Weinstein to surrender and face charges
The disgraced producer to finally face criminal charges
NEW YORK — Law enforcement officials say Harvey Weinstein is expected to surrender to authorities Friday morning to face criminal charges in a monthslong investigation into allegations that he sexually assaulted women.
The two officials said the criminal case involves allegations by Lucia Evans, a former actress who was among the first women to speak out about Weinstein. The case would be the first criminal charge against the film producer since scores of women began coming forward to accuse him of harassment or assault, triggering a cascade of accusations against media and entertainment figures that launched the #MeToo movement.
The precise charges Weinstein is expected to face weren’t immediately clear. Weinstein’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment. Weinstein has said repeatedly, through his lawyers, that he did not have “non-consensual sex” with anyone.
Evans told The New Yorker, in a story published in October, that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex during a daytime meeting at his New York office in 2004, the summer before her senior year at Middlebury College.
“I said, over and over, ‘I don’t want to do this, stop, don’t,’” she told the magazine. “I tried to get away, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t want to kick him or fight him.”
She didn’t report the incident to police at the time, telling The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow that she blamed herself for not fighting back.
“It was always my fault for not stopping him,” she said.
Weinstein was fired from the company he co-founded and expelled from the organization that bestows the Academy Awards last fall after The New York Times and The New Yorker published articles about his treatment of women, including multiple allegations that he groped actresses, exposed himself to them or forced them into unwanted sex.
His accusers included some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Several actresses and models accused him of criminal sexual assaults, including film 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 the Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe, who said he attacked her in a London hotel room in 2008. Another aspiring
actress, Mimi Haleyi, said Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in his New York apartment in 2006.
New York City police detectives said in early November that they were investigating allegations by another accuser, “Boardwalk Empire” actress Paz de la Huerta, who told police in October that Weinstein raped her twice in 2010. It’s not clear whether Weinstein will face additional charges involving other women.