Adam Donaghey Outed as "Harvey Weinstein of Indie Film"

Indie film producer Adam Donaghey made headlines last month after a woman accused the filmmaker of sexually assaulting her when she was 16. Now, after the producer of A Ghost Story was arrested, charged and released from custody on $25,000 bail, a recent report from The Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern reveals not only that Donaghey had a prior history of sexual assault, but also that his behavior was an open secret within the indie film community.

“The first time I was ever on set I was warned about Adam Donaghey,” a female filmmaker, one of Stern’s many interview subjects, told The Daily Beast. “I was told he was the Harvey Weinstein of Dallas.”

One subject, Cristen Leah Haynes, revealed she was sexually harassed by Donaghey in 2014 during production of the film Occupy Texas.

“We start driving over there and we get there before everybody else. And the whole way there, he’s coming on to me, and it was very blunt. Show me your underwear — not even a question in the beginning, just a statement, like he thought it was OK to say,” said Haynes. “I said, ‘I hope you’re joking, but no, that’s OK, thanks.’ But he kept going, so that’s when I pulled my phone out and decided that I should document what was happening in case I got fired after that, or in case he started doing something physically.”

According to the Daily Beast report, an audio recording of the encounter had been making the rounds within the Dallas indie film community for years without anyone taking action against Donaghey. Haynes added that the producer actually reached out to her with an attempted apology in 2016 after the audio began circulating, asking her how he could “make this go away.”

“I responded, saying there really wasn’t much he could do at this point,” she told The Daily Beast. “I just wanted to create an awareness, hoping that the people that do hire him would stop and that he would kind of slowly make his way out of the industry.”

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