Speaking at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour on Wednesday (8 August), Crews (who plays police officer Terry Jeffords) explained what the aftermath has been after speaking out about his ordeal.

“I call it the ‘summer of freedom’ in that we can now tell our truth,” he said.

Referring to the lessons that he’s learned while acting on the show, he continued: “It’s about freedom and being able to tell your story. One thing that influenced me was being here and feeling safe and having friends and family on this show that I felt secure enough that I could tell my truth and still go to work. And it made a difference.

“Each and every person is standing up here right now because it gave me strength to do that — along with all the women who came forward in the #MeToo movement where I got all my strength from.”

When Crews originally broke the news about what had happened to him, he described going through all the emotions familiar to anyone who’s ever been groped in a public place: shock, disbelief, anger, distress, helplessness. The incident happened in front of his wife, he said, and although he considered retaliating, he believed it would actually make him more vulnerable.

“I was going to kick his ass right then – but then I thought twice about how the whole thing would appear,” he wrote on Twitter. “‘240 lbs. Black Man stomps out Hollywood Honcho’ would be the headline the next day. Only I probably wouldn’t have been able to read it because I WOULD HAVE BEEN IN JAIL.”

This is how Brooklyn Nine-Nine plans on supporting #MeToo