DA: Give Harvey max Weinstein’s decades of alleged abuse detailed in sentencing filing
Manhattan prosecutors on Friday detailed a litany of alleged assaults carried out by convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein — some unreported and dating to the 1970s — to urge a judge to impose the maximum sentence possible when the disgraced producer returns to court next week.
In a sentencing memo filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi said that prosecutors learned of dozens of disturbing incidents during the course of their two-year criminal investigation into Weinstein — including accusations the pervy producer raped, sexually assaulted and verbally abused both men and women as he simultaneously climbed his way to the top of Hollywood.
“Throughout his entire adult professional life, [Weinstein] has displayed a staggering lack of empathy, treating others with disdain and inhumanity. He has consistently advanced his own sordid desires and fixations over the well-being of others,” the court document states.
“He has destroyed people’s lives and livelihoods or threatened to do so on whim. He has exhibited an attitude of superiority and complete lack of compassion for his fellow man.”
In one previously unreported incident during the summer of 1981, Illuzzi said that a young woman responding to a casting call near Central Park was directed to a hotel room where Weinstein was alone and waiting for her in a white terrycloth robe.
“Everyone calls me Teddy Bear because I’m so big and cuddly and harmless,” he allegedly said to her.
Weinstein told the woman he’d offer her the part of Faye Dunaway’s younger sister in a movie he was producing if she “was willing to do what it takes,” according to Illuzzi’s memo. Weinstein allegedly told the young woman he needed her to “get him off” in an abnormal position due to his obesity.
The woman refused to comply and never saw Weinstein again, until her alleged assailant turned up years later in a television appearance, Illuzzi said.
Illuzzi’s memo also described how Weinstein threw staplers at women assistants, underpaid his employees, forced his chauffeurs to drive illegally, once knocked his brother Bob unconscious, and in 2015, said to a board member “that he would send someone to his office to cut off his genitals with a garden shears.”
“Multiple people have reported to [prosecutors] that [Weinstein] bragged about his ability to get people killed,” the letter noted.
Illuzzi also wrote of a male employee who suffered the larger-than-life producer’s wrath. The unnamed man told prosecutors during their investigation that he acted as a “shield” for the women Weinstein tried to lure into his sordid orbit.
“[Weinstein] always wanted naked or scantily clad women on the movie posters. During one of these photoshoots, [Weinstein] called the employee repeatedly, asking if the female celebrity was ‘naked yet,’ ” Illuzzi’s memo said.
On one occasion, when a woman refused to have her picture taken without clothes on, Weinstein demanded that graphic designers superimpose her head onto a naked woman’s body.
Weinstein, 67, was convicted of criminal sexual act and thirddegree rape on February 24. He faces a maximum sentence of 29 years behind bars. He is due for sentencing on March 11.
“It is therefore totally appropriate in this case to communicate to a wider audience that sexual assault, even if perpetrated upon an acquaintance or in a professional setting, is a serious offense worthy of a lengthy prison sentence,” Iluzzi wrote.
Weinstein was transferred from Bellevue Hospital to the North Infirmary on Rikers Island on Thursday after undergoing a heart procedure.