebrated author of the Young Adult novel 13 Reasons Why, which became a popular Netflix series, is now telling his side of the story after allegations of sexual misconduct, which he maintains are baseless, shut his career down as #MeToo peaked, and, as he claims, the movement was weaponized by his scorned lovers for revenge.
In an article for The Free Press, the Bari Weiss-founded news outlet recently purchased by Paramount Skydance, novelist and reporter Kat Rosenfield shares Jay Asher’s perspective on what led to him being kicked out of his life as a married father with a wildly successful YA career, a Netflix deal, and shunned from the publishing world, divorced and earning just a hair above the national poverty level. The article, titled “How #MeToo Destroyed the Author of ‘13 Reasons Why,’” paints Asher as the victim of a vindictive campaign involving anonymous accusations from several women with whom he’d had affairs and organized by a single former lover hellbent on destroying his life and reputation.
Asher and Rosenfield state and frame the piece, respectively, as a tale of injustice and retribution that is long overdue, as he was caught up in the #MeToo reckoning on sexual misconduct eight years ago, when, as the reporter puts it, “demand for rapists, predators, and other such malefactors to punish became so great that it threatened to eclipse the supply” for splashy stories to buoy the women-led #MeToo movement against sexual abuse and misconduct. Asher openly admits in The Free Press to pursuing several women over the years at YA conferences, particularly at the annual meeting of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, in what often became lengthy affairs that gestated at the event and carried on via phone, text, emails, and so on; the relationships for the most part ended badly when they’d learn there were other women.
“I made horrible decisions in my personal life that tore apart my marriage,” Asher conceded to Rosenfield. “I cheated on my wife. I don’t care if people still want to look down on me for that. Their judgment is valid because I did that.”
What he will not concede — and did not when in 2018 he filed a defamation lawsuit, which ultimately failed under the SLAPP statute — was that he was expelled from SCBWI; he maintains he left voluntarily. He also takes exception to the claims that he threatened any of the women into keeping silent or that there was a power imbalance in the relationships. In fact, Asher told The Free Press that every single relationship occurred before he’d garnered any clout in the world of YA, or before he’d had anything published. He has published four novels, starting with 13 Reasons Why in 2007, and a handful of picture books and teen humor novels.
While it appeared to be several women who came forward in the comments section of a blog post in the publishing trade title School Library Journal, Asher was never formally accused of, it seems, or actually investigated over any of the accusations. Still, he soon found himself asked not to attend the conference after a letter was signed by seven women claiming they were lured into affairs and then threatened by the author. They remained anonymous in the letter, but in the Free Press article, one woman was deemed the ringleader: Robin Mellom.
Asher says he met Mellom in 2003 and their affair began in 2005, lasting three years. It hit the skids when he informed her that she was not his only affair, though in the article, he indicated that it was his first, and Mellom had initiated the tryst. When it ended, she turned angry and began to cyberstalk and harass him. That went on for 10 years, with her contacting women he was pictured with to warn them of his ways; evidence of these conversations was viewed and corroborated by The Free Press.
Former SCBWI executive director Lin Oliver played a key role in taking down Asher. After initially meeting with Asher and telling him she saw the women’s accusations as the “sour grapes” of his former lovers, months later, she made an about-face, writing in a letter that she’d expelled him from the group following an investigation. Asher says this is untrue and that he was never contacted for an investigation. Jessica Freeburg, Asher’s co-writer on the 2017 book Piper, summed up what she thinks of Oliver’s integrity: “She’s just a coward, and she was just being a coward.”
The publication also tracked down one of the women who made the initial formal accusations, who now reveals that she was not comfortable with Mellom’s wording in one of the letters about Asher, but the objection she made to them privately was silenced by the group, she told the publication.
“I just felt like [Mellom] had a vendetta, like it was starting to become this attack. The show had just come out, so it was like, how dare he get this show when he did all this stuff! And I just remember thinking, but it was consensual. We had talked to some of the other women and it was all consensual. There was nothing even remotely close to what would be considered #MeToo stuff.”
Asher’s story has largely concluded in the public eye, but he tells The Free Press that he is tired of remaining silent as he watches people in his life “contort themselves to avoid being honest about the campaign of destruction in which they were complicit.” He managed to get the Andrea Brown Literary Agency to stop collecting royalties on his books, as they dropped him amid the controversy — he even got the company to drop a non-disparagement clause in that agreement. But despite what he says is the truth of the situation, for Asher, any consolation is too little, too late.
“At the height of MeToo, and with the damage already done, it would have taken incredible courage to admit the truth,” he told The Free Press.
Read the full article here
