33-year-old Rosalynn McGinnis from Oklahoma was kidnapped when she was 12 years old and held in custody in Mexico by his 62-year-old stepfather Henri Michele Piette for 19 years. Kept as a sex slave, McGinnis was repeatedly raped and gave birth to nine children until she managed to escape last year in June.
McGinnis told the media that Piette had been harassing her since she was very young. Things started to get worse when Piette gave her a wedding ring and married her in a twisted “wedding ceremony” in the back of a van when she was 11.
A year later in 1997, Piette started rapeing this 12-year-old innocent girl. Worse still, McGinnis’ mother fled from the family and left her with the rapist because of intolerable domestic violence. McGinnis was then snatched away from her school to a remote rural area in Mexico.
In captivity, McGinnis suffered from near daily sexual assaults, beatings by baseball bat, stabbed by knife and even tortured until she went into a coma. She gave birth to nine children until she finally escape from custody in June last year.
McGinnis said she would have gone crazy or died if she kept living in such predicament. Hence she took a taxi with her children to Oaxaca City with money saved up over the years. She eventually managed to contact the authorities and fled back to the US.
Piette was arrested on 5th October in Mexico and extradited to the US. He is charged with first-degree rape and other offences by authorities in Oklahoma, and detained in an Oklahoma jail awaiting trial. As he had been living in Mexico and middle South America for quite a long period of time, Piette is suspected to have deep ties to Mexican criminal organizations, according to FBI.
Harvey Weinstein is scheduled to appear in a New York City court on Wednesday, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
The May 1 court appearance will come less than a week after New York’s highest court threw out Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, ordering a new trial. The DA's office has said it intends to pursue a retrial.
“We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault,” the office said in a statement.
Meanwhile, a woman he was sent to prison for sexually assaulting said Friday she is considering whether she would testify at any retrial.
Mimi Haley said she is still processing Thursday's decision by the state Court of Appeals and is considering numerous factors, including the trauma of having to prepare for another trial and again relive what happened to her.
“It was retraumatizing and grueling and exhausting and all the things,” she said during a news conference with her attorney, Gloria Allred. “I definitely don't want to actually go through that again. But for the sake of keeping going and doing the right thing and because it is what happened, I would consider it.”
Weinstein was convicted in New York in February 2020 of forcing himself on Haley, a TV and film production assistant, in 2006 for oral sex and raping an aspiring actress in 2013. He had pleaded not guilty and maintained any sexual activity was consensual.
The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named and Haley has agreed to be named.
The conviction was overturned this week in a 4-3 decision by the appeals court, which found the case prejudiced Weinstein with “egregious” improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that he wasn’t charged with.
Weinstein, 72, was also convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison in California. But he may still remain in custody in New York while awaiting a new trial.
Allred said the New York appeals court decision shows how important it was to also bring charges in California, even when critics called that prosecution superfluous.
Weinstein's attorney, Arthur Aidala, did not immediately respond to an email seeking a response to Haley's comments. But on Thursday he called the state Court of Appeals ruling “a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Friday that her office is analyzing the scale of the decision and how the state can make sure that all women feel safe coming forward.
“I don’t want this to be a moment of stifling the environment that was created where finally we were calling out people who were abusing women in their presence," said Hochul, a Democrat. "We don’t want to have any setbacks where there’s this sense that you now have to be silenced, and that’s something that we have to protect.”
Allred said she welcomed the governor's comments and likely would be suggesting possible legislation. She said she's concerned that the ruling will lead to fewer cases being brought, especially against high-profile defendants.
Haley said she has talked to other alleged victims of Weinstein about the ruling, but the subject of testifying again did not come up.
“What would make me want to do it again would just be, like I said in the past, this isn't just about me,” she said. “It's a really important case. It's in the public eye. It's really difficult for me personally, but it's important for the collective.”
Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this story from Albany, N.Y.
FILE - Harvey Weinstein arrives at a Manhattan courthouse as jury deliberations continue in his rape trial in New York, on Feb. 24, 2020. Weinstein will appear in a New York City court on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
