The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Hollywood movie mogul Weinstein faces sex charges
Like many around the country, Sarah Ann Masse watched the newscasts on Friday as former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was escorted into a New York City court to face sexual assault charges.
For Masse, it was both a relief and a vindication of her claims the movie producer molested her in his former Westport home in 2008.
“Harvey Weinstein’s arrest is an important step on the path to justice for myself and all of his victims. But it is not where this ends,” she told Hearst Connecticut Media. “This is a systemic issue, and this is one step in the right direction in a series to move us forward. Harvey must be sentenced and pay for his heinous crimes. Those who surrounded him, supported him, were complicit in and facilitated his crimes must also be brought to justice.”
Weinstein emerged from a police station Friday morning with his hands locked behind his back in steel cuffs. The once-powerful Hollywood mogul faces rape and criminal sex-act charges, a searing reckoning for the man who became a symbol of a worldwide outcry over sexual misconduct.
“This defendant used his position, money and power to lure young women into situations where he was able to violate them sexually,” Manhattan Assistant Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said later, in words that brought raised eyebrows from the otherwise stonyfaced Weinstein.
The charges stem from encounters with two of the dozens of women — some famous, some not — who have accused him of sexual misdeeds. The rape charge involves a woman who has not come forward publicly; the other is a onetime aspiring actress who was among his first accusers.
Underwear ‘interview’
Masse’s Westport encounter with Weinstein came in 2008, when she was working as a nanny to support herself as she pursued an acting career in New York City. Her agency informed her of a job babysitting Weinstein’s three children from his first marriage.
After about a month of interviews with Weinstein’s assistants, Masse said she was told that Weinstein wanted to meet her. The assistant scheduled the interview to take place at Weinstein’s then-home in Westport.
In her federal lawsuit she filed against Weinstein last year, Masse states she drove to Weinstein’s home. When she arrived, he opened the door in his boxer shorts and an undershirt. Masse assumed Weinstein had forgotten about the interview, and that he would excuse himself to go change. But he did not, the suit states.
Weinstein then proceeded to conduct the “interview” in his underwear.
At the end of the interview, still clad only in his underclothes, Weinstein grabbed Masse and pulled her tight against his body, the lawsuit states.
“The hug was uncomfortably close, and lasted too long. She did not know how to get out of his embrace,” the suit continues. “Weinstein then told Masse that he loved her. Masse felt unsafe and sexualized. She was afraid to try and pull away or push him off or even ask him to stop because she feared he may become violent.”
Masse left feeling upset, shaken, afraid and disrespected. When she returned home, she told the story to her mother, the lawsuit states.
It continues that a few days later, Weinstein’s assistant told Masse she did not get the job because she was an actor.
“On information and belief, the reason Masse was not hired was because she did not respond to Weinstein’s propositions,” the suit states.
Weinstein has consistently denied any allegations of nonconsensual sex. His lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said Friday that he would fight to get the charges dismissed.
Weinstein was released on $1 million bail, with constant electronic monitoring and a ban on traveling beyond New York and Connecticut. The top charges against him carry the potential for up to 25 years in prison.
He is accused of confining a woman in a Manhattan hotel room and raping her in 2013, according to a court complaint.
The criminal sex-act charge stems from a 2004 encounter between Weinstein and Lucia Evans, a then-aspiring actress who told The New Yorker magazine he forced her to perform oral sex during a daytime meeting in his office.
More than 75 women have accused Weinstein of wrongdoing, and authorities in California and London are also investigating assault allegations. Brafman has said Weinstein was a “principal target” of an investigation being conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.
Other women who have publicly accused Weinstein of criminal sexual assaults include actress Rose McGowan, who said Weinstein raped her in 1997 in Utah; “Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra, who said he raped her in her New York apartment in 1992, and Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe, who said he attacked her in a London hotel room in 2008.
Blacklist threat
Until the scandal, Weinstein was among the most influential forces in American film. Companies he cofounded, Miramax and the Weinstein Co., were behind such hits as “Pulp Fiction,” “Shakespeare in Love” and “The King’s Speech.”
After Weinstein was fired from his own company in the wake of sexual assault complaints from women, Masse said she finally felt she could speak publicly about Weinstein’s predatory behavior. She publicly declared she will not audition for roles for productions in which known predators are involved.
Early last December, Masse said she was informed that several casting directors had complained about her public position on Weinstein, implicitly threatening to blacklist her.
“This movement is changing the discourse of abuse and assault so that survivors are heard and believed,” she told Hearst. “Through breaking the silence, through class actions against predators like Harvey and his ring of conspirators, through cooperating with criminal cases, and through being a part of creating the art, industry, and society that no longer stands for this type of behavior. Today, we can both appreciate what we have done and appreciate what we have yet to do.”