A jury found disgraced former media mogul Harvey Weinstein guilty of criminal sex act and third-degree rape.
Accusations against Weinstein became public in the fall of 2017, which spawned the #MeToo movement. Actresses told their stories to The New York Times and Ronan Farrow.
From Fox News:
He 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 found him not guilty on the most serious charge, predatory sexual assault, that 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 jury of seven men and five women handed down the on Monday after five days of deliberating.Weinstein has maintained any sexual encounters were consensual.
Weinstein did not testify even though he wanted to. Reports say his team decided against it to avoid “the risk of prosecutors” going after him on cross-examination.
However, defense lawyer Arthur Aidala said Weinstein’s “lawyers felt prosecutors ‘failed miserably’ to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Weinstein’s lawyers probably felt that way because two of the victims kept in touch with after the assaults.
The rape victim, who remains anonymous, acknowledged “she had a sexual encounter with him more than three years afterward.” She also sent him “friendly and sometimes flirtatious emails.”
The lawyers caused the woman to break “down in tears on the stand.” She explained she sent those messages “because she was afraid of his unpredictable anger and ‘I wanted him to believe I wasn’t a threat.'”
Women have described Weinstein as Jekyll and Hyde. While he appears interested in your career it’s all a show to get women alone in a room. One woman said she turned down Weinstein, who then ‘sneered, ‘You’ll never make it in this business. This is how this industry works.'”
[Featured image via YouTube]
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