Disgraced Hollywood titan Harvey Weinstein has been convicted on three out of seven charges, including one charge of rape. This is his second sexual assault trial, the first having taken place in New York. A California jury was reportedly swayed by the testimony of Jane Doe 1, who said Weinstein arrived at her hotel room uninvited in the middle of the night, and raped her. His lawyer, meanwhile, accused her of lying in his closing statement.
“Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013. I will never get that back,” Jane Doe 1 said in a statement. “The criminal trial was brutal. Weinstein’s lawyers put me through hell on the witness stand. But I knew I had to see this through the end, and I did… I hope Harvey Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime.”
For years, Weinstein was an open supporter and donor of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, which has a long history of aiding sexual abusers and covering up sex trafficking and child abuse. As Live Action’s Aiding Abusers investigation found, Planned Parenthood was regularly found to cover up these crimes, to the benefit of the men who committed them. Hollywood has been found to regularly pressure women in the entertainment industry to abort — and Weinstein was, of course, a highly influential power player in Hollywood.
Weinstein was previously sentenced to 23 years in prison in New York, on charges of rape and sexual assault. In California, he faces an additional 18 years in prison. He had originally been charged with 11 counts, but four of the charges — based on the testimony of a woman called Jane Doe 5 — were dismissed when prosecutors said they could not proceed on them. The jury couldn’t come to a unanimous decision on four of the remaining seven charges.
Siebel Newsom, one of the woman whose charges the jury couldn’t reach a verdict on, said she was disappointed, but still glad Weinstein couldn’t victimize anyone else.
“Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs. Harvey Weinstein is a serial predator and what he did was rape,” she said in a statement. “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny, and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean, and ridicule us survivors. This trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do. To all survivors out there – I see you, I hear you, and I stand with you.”
