3 women file suit accusing Weinstein of sexual assault

NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein’s legal problems multiplied Friday as three women filed a lawsuit in federal court, accusing him of using his power as a movie producer to lure them into hotel rooms where he sexually assaulted them.

One of the women, Melissa Thompson, accused Weinstein of raping her in a room at the Tribeca Grand Hotel in September 2011 as she was trying to demonstrate an online marketing tool.

This week a Manhattan grand jury indicted Weinstein, 66, on charges he forced an aspiring actress to perform oral sex on him during a meeting at his office in 2004 and that he raped a woman at the Doubletree Hotel on Lexington Avenue in 2013. His lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, maintains the encounters with both women were consensual.

Danny Frost, a spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, declined to comment on whether investigators were aware of or had looked into Thompson’s accusation.

In the lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Thompson said she first talked to Weinstein about her digital marketing platform at a meeting in his office at 375 Greenwich St. on Sept. 29, 2011. He asked if he “was allowed to flirt” with her, then caressed her leg and put his hand up her skirt as she was trying to demonstrate the product, the suit said. She moved away from him, but continued her sales pitch.

Weinstein then said he had to edit a film and asked her to meet him for a drink at 5:30 p.m. at the Tribeca Grand to continue the conversation. At the hotel, he led her to a room, where, she said, a few minutes later he forced her onto a bed and raped her. “Thompson was fighting back, but could not outmuscle him,” the lawsuit said.

The other plaintiffs in the class-action suit are both actresses: Caitlin Dulany and Larissa Gomes. Dulany accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in a room at the Hotel du Cap in Cannes, France, in 1996. Gomes said Weinstein invited her to his room at the Sutton Place Hotel in Toronto in 2000, ostensibly to talk about parts for her, then groped her breasts and propositioned her, saying other actresses “had no problem” having sex with him. She fled the room.

The New York Times does not normally publish the names of victims of sex crimes. Elizabeth Fegan, the lawyer for the three plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said they had consented to their names being published.