Count our blessings – Weinstein is still in prison

So a New York court has chucked out the 2020 rape case against serial sexual predator Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer whose sexual assaults were so numerous, his behaviour so brutal, that it globally reignited the #MeToo movement and made it seem the free pass given to the patriarchy’s most rich and powerful, was being challenged.

Thursday’s ruling — passed four to three — said the prior court had “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts”.

It allowed women who weren’t directly charging Weinstein to give testimony to help build a picture of what a vicious predator Weinstein was.

Wigdor Law, which represented eight of Weinstein’s accusers, said the ruling was bunkum: “Courts routinely admit evidence of other uncharged acts where they assist juries in understanding issues concerning the intent, modus operandi or scheme of the defendant.”

So Weinstein’s conviction was overturned on a technicality: the women’s testimony showed Weinstein had a “propensity to commit rape and sexual assault”, but it didn’t indicate “motive or intent”. Excuse me while I die laughing. The ruling sent shock waves. This man was once so powerful that if actresses, personal assistants, secretaries, didn’t masturbate him, allow him to masturbate them, didn’t agree to oral sex, didn’t agree it was “consensual sex” when he raped them, he destroyed their careers.

He had so much power it was easy: this actress was “impossible to work with”. This one “a shrew”. This one “crazy”. Labyrinthine

NDA agreements stripped women of legal redress. Weinstein’s goons tapped phones, rang bosses, mucked up private lives.

He was a ruthless, savage, sexually incontinent bully. Everyone knew. And no one said a word. For fear of the ferocious smackdown. For fear of work drying up.

Tangentially, we have an inside player here: Ronan Farrow, son of Mia, daughter of Maureen O’Sullivan. It was his exposé,

Catch and Kill, that helped bring Weinstein to justice.

Powerful men being bastards was not virgin territory for Farrow. His sister Dylan had long accused their father Woody Allen of abuse but an independent investigation found that there was no abuse.

It was Woody Allen’s legal team that dubbed Mia Farrow a “harridan”. Ended her career. Cast Dylan as sweet but “deluded”.

As Allen went public with his sexual affair with adopted schoolgirl daughter, Soon Yi, Hollywood looked carefully the other way.

Woody Allen was the then power.

Dylan published her 2014 letter in the New York Times: “For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like...”

Ronan was initially aghast. It threatened his father’s wrath, the loss of powerful connections. But how could he help Weinstein’s victims and not his own sister? He became her, and Mia’s, advocate.

Still, all is not lost. Weinstein is still in jail on a 16-year sentence from LA. And Tarana Burke, 2006 founder of #MeToo, said the court’s reversal isn’t so much a blow as “a clarion call”. One the #MeToo movement is up to.

Of course survivors are “disgusted” and “horrified”. The ruling is an “act of institutional betrayal”. Meanwhile, Weinstein’s cock-ahoop legal team said their boy was “crying”, “so grateful he was finally being listened to”.

Maybe more accurately crying with relief ? So grateful, powerful men can still get away with abusing women? Oh, America.