Harvey Weinstein found guilty on two out of five charges in rape trial
Former film mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose many accusers spurred the Me Too era with their public allegations of rampant sexual misconduct by him, was found guilty Monday on two charges ― a criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree.
Weinstein himself did not take the stand on advice from his attorneys, although he told reporters outside the courtroom that he would have liked to. The New York trial kicked off dramatically on Jan. 6, when prosecutors in Los Angeles announced their own sex crime charges against Weinstein the same day he showed up to court in Manhattan using a walker for his supposed back pain. The very next day, Weinstein managed to outrage New York state Supreme Court Justice James Burke, who presided over the trial, by bringing four cell phones into the courtroom in a flagrant violation of Burke’s no-phone rule.
Seven years later, Weinstein allegedly raped Mann, who told the jury she was still relatively new to Hollywood when she met Weinstein at a Los Angeles party, having been raised in a rural part of Washington state. During an initial meeting, Mann ended up giving Weinstein a massage so that “he wouldn’t have to touch her,” prosecutor Meghan Hast told jurors. The producer then dangled movie roles to keep Mann in his orbit.
At one point, Mann broke down in tears after a defense lawyer asked her to read aloud an email she’d sent to an ex-boyfriend describing Weinstein as fatherly, writing that he “always offered to help in ways that my parents didn’t.” The note revealed that Mann had been sexually abused years before she met the producer, at which point she began to sob. Burke adjourned for the day when the witness appeared to have a panic attack.
To bolster their image of Weinstein as a serial abuser, prosecutors called four other women to the stand to share their own stories.
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