Weinstein charged with rape, sex acts
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein surrendered Friday to face rape and other charges from encounters with two women, wearing both handcuffs and a strained smile as officers led him from a police precinct to court.
“You sorry, Harvey?” came a shout from a throng of media as the once powerful movie mogul walked into a lower Manhattan courthouse, his head bowed. Asked “What can you say?” he mildly shook his head and softly said “No.”
It marked the first criminal case against Weinstein, coming seven months after the allegations destroyed his career and set off a national reckoning over sexual misconduct known as the #MeToo movement.
Weinstein, 66, was charged with rape and a criminal sex act as well as lower-level sex abuse and sexual misconduct charges, the New York Police Department said.
He turned himself in at the police station early Friday.
A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the criminal sex act charge stems from a 2004 encounter between Weinstein and Lucia Evans, a then-aspiring actress who has said the Hollywood mogul forced her to perform oral sex on him in his office. She was among the first women to speak out about the producer.
The rape charge relates to a woman who has not spoken publicly or been identified.
Weinstein’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment when first contacted about the charges late Thursday, but has previously said that Weinstein has consistently denied any allegations of “nonconsensual sex.”
Evans confirmed to The New Yorker that she was pressing charges.
Evans told The New Yorker in a story published in October that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex during a daytime meeting at his New York office in 2004, the summer before her senior year at Middlebury College.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance had been under enormous public pressure to bring a criminal case against Weinstein. Some women’s groups, including the Hollywood activist group Time’s Up, accused the Democrat of being too deferential to Weinstein and too dismissive of his accusers. A grand jury has been hearing evidence in the case for weeks.
In March, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo took the extraordinary step of ordering the state’s attorney general to investigate whether Vance acted properly in 2015 when he decided not to prosecute Weinstein over a previous allegation of unwanted groping, made by an Italian model. That investigation is in its preliminary stages.
More than 75 women have accused Weinstein of wrongdoing around the globe. Several actresses and models accused him of criminal sexual assaults, but many of the encounters happened too long ago for any prosecution.