Was MeToo all for nothing?
Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction seemed to usher in “a new age of accountability” for sexual predators, said Jessica Bennett in The New York Times, until “it didn’t.” In a 4-to-3 decision, a New York appeals court last week overturned the guilty verdicts on rape and sexual assault charges against the disgraced Hollywood producer because the trial judge had allowed testimony from women whose accounts of his predatory behavior were not officially part of the criminal charges— thereby putting him in “a highly prejudicial light.” The ruling does not free Weinstein, 72, who remains in prison in New York state as he faces a 16-year sentence for similar convictions in California. But the New York appeals court ordered a retrial. That would require Weinstein’s victims to “relive their trauma and testify once again,” said Laura Sinko in The Philadelphia Inquirer. For survivors of rape and assault who seek justice in our court system, “it’s never over.”
I feel great sympathy for those women, said Carli Pierson in USA Today, but even defendants as widely reviled as Weinstein have “a constitutional right to a fair trial.” This was a victory for dueprocess rights. Imagine the impact on the average defendant if prosecutors are free to introduce testimony about uncharged allegations of wrongdoing. Actually, it’s survivors who have the system stacked against them, said Moira Donegan in The Guardian. Sexual crimes often have no witnesses, and accusers inevitably must endure character assassination in court. For the more than 100 women who publicly accused Weinstein of sexual abuse from 2017 onward, “there was supposed to be safety—and credibility—in numbers.” Now, it seems, he had too many accusers. Bill Cosby, too, had his conviction overturned on a technicality in 2021. Even after MeToo, “somehow, the ending is always the same.”
That’s not really true, said The Economist. In part because of Weinstein’s exposure and prosecution, the law now sharply limits employer nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment disputes. Several states have lengthened their statutes of limitations for sexual crimes. On movie sets and in many other workplaces, sexual harassment is no longer shrugged off. Weinstein’s convictions in California, which allows “other acts” witnesses to testify, are likely to stand. The New York decision is “the biggest setback for MeToo yet,” but the movement’s efforts to expose and punish sexual abuse in the workplace “have not been for nothing.”