Read This: Gabrielle Union on sexual assault, Nate Parker, and Birth Of A Nation

In The Birth Of A Nation, Gabrielle Union—who is a sexual assault survivor herself—has a non-speaking role as a woman who endures a similar trauma. Union helped shape the role by requesting that her character have no dialogue, as she told Vulture after the film premiered at Sundance. “It’s just more symbolic of the lack of control or power that black women had, and have, over our own bodies,” she said. Union’s wordless statement was another sign of the impact the film could have had. But everything changed when it came to light that the film’s writer, director, and star Nate Parker was accused of sexual assault when he was in college along with Jean Celestin, who wrote the film with Parker. Parker was acquitted when the case went to trial; Celestin received a conviction, which was eventually overturned.

Now Union is sharing her reaction in an essay for the Los Angeles Times. “Since Nate Parker’s story was revealed to me, I have found myself in a state of stomach-churning confusion,” she writes. She goes on to say that she “cannot take these allegations lightly,” questioning whether Parker had consent and noting that “by his own admission he did not have verbal affirmation; and even if she never said ‘no,’ silence certainly does not equal ‘yes.’” In a recent interview with Ebony, Parker talked about the extend to which he didn’t understand consent when he was 19.