Former film producer Harvey Weinstein faces of this monday to retrial against him on charges of sexual abuse. It takes place in the courts of the city of Los Angeles, where he has been a leading figure in the Hollywood industry for decades.
The 70-year-old producer now faces eleven more charges, including rape and forced oral sex against women in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles hotels between 2004 and 2013, in a criminal trial that could last for the next two months.
Weinstein is serving a sentence of 23 years in prison in New York, after being convicted in this city for a series of sexual assaults. If convicted in Los Angeles too, the movie mogul – who pleaded not guilty to all charges – could be sentenced to another 140 years Behind the bars.
Jury selection will begin Monday in a downtown Los Angeles courthouse.
Allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against Weinstein exploded in October 2017. In total, nearly 90 women including Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Salma Hayek Weinstein was charged assault or harassment.
In June, he lost an attempt to overturn these sex crimes convictions. He was also separately accused by British prosecutors of indecent assault on a woman in London in 1996.
He claims that all sexual encounters were agreedand his attorney told reporters that the Los Angeles allegations “are many years old,” so they can’t be “corroborated by forensic evidence” or “credible witnesses.”
Also this week, “She Said” will premiere at the New York Film Festival. The production tackles the 2017 journalistic investigation into Weinstein that sparked the fall of his film empire.
Before the complaints against him, Harvey and his brother Bob were among the most powerful producers in Hollywood. Together they founded Miramax Films, a distribution company created in 1979 and whose name pays homage to their mother Miriam and father Max. Disney bought the company in 1993.
A key milestone in #MeToo history
Weinstein’s new court summons comes when she’s satisfied five years after the #MeToo complaints startedwhen hundreds of women began to make public what had been a secret of Pulcinella in the entertainment industry for decades: the culture of harassment.
“The most important achievement of #MeToo was raising awareness of how the powerful use their tools to sexually abuse women and to have created a public concept that, instead of embarrassing victims, embarrasses abusers, “Aya Gruber, a law professor at the University of Colorado (USA), told the EFE agency.
in the next weeks the plaintiffs will also go through the US courts. Danny Masterson, Kevin Spacey and director Paul Haggis. All accused of alleged crimes of sexual harassment and abuse that follow the same pattern of intimidation and abuse of power dynamics.
One day after Weinstein’s trial begins, in the same building, the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Center in Los Angeles, the oral hearing of the case of Masterson, protagonist of the series “That 70s Show” arrested in 2020 for three alleged rape crimes at his Hollywood Hills home.
The actor, who He lost a millionaire contract with Netflix the moment the allegations came to light, has always denied his guilt and claims it was all due to a campaign organized by the Church of Scientology after his abrupt departure.
But if #MeToo has achieved anything, it’s hastening the fall times of all who are scored: Kevin Spacey left the cast of the series he starred in, “House of Cards”, as soon as the first complaints against him surfaced. and, in addition, it must pay the manufacturer $ 31 million for breach of contract.
“An environment has been created in which many women have broken down their barriers and talked about the abuses suffered. The consequence was that many people realized that there was a reality that was there that they didn’t want to face, “Jennifer Becker, senior attorney and legal director of Legal Momentum, the oldest legal advocacy group for women, the United States.
As complaints continue to pile up in the courts, gender experts agree that the next step for #MeToo is to enter the legislative chambers. For the time being, the United States Congress has already passed a law regulating the protocol by which companies respond to cases of harassment.
“If women continue to be underrepresented and fail to reach positions of power, dynamics of vulnerability will continue to be promoted where it is more common for situations of abuse or harassment to occur and it will not be possible to progress towards equality, ”adds Becker.
Source: Clarin
