A New York City grand jury has indicted former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual assault or harassment by at least 80 women, on new charges that reportedly revolve around other cases of sexual harassment.
In 2017, women started coming forward to accuse Weinstein of sexual abuse. Weinstein’s 2020 conviction of third-degree rape of one woman and first-degree criminal sex act of another was overturned in April by an appellate court. But in 2022, Weinstein was found guilty of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault, and sentenced to 16 years in prison, a decision that is being appealed by his attorneys.
Earlier this week, Weinstein was transported from Rikers Island jail to Bellevue Hospital for emergency heart surgery.
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Weinstein’s Miramax company, which he founded with his brother Bob, produced three films that won the Best Picture Oscar: “The English Patient,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and “Chicago,” as well as the films “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting.”
The appellate court that overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction wrote, “We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes. The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial. … It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them.”
After 2017 reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker detailed Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment of women, Weinstein was dismissed from Miramax, expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and suspended from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He resigned from the Directors Guild of America.
In what was called the “Weinstein Effect,” after the reports of Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment became public, many women and some men came forward to speak of being sexually harassed by prominent individuals.
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