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Harvey Weinstein
A Los Angeles judge on Thursday sentenced Harvey Weinstein to 16 years in prison after a jury convicted him of the 2013 rape and sexual assault of an Italian actor and model. The sentence comes on top of the more than 20 years the 70-year-old Weinstein has left to serve for a similar 2020 conviction in New York, furthering the fall of the onetime movie magnate who became a #MeToo magnet. Weinstein directly appealed to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench, saying: I maintain that I'm innocent. I never raped or sexually assaulted Jane Doe 1." The woman who Weinstein was convicted of raping sobbed in the courtroom as he spoke. Moments earlier she had told the judge about the pain she felt after being attacked by Weinstein. Before that night I was a very happy and confident woman. I valued myself and the relationship I had with God, the woman, who was identified in court only as Jane Doe 1, said. I was excited about my future. Everything changed after the defendant brutally
After a month-long trial and nine days of deliberations, Los Angeles jurors on Monday found Harvey Weinstein guilty of the rape and sexual assault of just one of the four accusers he was charged with abusing. But the three guilty counts involving an Italian actor and model known at the trial as Jane Doe 1 still struck a major blow against the disgraced movie mogul, and provided another #MeToo moment of reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement. Weinstein, who is two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York that is under appeal, could get up to 24 years in prison in California when he's sentenced. He was found guilty of rape, forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count involving the woman who said he appeared uninvited at her hotel room door during a Los Angeles film festival in 2013. Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013 and I will never get that back. The criminal trial was
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, faced cross-examination from one of Harvey Weinstein's attorneys Tuesday about why her description of a 2005 encounter during which she says the filmmaker raped her has expanded since she first spoke with prosecutors. The testimony came three weeks into the Los Angeles rape and sexual assault trial of Weinstein, and on the same day that the judge dismissed four of the 11 counts against him at the request of prosecutors. Weinstein lawyer Mark Werksman pressed Siebel Newsom about what she said were frequent nightmares she'd been having about the encounter with Weinstein in a Beverly Hills hotel suite. Have you had a difficult time actually discerning what happened in a nightmare and what actually happened in a bedroom at the Peninsula Hotel? Werksman asked. No, no, Siebel Newsom responded. She explained that the new elements of her testimony, some of which she said under oath for the first
A woman testified Monday that Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her in a hotel room during the Toronto Film Festival in 1991, then did it again when she went to confront him in the same hotel during the same festival 17 years later. Kelly Sipherd told a Los Angeles jury that she was a 24-year-old aspiring actor at the 1991 festival and didn't know who Weinstein was before she met him at a party. She said her friends there were abuzz about the man whose company Miramax had surged to the forefront of independent film and was making its mark at the Oscars. Sipherd said she was charmed by Weinstein at first as they discussed books and films. We got along very well, she said. He was very intelligent. We had a wonderful conversation. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused, but Sipherd agreed Monday to be named through her attorney. She said the two of them left the party for a glass of wine at a nearby cafe, then she went with him to
- "The Sopranos" actress Annabella Sciorra's voice cracked as she told a court Thursday that being raped by Harvey Weinstein left her feeling like she was having "a seizure" and caused her to self-harm. In emotional testimony at Weinstein's trial, Sciorra described how he barged into her New York apartment late at night in the early 1990s and attacked her while she was wearing a nightgown. "It was just so disgusting that my body started to shake in a way that was very unusual. I didn't really even know what was happening," the 59-year-old said. Sciorra faced the jury as she held her hands above her head and clasped her wrists to demonstrate how Weinstein, then three times her weight, held her down on her bed and sexually assaulted her. "He got on top of me and he raped me," she said, under questioning by lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon. "He put his penis inside of my vagina and he raped me," Sciorra repeated. Weinstein, 67, avoided eye contact and gestured towards one of his .