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Harvey Weinstein Is Convicted of Rape in Case That Sparked #MeToo

Harvey Weinstein Is Convicted of Rape in Case That Sparked #MeToo

(Bloomberg) -- Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and a criminal sexual act, more than two years after allegations against the former Hollywood power broker sparked the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein faces a five- to 25-year sentence for the criminal sexual act and as long as four years on a third-degree rape count. He was acquitted of rape in the first degree and charges of predatory sexual assault that could have resulted in a life sentence.

The 67-year-old movie producer, who is due to be sentenced on March 11 and plans to appeal, heard the verdict without expressing any emotion in an otherwise silent courtroom -- though he then turned to his lawyers and said, “But I’m innocent, I’m innocent, I’m innocent. How can this happen in America?” one of them said after court.

He was led away in handcuffs by a pair of court officers, one holding each arm, his walker remaining behind in the courtroom. The judge ordered Weinstein to be sent to the infirmary at New York City’s Rikers Island jail. Lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi and her colleague Meghan Hast exchanged a smile as they left the courtroom.

The trial marked an extraordinary moment in a national reckoning over the abuse and assault of women in the workplace. Much has changed since the New York Times and the New Yorker reported in late 2017 that dozens of women had accused Weinstein of preying on them, unleashing similar claims against other powerful men.

“This trial -- and the jury’s decision today -- marks a new era of justice, not just for the Silence Breakers, who spoke out at great personal risk, but for all survivors of harassment, abuse and assault at work,” Tina Tchen, chief executive officer of the Time’s Up Foundation, said in a statement.

Since the allegations against Weinstein were first widely reported, some 1,400 powerful people have been publicly accused of harassment, abuse or assault, according to Temin, the crisis consultants. Many suffered professional consequences of one kind or another. The crisis consultancy Temin & Co. puts the current number of Weinstein accusers at 111.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. named the six accusers who testified -- Dawn Dunning, Miriam Haley, Jessica Mann, Annabella Sciorra, Tarale Wulff and Lauren Young -- and added prosecutors Illuzzi and Hast.

“These are the eight women who changed the course of history in the fight against sexual violence,” Vance said in a statement. “These are eight women who pulled our justice system into the 21st century by declaring that rape is rape, and sexual assault is sexual assault, no matter what.”

Read More: Weinstein Jury Stuck on Gravest Charge, Told to Keep Trying

Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala said the defense would appeal the guilty verdicts and that he was “very confident” in the outcome. He called his client “a very strong man” who has remained “very calm” in the face of the verdict, and said he would ask an appeals court this week to order Weinstein’s release pending his sentencing.

Aidala, who related Weinstein’s response to the verdicts, added, “I put my hand on him and I said, ‘Harvey, it’s gonna be OK.’”

Lead defense lawyer Donna Rotunno had asked New York State Supreme Court Justice James Burke to let Weinstein remain free under house arrest. She said he was in the care of five doctors and needed to inject himself in the eye to avoid going blind. She noted that he’d been acquitted of the most serious charges. Burke told the lawyers he’d see them at the sentencing.

The jury, made up of seven men and five women, deliberated for five days and last week suggested they might be deadlocked on two counts. As eight of them left the courthouse Monday, they ignored a throng of reporters scrambling to interview them and got into a New York state court van.

Weinstein had been on trial in Manhattan since Jan. 6, charged with forcing oral sex on “Project Runway” assistant Haley in his SoHo loft in 2006 and raping aspiring actor Mann in a midtown Manhattan hotel in 2013. Prosecutors also called actor Sciorra, who says Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s, to support the predatory sexual assault charges, which require a serious assault on at least two people -- Haley and Sciorra, in this case, or Mann and Sciorra. Sciorra’s friend and professional colleague Rosie Perez testified that Sciorra told her about the attack at the time.

Read More: Weinstein Was Jekyll and Hyde, Witness Tells Jury

To show a pattern of sexual activity without consent, prosecutors called three additional witnesses who allege Weinstein attacked them.

The verdict appeared to reflect skepticism of Mann’s and Sciorra’s testimony. Weinstein’s lawyers pressed both Sciorra and Perez on the lack of specificity of their memories about an incident that allegedly happened more than 25 years ago. The defense cross-examined Mann for more than two days, suggesting she had continued to have sexual encounters with Weinstein after the alleged attack until late 2016 -- a behavior typical of victims, according to a forensic psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution.

Weinstein’s lawyers invoked affectionate emails and sustained relationships with Weinstein long past the alleged attacks, to paint a picture of consensual sex with mutual benefits. It was the women who were using Weinstein, they told the jury.

In the end, though, Weinstein’s lawyers couldn’t persuade the jury that the encounters with Haley and Mann were at worst transactional and that the woman is responsible for what happens to her -- a go-to defense in sexual assault trials that’s riskier in the #MeToo era.

Weinstein still faces sexual assault charges in Los Angeles. They were announced the day his New York trial started.

#MeToo advocates stress that the movement is about more than the Weinstein trial.

“These really brave women have unleashed something that is bigger than anything we could have ever predicted,” said Fatima Goss Graves, the president and chief executive officer of the National Women’s Law Center.

Read More: #MeToo Moment Two Years in the Making

Workplaces have bolstered their sexual harassment policies. Some of the biggest companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Wells Fargo & Co., have dropped forced-arbitration clauses for harassment complaints from employment contracts. More than a dozen states have amended or updated workplace harassment laws.

But Weinstein’s conviction “should not be viewed as a statement for or against a movement,” said Laura Brevetti, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn who has defended clients accused of sex crimes.

Instead, she said, it is “a clear vindication of the goal that so many have tried to achieve for decades -- that a person who has been sexually abused by anyone, especially someone in a position of power or authority, should not remain silent about it, that a victim has the right and channel to report it, and that our judicial system can ultimately bring justice to a victim.”

The case is People v. Weinstein, 450293/2018, New York State Supreme Court (Manhattan).

Read More

Accusers Could Send Producer to Prison for LifeWeinstein Lawyer Mocks D.A.’s Case, Urges ‘Courage’ on JuryWeinstein Was a ‘Predator’ With ‘Insurance,’ Prosecutor Says‘I Think I Was Raped’: Jury Hears Rosie Perez Back Up SciorraAccuser Called Weinstein a ‘Soul Mate,’ Ex-Friend TestifiesJessica Mann Is Grilled on Contact After Alleged RapeWeinstein’s Dream Jury Is Conservative, Traditional, Skeptical

(Updates with Weinstein’s remark in third paragraph and Vance’s in eighth and ninth paragraphs)

--With assistance from Olivia Rockeman, Olivia Raimonde, Chris Dolmetsch, Jeff Green and Rob Golum.

To contact the reporters on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net;Rebecca Greenfield in New York at rgreenfield@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey, Tina Davis

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