Harvey Weinstein yesterday morning turned himself in to police to face the first criminal charges to be filed against him after months of misconduct allegations from scores of women that destroyed his career and sparked the #MeToo movement.
Weinstein, 66, stepped from a black sport utility vehicle wearing a blazer and carrying books under his arm, and lumbered into a Manhattan police station before a crowd of news cameras.
The film producer was to face criminal sex act and rape charges in a New York court, said a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Photo: Reuters
The official said Weinstein would be charged with committing a criminal sex act in a 2004 encounter with Lucia Evans, a then-aspiring actress, who has said that the Hollywood mogul forced her to perform oral sex on him in his office.
She was among the first women to speak out about the producer.
The rape charge relates to a woman who has not spoken publicly or been identified, the official said.
Weinstein’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment when contacted about the charges late on Thursday, but has previously said that Weinstein has consistently denied any allegations of “nonconsensual sex.”
Evans confirmed to the New Yorker that she was pressing charges.
“At a certain point, you have to think about the greater good of humanity, of womankind,” she told the magazine.
Evans told the New Yorker in a story published in October last year 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.”
More than 75 women have accused Weinstein of wrongdoing around the globe. Several actresses and models accused him of criminal sexual assault, but many of the encounters happened too long ago for any prosecution.
The statute of limitations for rape and certain other sex crimes in New York was eliminated in 2006, but not for attacks that happened prior to 2001.
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