“Surviving R. Kelly” filmmaker Dream Hampton said Friday that she is dropping out of an upcoming women’s conference in D.C. because Kirstjen Nielsen, President Trump’s former homeland security secretary, is slated to speak.
“Sharing a stage with Nielsen, who separated immigrant families and put babies in cages, would have put a stamp of approval on her immoral and reprehensible actions and help legitimize the terror that Trump is inflicting on immigrants and communities of color,” Ms. Hampton said in a statement to HuffPost. “So I’m cancelling my attendance and encourage other speakers to do the same.”
Ms. Hampton, who was recently named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in the world, was scheduled to sit on a panel about “justice and power” at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington on Tuesday. In her statement explaining her decision to drop out, Ms. Hampton said the former Trump official’s presence at the summit would amount to “reputation rinsing.”
“Reputation rinsing ― using visible, celebratory platforms to restore and normalize monstrous abuse ― was actually common practice for predators like R Kelly and Jeffrey Epstein,” she said in her statement. “When every infant, toddler, child and teenager Nielsen is responsible for ripping from their families is released and reunited, when attempts at restitution are made, then perhaps she can face one of them for a public ‘interview.’”
Ms. Nielsen is still listed as a speaker at the summit.
