Updated 16th December 2018
And as another lawsuit is leveled at the disgraced movie mogul, JLaw finds herself pulled in story which most reported as similar to “Harvey Weinstein bragged of sex with Jennifer Lawrence” but which the Mail Online headlined in juicy graphic detail as:
Harvey Weinstein ‘masturbated on an aspiring actress, forced oral sex against her will and boasted that he’d slept with Jennifer Lawrence’ (dailymail.co.uk).
But with the first incident prior to his JLaw bragging boast certainly taking creepy cake with him licking his lips and and wiggling his tongue, cocksure of his irresistible power-seduction:
During the meeting, the woman got up to use the restroom, where she was abruptly greeted by an erect Weinstein in a stall. Weinstein allegedly pulled in pants down and made sexually explicit remarks to her.The woman, meanwhile, was still sitting on the toilet with her skirt around her ankles, according to the suit.
Weinstein then allegedly told her: “My d**k is nice and hard for you” and asked: “Do you like my d**k?”
Despite rejecting his advances, Weinstein allegedly masturbated in front of her and inched closer to her on the toilet.
Moments later, he allegedly ejaculated on her skirt then insisted the pair should remain friends.
Updated 20th December 2018
And despite Weinstein’s seeming still lecherously lingering belief that it will still all go away if he pulls off alone and unwatched for a time in the shower while his lawyers contend the case is “irreparably tainted” by a detective’s alleged coaching of a potential witness:
Harvey Weinstein: judge rejects bid to dismiss sexual assault charges (theguardian.com).
There is “no basis for the defendant’s claim of prosecutorial or law enforcement misconduct in the proceedings”, the judge said in a written decision issued after the hearing. He set the next court date for 7 March.
Updated 26th August 2019
Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to new indictment forcing trial delay (theguardian.com).
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty on Monday to a new indictment that included revised charges of predatory sexual assault. The revisions forced the delay of Weinstein’s trial from 9 September to 6 January 2020.
The new charges reflecting evidence presented enabling the prosecution to add testimony from actress Annabella Sciorra, but with defense saying the changes revealed “the weakness” of the prosecution’s case with them also seeking to have the trial moved from Manhattan where they claim is “the least likely place on earth where Mr Weinstein could receive a fair trial”.
Updated 28th August 2019
‘The Sopranos’ actor Annabella Sciorra will testify that she was raped by Harvey Weinstein, prosecutors say (buzzfeednews.com).
Annabella Sciorra, best known for her role in The Sopranos, will testify that Weinstein raped her inside her Manhattan apartment in 1993, Manhattan prosecutors said.
With Sciorra having first spoke about the alleged rape shortly after the initial Weinstein exposé New Yorker story in October 2017.
Updated 23rd October 2019
With it time for Citizen Rose to launch a new lawsuit too:
Rose McGowan says Weinstein launched ‘diabolical’ effort to silence her (theguardian.com).
The actor Rose McGowan alleges in a new lawsuit that the film mogul Harvey Weinstein took “diabolical” actions when he learned she was going to write in a memoir that the producer had raped her decades prior, engaging a team of fixers, lawyers and an international spy agency to intimidate and silence her.
Her attorneys claiming in a statement that the team—including the indeed somewhat diabolically sounding private intelligence agency Black Cube—used unlawful tactics in “a sprawling smear campaign to defraud, malign, and marginalize McGowan” as she began work on her memoir titled “Brave”.
Updated 12th December 2019
Harvey Weinstein ‘reaches tentative $25m deal with accusers’ (bbc.co.uk).
Film mogul Harvey Weinstein has reached a tentative $25m (£19m) settlement with dozens of women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, lawyers have said.
All sharing in the payout from insurance firms representing the Weinstein Company which would end almost all related civil lawsuits against him without admitting wrongdoing, although still needing to be signed off by all parties and court approval is required, with him still facing a separate trial on rape and sexual assault charges next month and with his appearance at court garnering skeptical commentary:
No chance Harvey: the charges against Weinstein are so serious his zimmer-frame shuffle just doesn’t cut it (theguardian.com).
The suggestion being that he perhaps should have had a role in some of the films he produced when turning up looking disheveled on somebodies nan’s walking frame having been involved in a car accident in August.
The man went full Daniel Day-Lewis. True, your eye may have been drawn to his walking frame at first—a bold choice, certainly, but nobody ever won a court case with nuance—but it lingered at the tennis balls that had been clumsily placed over the legs. “Look at this poor wretch of a man,” they said. “He can’t even afford a walking frame that comes with adequate padding. He has to use tennis balls, like somebody’s nan would.”
Updated 6th January 2020
Harvey Weinstein arrives at court for opening day of rape trial (news.sky).
Indeed, going full “Daniel Day-Lewis” again hobbling in again with his nan-style frame with tennis ball ferrules but with Citizen Rose and Rosanna Arquette who says he derailed his her career after resisting his advances confronted Weinstein as he was got out of his car.
New York’s Supreme Court is expected to make its jury selection today, with the trial set to last around two months.
And after pleading not guilty to five counts in New York to what is a potential life sentence, Los Angeles prosecutors announced their own criminal charges (theguardian.com), presumably relating to accusations from eight people involving allegations of sexual battery or assault that were being investigated.
Updated 25rd January 2020
(Please note: From here on the American spelling of “defense” rather than the British “defence” will be used in reference to Weinstein’s lawyers is used so as to remain consistent with source articles which are usually American in origin.)
After getting threatened with jail for using two phones in court (buzzfeednews.com), and with the judge telling potential jurors that the “case is not a referendum on #MeToo” (buzzfeednews.com), with model Gigi Hadid dismissed as a juror regards potential impartiality (buzzfeednews.com) the trial commenced on Thursday:
Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer played up old myths about rape while questioning the case’s star witness, Annabella Sciorra (buzzfeednews.com).
Though another one of Weinstein’s lawyers, Damon Cheronis, assured jurors during opening statements on Wednesday that the defense would not shame any of the victims—only “question them thoroughly”—Rotunno’s line of inquiry on Thursday played up old myths about rape, as she asked Sciorra a series of questions about her behavior following the alleged assault.
With defense attorney Donna Rotunno firing questions such as “Did you call 911?”, “Why didn’t you run out of the apartment?“ and why didn’t you “Try to poke him in the eyes?” after The Sopranos actress had told the jury that she blacked out and fainted after the alleged attack in which she testified he had pinned her down, raped her and ejaculated on her leg and with Do the Right Thing and White Men Can’t Jump actress Rosie Perez taking to the stand to tell that she had told her (standard.co.uk).
Updated 3rd February 2020
And after the second accuser, production assistant Mimi Haley—who legally changed her last name from Haleyi in order for her surname to be more generic (theguardian.com, Jan. 2020) although it is often used in press reports— took to the stand and said she “Felt like an idiot” for not did not initially considering the second time he had attacked her as rape as she had attempted to reclaim “some power” (buzzfeednews.com, Jan. 2020) in a work relationship which was never anything more than him demonstrating the power a Hollywood megaproducer who was once described as “God” at the Golden Globes had over everyone around him, and the third, former actress Dawn Dunning told that he had offered her a movie role in exchange for a threesome with him and his assistant and the forth, model Tarale Wulff, told of him saying “Don’t worry, I’ve had a vasectomy” as he preceded to rape her (buzzfeednews.com, Jan. 2020):
The testimony that changed the Harvey Weinstein story (buzzfeednews.com).
A former aspiring actor, [Jessica Mann] testified last week that Weinstein forced oral sex on her, raped her, and then manipulated her into a sexually humiliating relationship, which she said included him wanting to film her having sex, urinating on her, and asking if she liked his “big Jewish dick.” On Monday, as she attempted to answer Weinstein’s lawyers’ questions on why she continued to stay in touch with the wealthy producer long after the alleged assaults, Mann, sobbing uncontrollably, said she felt like she was having a panic attack and court was adjourned for the day.
With Weinstein’s lead attorney Donna Rotunno suggesting that it was Mann who had manipulated her client to further her professional success with a “friendship, relationship, sexual or professional” in which she “enjoyed the power and the parties”, and with the testimony changing part being that the three taking the stand previous had all broke off contract with him after the assaults, whereas with Mann, the youngest of the women to testify thus far, it was “something far more complicated—a long, drawn-out relationship with her alleged rapist”:
Mann testified that she craved the validation that Weinstein had provided—but fundamentally, Mann appeared to be trying to salvage a career and personhood out of the wreckage of her relationship with Weinstein. Rotunno cast this as her being manipulative and disingenuous—but the transaction between Mann, a young woman who grew up in a trailer park on a dairy farm, and Weinstein, a powerful film producer, had never been a fair one to begin with.
And with her describing his “deformed” body and the abuse as unpredictable and with her putting on a face to engage in what she thought of role-play while seemingly thinking him incapable of having “actual sex” and that, to “create a fantasy in which he would get to feel like he was having actual sex” “he would negotiate”, with her making excuses to avoid the worst until “I would give in, like he would agree to just masturbate while holding me”, although with regards that “urinating on her” testified that he had once asked her if she “ever had a golden shower” before preceding to pee on her in the shower (thedailybeast.com).
Next page: Story changing testimony with the youngest to testify enduring a long, drawn-out relationship with her alleged rapist resulting in the jury getting to see photos of Harvey Weinstein’s “deformed” naked body, defence rests its cast after witnesses deny accusers accounts at which they were present, and in closing arguments Weinstein’s attorney acknowledges that she is asking the jury to make a possibly “unpopular decision” while prosecution describes him as “master of his universe” where woman were “merely ants he could step on without consequences”.