Police look at new Weinstein claims
THREE further sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein have been made to British police, sources have confirmed.
The fresh complaints, from one alleged victim, relate to incidents in 2010, 2011 and 2015, in Westminster and Camden.
It takes the total number of allegations being investigated by the Metropolitan Police to four, after Merseyside Police passed a complaint dating back to the late 1980s to Scotland Yard earlier in the week.
The latest allegations, made to police on Saturday, came as more women came forward saying they were raped by Weinstein.
Hollyoaks actress Lysette Anthony has told the Metropolitan Police she was attacked by the movie mogul in her London home in the late 1980s, while another unnamed former Miramax employee said he raped her in the basement flat of his London offices in around 1992.
The woman, who is granted automatic anonymity as an alleged sex offences victim, said she has only confided in her husband about the attack within the past few days. The woman, who said she chewed raw garlic and wore tatty clothes to repel Weinstein, told a newspaper: “Even after all these years, I can still wake up screaming.
“I wanted the opportunity to speak out, but I just couldn’t see how.”
The fresh allegations follow several made by actresses in the US against Weinstein – four of rape and more than 30 of sexual harassment – and come as the organisation behind the Oscars expelled Weinstein. Bafta had already suspended the producer.
Actress Anthony, 54, told reporters she met the producer when she starred in 1982 sci-fi film Krull and the alleged assault occurred a few years later.
She said it was a “pathetic, revolting” attack that had left her “disgusted and embarrassed”.
Fellow British star Kate Winslet also said it was “absolutely deliberate” that she did not thank the director when she won her best actress Oscar, despite the fact his company financed and distributed the film.
Winslet, who won the Academy Award in 2009 for The Reader – in which she played a woman hiding her past as a guard at a concentration camp – thanked 19 people by name, but deliberately excluded Weinstein. She said: “That was absolutely deliberate. “I remember being told, ‘Make sure you thank Harvey if you win.’ And I remember turning around and saying, ‘No I won’t.’
“The fact I’m never going to have to deal with Harvey Weinstein again as long as I live is one of the best things that’s ever happened, and I’m sure the feeling is universal.”
Through his spokeswoman, Weinstein has “unequivocally denied” any allegations of non-consensual sex after three actresses said he had raped them in an article in The New Yorker.
As the controversy showed little sign of halting, Woody Allen, whose estranged son Ronan Farrow was among those investigating the mogul, said he was “sad” for Weinstein.