Harvey Weinstein during his trial in Los Angeles ETIENNE LAURENT (AP)
Harvey Weinstein was found guilty in the country he once ruled. After more than nine days of deliberations, a Los Angeles court jury has added to the black history of the former producer-turned-an icon of the Me Too movement. Weinstein was found guilty of rape and two other charges of sexual molestation. No consensus was needed to get a guilty verdict on the charges of two other women, including Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of the California Governor. Weinstein was cleared of another charge. Whoever was a famous and powerful actor in the film industry will know his punishment by the beginning of 2023. Everything indicates that he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Weinstein, 70 and with various health issues, arrived on the West Coast in the summer of 2020 to face two allegations of rape and another five allegations of sexual abuse from four filmmakers. They testified in court about the events between 2005 and 2013. During the four-week trial, a jury of eight men and four women heard testimony from 49 witnesses, all but five women. The victims explained the sex offender’s modus operandi. A New York sentence of 23 years in prison already weighed on his back. The US legal system requires you to serve your sentence in the East first. When that expires, he will be transferred back to California to serve his sentence.
The judge declared three trials null and void. Despite deliberations spanning nine days over two weeks, the jury was unable to agree on the evidence offered in the three women’s cases. And this despite the fact that the prosecutors had declared at the end of the trial that they had provided “irrefutable and overwhelming evidence of the nature of this man”. Weinstein’s defense denied several of the events described, with others calling them consensual sexual encounters.
The prosecution sought to prove the repeated tactics Weinstein used to frame his victims. The first victim to tell her story was a Russian model who was in Los Angeles in February 2013 to attend an Italian film festival. The victim denounced in October 2017, when The New York Times began airing the producer’s behavior. The model assured that he came to his room without an invitation. There he raped her. “I felt very guilty towards myself. Mainly for opening that door,” he told the court.
This Monday, the jury concurred with the model, ruling Weinstein guilty of charges of rape, another of forcing oral sex, and another of molestation. The defendant, who uses a walker to get around, did not take his eyes off the table for the first few minutes while the verdict was read out. His new sentence could be up to 24 years in prison.
Lauren Young, a model-turned-actress, was the only woman to testify in the Weinstein trials in New York and Los Angeles. In her statement, she claimed the producer locked her in a Beverly Hills hotel bathroom, where he groped her and masturbated in front of her. His testimonies did not convince everyone on the jury except two people, so the case was declared void.
The same happened in the case of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a star of the Democratic Party. His testimony was one of the most awaited at the trial. And also one of the most dramatic. The documentary filmmaker described meeting the film producer at a party at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005. Weinstein expressed great interest in a 31-year-old actress who had not yet met Newsom, then Mayor of San Francisco.
Weinstein sought her out upon his return to Los Angeles. He stopped by her house to give her a book by legendary MGM producer Louis B. Mayer. He met her the next day at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. “You don’t say no to Harvey Weinstein (…) because he can make or break your career,” said Siebel, who is 47 today. The actress then figured the date would be at the bar, but a filmmaker’s assistant took her to a suite where the producer was, who showed little interest in the projects she was proposing.
Siebel said Weinstein got off the couch and went to another room. Minutes later he called her for help. She found him in the bathroom. He masturbated, he testified. He pulled her and tried to get her to take his penis. “I just remember that he physically tried to pull away, I told him several times no please,” said the victim. After 45 minutes of fighting, he forced her into a room where he entered her and performed oral sex on her, she said. Siebel admitted under oath that he exchanged some friendly emails with Weinstein after the violent episode he narrated, pausing several times to cry and take deep breaths as he told the story.
Although the jury found the fact inconclusive and divided 8-4, Siebel celebrated the trial’s outcome. “Harvey Weinstein will never rape a woman again. She will spend the rest of her days behind bars where she belongs,” the First Lady of California said in a statement.