Longtime prosecutor takes over Weinstein case in NYC
Woman won conviction in case of missing child Etan Patz
NEW YORK — A longtime Manhattan prosecutor who led the ultimately abandoned sex assault inquiry against former International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn has taken over the rape investigation of Harvey Weinstein, two people familiar with the case said Thursday.
Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, who also won a conviction in a notorious decades-old case of a missing child Etan Patz, a touchstone of the national missing-children’s movement, has been working on the Weinstein investigation since about the beginning of the month.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office and the NYPD have been looking into allegations made by at least two women who say Weinstein assaulted them. One, actress Paz de La Huerta, said he raped her twice in 2010. A second, Lucia Evans, said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in his Miramax office in Manhattan in 2004; at the time, Evans was a college student trying to break into acting. Weinstein is also under criminal investigation in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and London but has not been charged. Since last fall, scores of women, including famous actresses, have accused him of sexual harassment, assault and rape. He was fired from the production company he started with his brother. The business recently filed for bankruptcy.
Weinstein has not been charged criminally and denies any nonconsensual sex. Weinstein’s attorney Benjamin Brafman, who also represented StraussKahn when he was accused in 2011 of sexually assaulting a hotel maid, said he welcomed IlluzziOrbon to the case.
“In all of my prior professional dealings with her, she has acted as a consummate professional,” he said. Illuzzi-Orbon has been with the district attorney’s office for nearly 30 years, resigning briefly in 2015 to run for Staten Island District Attorney. When she lost the election, she returned to Manhattan.
The Strauss-Kahn case was ultimately dropped after prosecutors lost faith in the accuser.