New York: Harvey Weinstein was convicted Monday at his sexual assault trial, sealing his dizzying fall from powerful Hollywood studio boss to arch villain of the ‘#MeToo movement’.
Weinstein was found guilty of criminal sex act for assaulting production assistant Mimi Haleyi at his apartment in 2006 and third-degree rape of a woman in 2013. The jury however, found him not guilty on the most serious charge, predatory sexual assault, which could have resulted in a life sentence.
The verdict followed weeks of often harrowing and excruciatingly graphic testimony from a string of accusers who told of rapes, forced oral sex, groping, masturbation, lewd propositions and that’s Hollywood excuses from Weinstein about how the casting couch works.
The conviction was seen as a long-overdue reckoning for Weinstein after years of whispers about his behaviour turned into a torrent of accusations in 2017 that destroyed his career and gave rise to ‘#MeToo’, the global movement to encourage women to come forward and hold powerful men accountable for their sexual misconduct.
The jury of seven men and five women took five days to find him guilty.
The case against the once-feared producer was essentially built on three allegations: that he raped an aspiring actress in a New York City hotel room in 2013; that he forcibly performed oral sex on Haleyi and that he raped and forcibly performed oral sex on ‘Sopranos’ actress Annabella Sciorra in her apartment in the mid-1990s.
Three additional women who said they, too, were attacked by Weinstein also testified as part of an effort by prosecutors to show a pattern of brutish behavior on his part.
This agency does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sex crimes unless they grant permission, as Haleyi and Sciorra did.
While Weinstein did not testify, his lawyers contended that any sexual contact was consensual and that his accusers went to bed with him to advance their careers.
The hard-charging and phenomenally successful movie executive helped bring to the screen such Oscar winners as Good Will Hunting, Pulp Fiction, The King’s Speech and Shakespeare in Love and nurtured the careers of celebrated filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith.
AP