Predator movie mogul Harvey Weinstein gets 23 years in jail
Former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison on Wednesday for sexual assault and rape in a case that has been hailed as a victory for the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct.
The sentence was handed down in the Manhattan criminal court by justice James Burke, who presided over Weinstein’s trial. On February 24, a jury found Weinstein guilty of sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi and raping former aspiring actress Jessica Mann.
Once one of Hollywood’s most influential producers, Weinstein had faced the possibility of a maximum sentence of 29 years in prison.
During sentencing proceedings, prosecutor Joan Illuzzi asked Burke to impose 25 years or “near” 25 years in prison for Weinstein’s conviction on a charge of criminal sexual act in the first degree involving Haleyi, and to impose a consecutive sentence for the third-degree rape conviction involving Mann. That charge called for up to four years in prison, but the prosecution made no specific request.
Weinstein, and the six women who testified against him, were all in court for the proceedings.
In an emotional statement in court, Haleyi spoke of the trauma she had endured since the attack. “It scarred me deeply, mentally and emotionally, perhaps irreparably, perhaps forever,” she said.
Prosecutors argued in court filings last week that the sentence should reflect not only the crimes of which Weinstein was convicted, but a “lifetime of abuse towards others”.
More than 100 women, including famous actresses, have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct stretching back decades, fuelling the #MeToo movement against sexual abuse and harassment. Weinstein has denied the allegations and said that any sex was consensual.
The jury of seven men and five women acquitted Weinstein on the most serious charges, a single count of first-degree rape as well as two counts of predatory sexual assault, which carried a potential life sentence.
Those charges relied on testimony by actress Annabella Sciorra, who said Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s.
Weinstein’s lawyers urged Burke on Monday to impose the minimum sentence of five years, asking him to consider Weinstein’s
charitable activities. They also said that a longer sentence would probably result in Weinstein dying in prison.
“His life story, his accomplishments and struggles are simply remarkable, and should not be disregarded in total because of the jury’s verdict,” they said.
Weinstein has been awaiting sentencing in New York’s Rikers Island jail. He was moved there on Thursday last week after a 10-day hospital stay at Bellevue Hospital, where he had an operation to clear a heart blockage.
The fallen mover and shaker was a powerful figure in Hollywood, and donated money to Democratic candidates.
Weinstein won an Academy Award for producing
and was responsible for other acclaimed films including and
Prosecutors portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who manipulated women with promises of career advancement in Hollywood, luring them to hotel rooms or private apartments and then overpowering and attacking them.
Haleyi testified at the trial that Weinstein had invited her to his home in 2006 after she had worked on one of his television productions, backed her into a bedroom, held her down on the bed and forced himself on her orally.
Mann told jurors that Weinstein raped her in a Manhattan hotel room in March 2013, about a month into what she described as an “extremely degrading” relationship with him that continued for several years after the attack. Mann called Weinstein a “Jekyll and Hyde” character, charming in public but prone to rage when they were alone.
Weinstein’s lawyers argued during the trial that the six women who had testified against him were reframing consensual encounters as assaults out of regret.
In Friday’s filing, prosecutors listed more than a dozen accusations going back to 1978, when they said he had in a hotel room sexually assaulted an employee of his music company based in Buffalo, New York.
Court documents unsealed on Monday included an e-mail to Weinstein from his estranged brother, Bob Weinstein, telling him that he belonged in hell.
“U deserve a lifetime achievement award,” Bob Weinstein wrote in the November 2017 message, “for the sheer savagery and immorality and inhumaneness, for the acts u have perpetrated.”