Harvey Weinstein responsible of rape in Los Angeles

A Los Angeles jury on Monday discovered Harvey Weinstein responsible of raping a girl, delivering a verdict that additional condemns the disgraced film titan whose remedy of ladies helped spur the #MeToo motion.

The choice all however assures that Weinstein, who’s 70, ill, and at present serving a 23-year jail sentence in New York for different rapes, will spend the remainder of his life behind bars. He’s scheduled to be sentenced within the Los Angeles case early subsequent yr, however should full his present jail sentence earlier than being transferred to California.

Following a bitter trial that stretched over a month, jurors deliberated for greater than 9 days earlier than returning to convict Weinstein of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, and sexual penetration by a overseas object. The costs had been based mostly on the account of a girl reported Weinstein for attacking her in a Beverly Hills resort room in 2013.

The jury both acquitted Weinstein or couldn’t attain a verdict on expenses that had been based mostly on allegations by three different girls who additionally accused him of raping or sexually assaulting them in resort rooms between 2004 and 2013.

Weinstein’s authorized troubles in L.A. started on the eve of his Manhattan trial in January 2020, when prosecutors right here introduced an preliminary set of expenses towards him based mostly on the claims of two girls. Extra expenses would comply with.

It was a kind of first accusers, an Italian mannequin recognized in courtroom as Jane Doe 1, on whose allegations the jury convicted Weinstein. Weinstein, she stated, had barged into her room on the Beverly Hills resort she was staying in whereas attending a movie pageant to brutally assault her. She reported the assault with Los Angeles police in October 2017, not lengthy after articles within the New York Instances and the New Yorker detailed sexual misconduct allegations towards Weinstein that helped spark the #MeToo motion and ended the profession of certainly one of Hollywood’s strongest figures.

The second lady, Lauren Younger, accused Weinstein of luring her to a resort suite with a suggestion to debate a screenplay she’d written after which groping her in a toilet whereas he masturbated. Younger first detailed her alleged assault throughout the New York trial, the place she was amongst a number of girls who testified about so-called “prior dangerous acts” by Weinstein that weren’t a part of the costs towards him.

Greater than 100 girls have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct since 2017. The Miramax co-founder, who was as soon as celebrated because the drive behind many iconic movies together with “Pulp Fiction,” “Good Will Looking” and “The English Affected person,” has now been erased from the movie business’s collective reminiscence. The studio that bore his identify is gone and the awe he as soon as instilled changed by disgust.

Following the preliminary expenses, Weinstein was indicted final yr on extra counts of sexual assault. Amongst that new group of accusers was Jennifer Siebel Newsom, now Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spouse, who alleged that Weinstein raped her throughout a gathering that was presupposed to be about her nascent appearing profession.

Throughout two days of emotional testimony final month, Siebel Newsom stated a gaggle of Weinstein’s aides left her alone with Weinstein in a resort suite. They mentioned overseas movie tasks, however he appeared disinterested and retreated to a toilet, she recalled. He emerged in a gown and began masturbating, she testified. For the subsequent 45 minutes, she stated, Weinstein repeatedly tried to coerce her into intercourse, claiming a variety of different A-list actresses had slept with him to advance in Hollywood.

Siebel Newsom stated that throughout the rape she felt “like a blow-up doll.” Ultimately, she stated, she made “pleasure noises” within the hopes of ending the assault.

“I’m shaking. I’m crying. He is aware of this isn’t consent in any respect,” she testified.

In her closing argument, Deputy Dist. Atty. Marlene Martinez advised jurors the assault on Siebel Newsom was certainly one of a number of that confirmed Weinstein had a predatory methodology. He used the promise of profession development to get girls alone, and after an assault would organize extra conferences with the ladies or supply them movie roles, Martinez stated. The follow-up conferences or presents, she argued, had been performed to protect towards rape accusations by making it seem the ladies willingly traded intercourse for skilled assist.

“For this predator, resorts had been his entice,” Martinez stated. “Confined inside these partitions, victims weren’t capable of run from his hulking mass. Folks weren’t capable of hear their screams.”

Weinstein has denied all wrongdoing. His protection attorneys, Mark Werksman and Alan Jackson, argued the assaults alleged by Jane Doe 1 and Younger by no means occurred. The attorneys acknowledged Weinstein had sexual relationships with Siebel Newsom and Juls Bindi — a masseuse who alleged that Weinstein groped her and masturbated in entrance of her in 2010 — however Werksman described their interactions as “transactional.”

Bindi, they stated, was provided a guide deal by Miramax’s publishing arm after their encounter. Siebel Newsom stayed in contact with Weinstein about future movie tasks and later solicited Weinstein, a high-level donor to Democrats, for contributions to her husband’s campaigns.

The protection attorneys additionally argued that most of the girls had been opportunists, profiting from the wave of anger towards highly effective, abusive males that fueled the #MeToo motion to rewrite what had been consensual “casting sofa” relationships as rape.

In his opening assertion, Werksman stated Siebel Newsom‘s rape allegations had been the one factor preserving her from being “simply one other bimbo” who slept with Weinstein to advance her appearing profession.

Throughout his closing argument, Jackson stated the prosecution’s case was constructed off emotion, fairly than reality. No witnesses may corroborate the assaults, he stated. And whereas the allegations towards Weinstein could have helped make the phrase #MeToo ubiquitous, Jackson reminded jurors that social actions weren’t proof.

“I don’t know how one can say it extra light than this, however fury doesn’t make reality,” he stated. “Tears don’t make fact.”