Harvey Weinstein, last Tuesday in a Los Angeles court. POOL (REUTERS)
This Monday, when a new trial against Harvey Weinstein begins in Los Angeles, much will have changed for who was the almighty film producer.
Nothing is the same for the filmmaker since October 5, 2017, when journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published in
The New York Times
the investigation that broke the silence and broke the wall of impunity that surrounded who reigned in Hollywood for decades. .
With 70 years and a sentence of 23 years in prison for rape and other sexual crimes, Weinstein begins a new judicial process in California.
If found guilty of the accusations made by five women, he could face up to 140 years in prison.
Five years after the birth of the MeToo movement, Weinstein's is just one among several processes where victims seek justice.
In the same court where the founder of Miramax will be tried, the trial against Danny Masterson, the star of the television series
That 70′s Show
, who faces three charges of rape, which he denies, will begin just days apart.
In New York, actor Kevin Spacey and director Paul Haggis also sit on the bench.
Weinstein arrived on the West Coast in July 2021 after being extradited from New York, where he received what has been considered an exemplary sentence during the process that marked the birth of the MeToo movement.
And who helped transform the
New York State court system.
The Adult Survivors of Abuse Act goes into effect next month, creating a one-year window to prosecute a rapist or stalker regardless of when the crime occurred.
In 2019, in addition, both California and New York extended the statute of limitations for a series of crimes of this type to 20 years.
Jury selection begins Monday, a difficult task for the defense of the man who has become the face of modern sexual predation alongside Bill Cosby (whose conviction was overturned for a procedural error).
More than 90 women accused Weinstein of abuse during a process that ended in February 2020. Among them were Mira Sorvino, Ashley Judd, Cara Delvingne or Patricia Arquette.
The sentence was confirmed by five judges in June.
The jury is one of the targets of attack by defense attorneys.
Despite the decision of the judges, the lawyers went to the highest court of appeals in New York with the hope of annulling the sentence.
They argue alleged prejudice against their client by a juror and a judge, who allowed three women who were not victims of the producer to testify.
The sentence that weighs on Weinstein was because the Prosecutor's Office managed to prove the abuse suffered by Mimi Haley, a production assistant, and Jessica Mann, an aspiring actress.
Lauren Young, another of the women who took the stand in New York, will repeat her testimony in Los Angeles court.
She affirms that the nightmare that she lived originated, like many other cases, in supposed work meetings in luxury hotels where the abuses took place.
A group of actresses and women who broke their silence to point the finger at Harvey Weinstein pose together in February 2020, after the verdict was heard in New York. FREDERIC J. BROWN (AFP)
Weinstein faces in Los Angeles, the city where he reigned, 11 counts of
rape, sexual harassment, forced copulation and penetration with the use of force against five women.
Some cases that would have occurred over almost a decade, between 2004 and 2013. Four of the 11 accusations would have happened in the week before the 2013 Oscars, one of the most important events in Hollywood.
On February 24, two tapes produced by him triumphed at the gala that night.
Jennifer Lawrence won the acting award for
The Bright Side of Things
and Quentin Tarantino got the second statuette from him, for
Django Unchained
.
This Oscar season also has Weinstein as an accidental lead.
One of Universal's bets for the awards season is
She Said
, the film adaptation of the book written by Kantor and Twohey that explains the long process that led the victims of the producer and other predators to step forward and raise their voices, which started the MeToo movement.
The tape counts among the cast with some of the ex-producer's abuse survivors.
Young claims Weinstein entered her room at the exclusive Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills (now known as Maybourne) after a meeting and grabbed her breasts while she was masturbating.
The events allegedly occurred on February 19, 2013. Weinstein, just as he did with the New York accusations, denies the accusations.
In addition to her, four other women will expose her cases to the jury.
Another victim was allegedly raped a day before Young.
According to the indictment filed by the Los Angeles district attorney, an unnamed woman saw the producer force his way into her room after she had attended a screening with Weinstein.
After briefly arguing, he forced her to perform oral sex on him and then raped her.
Three of the five victims have Gloria Allred as a lawyer, a feminist activist who has achieved sentences in trials against other sexual predators such as millionaire pederast Jeffrey Epstein, Cosby and, more recently, rapper R. Kelly.
Allred will have the support of witnesses in court who will help establish a history of misconduct.
These, who have come to be known as MeToo witnesses, can help the Prosecutor's Office to highlight a prolonged pattern of abuse by the accused, without these testimonies having materialized into accusations in this trial because either they have prescribed or the Prosecutor's Office considers which are more difficult to test.
With almost a hundred women among Weinstein's victims, the Prosecutor's Office asked that 16 take the stand to testify under that figure.
Judge Lisa Lench refused, accepting only four.
Among those left out are actresses Rose McGowan, one of the first to point the finger at Weinstein, and Daryl Hannah.
The former producer's lawyers reject these testimonies because they consider that they violate Weinstein's defense rights.
other defendants
On the other side of the country, in New York, the director and two-time Oscar winner Paul Haggis faces civil proceedings on Tuesday for allegedly raping a publicist in January 2013. The producer also rejects the accusations, assuring that he is the victim of a extortion.
In June, Haggis was detained in Italy for two weeks until a judge threw out the accusation made against him by a 28-year-old British woman who claimed to have been raped two days in a row by the director of
Crash
.
The judge determined that there were no elements to judge the facts and that the director's defense proved that the woman was lying.
Kevin Spacey occupies the bench of the accused in New York since this week.
In front of him is Anthony Rapp, who accuses the 63-year-old protagonist of
House of Cards
of harassing him in 1986, when he was 14 years old.
"I was a child and I had no desire to live an experience like this in my life ... I was very scared and it was very alarming," Rapp said Friday during the beginning of the process, in which he asks for 40 million dollars in compensation.
Spacey's defense rejects the accusations, which he describes as fabricated lies to raise the profile of Rapp, who today is part of the cast of a musical on Broadway.
On Tuesday, the actor will answer questions from Spacey's defense, whom 20 men have accused of sexual abuse.
In 2023, the
American Beauty
actor will face five accusations of harassment, allegedly committed between 2005 and 2013, in London.
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