Handcuffed Weinstein faces rape charge in MeToo reckoning

It was the moment the #MeToo movement had been waiting for: Harvey Weinstein in handcuffs.

His face pulled in a strained smile and his hands locked behind his back, the once-powerful Hollywood figure emerged from a police station Friday facing rape and criminal sex act charges, a searing reckoning for the man who became a symbol of a worldwide outcry over sexual misconduct.

Harvey Weinstein, center, listens during a court proceeding in New York on Friday, May 25, 2018. Weinstein was arraigned Friday on rape and other charges in the first criminal prosecution to result from the wave of allegations against him that sparked a national reckoning over sexual misconduct. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool)

"This defendant used his position, money and power to lure young women into situations where he was able to violate them sexually," Manhattan Assistant Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said later, in words that brought raised eyebrows from the otherwise stony-faced Weinstein.

The charges stem from encounters with two of the dozens of women — some famous, some not — who have accused him of sexual misdeeds. The rape charge involves a woman who has not come forward publicly; the other is a onetime aspiring actress who was among his first accusers.

Weinstein has consistently denied any allegations of nonconsensual sex.

His lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said Friday that he would fight to get the charges dismissed.

And he began to take aim at the accusations and accusers, noting that the alleged attacks weren't reported to police when they happened and suggesting potential jurors wouldn't believe the women.

"Assuming," he added, "we get 12 fair people who are not consumed by the movement that seems to have overtaken this case."

Asked about the raft of other allegations against Weinstein, Brafman said the case was a question of crime, not bad behavior.

"Mr. Weinstein did not invent the casting couch in Hollywood," the attorney said.

In this courtroom sketch, Harvey Weinstein, center, is escorted into New York County Criminal Court in New York on Friday, May 25, 2018. Weinstein was arraigned Friday on rape and other charges in the first criminal prosecution to result from the wave of allegations against him that sparked a national reckoning over sexual misconduct. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams)

Weinstein was released on $1 million bail, with constant electronic monitoring and a ban on traveling beyond New York and Connecticut.

As he surrendered, the 66-year-old Weinstein found himself surrounded by lights and cameras in a spectacle he couldn't control.

"You sorry, Harvey?" came a shout from a throng of media as the once powerful movie mogul was led into a lower Manhattan courthouse.

Asked "what can you say?" Weinstein mildly shook his head and softly said "no."

Earlier, he lumbered into a police station carrying books that harkened to his show-business roots: one on the Broadway songwriting team of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and another about famed film director Elia Kazan.

During a half-hour in a cell, officials said, he sat on the floor and flipped through the Kazan biography. Later, in a courthouse booking area, he complained he felt faint and his handcuffs were too tight. Officers used three, linked sets to put his hands behind his back — a common procedure for heavyset prisoners. Other suspects who recognized him yelled out, "Yo, Harvey!"

The top charges against him carry the potential for up to 25 years in prison.

Harvey Weinstein, right, stands with his attorney, Benjamin Brafman, during a court proceeding in New York on Friday, May 25, 2018. Weinstein was arraigned Friday on rape and other charges in the first criminal prosecution to result from the wave of allegations against him that sparked a national reckoning over sexual misconduct. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool)

He's accused of confining a woman in a Manhattan hotel room and raping her in 2013, according to a court complaint.

The criminal sex act charge stems from a 2004 encounter between Weinstein and Lucia Evans, a then-aspiring actress who told The New Yorker magazine he forced her to perform oral sex during a daytime meeting in his office.

"We are relieved and grateful that justice is coming, but we also mourn the cases where it didn't," her lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, said in a statement to The Associated Press.

More than 75 women have accused Weinstein of wrongdoing, and authorities in California and London are also investigating assault allegations. Brafman also has said that Weinstein was a "principal target" of an investigation being conducted by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan.

New York City police have also been investigating allegations by "Boardwalk Empire" actress Paz de la Huerta, who told police last fall that Weinstein raped her twice in 2010.

Other women who have publicly accused Weinstein of criminal sexual assaults include actress Rose McGowan, who said Weinstein raped her in 1997 in Utah; "Sopranos" actress Annabella Sciorra, who said he raped her in her New York apartment in 1992, and Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe, who said he attacked her in a London hotel room in 2008.

Until the scandal, Weinstein was among the most influential forces in American film. Companies he co-founded, Miramax and the Weinstein Co., were behind such hits as "Pulp Fiction," ''Shakespeare in Love" and "The King's Speech."

Harvey Weinstein, center, leaves the New York Criminal Court building in New York on Friday, May 25, 2018. Weinstein was arraigned Friday on rape and other charges in the first criminal prosecution to result from the wave of allegations against him that sparked a national reckoning over sexual misconduct. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

But there were rumors in Hollywood for years about Weinstein's pursuit of young actresses. And in 2015, an Italian model went to New York City police and accused him of groping her during a meeting.

Police set up a sting in which the woman recorded herself confronting Weinstein. But Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. decided not to bring charges, citing a lack of evidence.

Vance — a Democrat who faced public pressure from women's groups to prosecute Weinstein this time — said Friday's charges "reflect significant progress in this active, ongoing investigation."

The public allegations against Weinstein helped prompt a broad public furor about sexual misconduct.

Major figures in media and politics have lost their jobs or had their reputations tarnished by allegations that they subjected women to unwanted advances or outright assaults. They include TV hosts Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, comedian Louis C.K, Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken, chef Mario Batali, casino magnate Steve Wynn and, most recently, Democratic New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

But on Friday, it was Weinstein in the spotlight.

"We got you, Harvey Weinstein," McGowan tweeted. "We got you."

Harvey Weinstein arrives at the first precinct while turning himself to authorities following allegations of sexual misconduct, Friday, May 25, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Harvey Weinstein's landmark New York sexual assault conviction was thrown out by an appeals court Thursday, and most of the dozens of civil cases filed against him since he became a central target in the #MeToo movement in 2017 have either been settled or dismissed.

That doesn't mean the 72-year-old disgraced movie mogul and his lawyers don't have plenty of court time ahead. Prosecutors in Manhattan say they plan to retry him, and several other cases remain unresolved.

Here's a look at those, and at some that have come and gone:

Weinstein was found guilty in 2022 in Los Angeles of the rape and sexual assault of Italian actor and model Evgeniya Chernyshova, and his 16-year sentence in that case will keep him in prison despite the reversal of the New York verdict.

Of the four women he was charged with assaulting in California, this was the only case that led to a conviction. Weinstein insisted at his sentencing that he never met her.

An appeal looms there too, and Weinstein's attorneys will make the same arguments as in the New York case about witnesses testifying to assaults he was not charged with.

Los Angeles prosecutors said Thursday that the judge at their trial acted well within state law in the testimony she allowed. Weinstein's lawyers must make their case in a filing by May 20.

Weinstein could be brought to California to serve the sentence in that case, or he could remain behind bars in New York while awaiting retrial.

Chernyshova also is the plaintiff in one of the last remaining civil lawsuits against Weinstein. Just weeks after the guilty verdict, she sued over emotional distress from her 2013 rape at a Beverly Hills hotel.

Weinstein's attorneys argued at his sentencing in the criminal case that the lawsuit constituted proof that she lied on the stand when she said she sought no financial gain from coming forward with her allegations.

The civil case remains in its early stages. At a hearing Thursday, just a few hours after the New York decision was revealed, a judge tentatively granted Chernyshova's request that it be put on hold while the California criminal appeal plays out.

Like other actors including Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, Julia Ormond, briefly a major star in the 1990s, has alleged in a lawsuit that Weinstein railroaded her career.

Ormond, who appeared opposite Brad Pitt in “Legends of the Fall” and Harrison Ford in “Sabrina,” filed her suit in New York last October. In it she accused Weinstein of committing sexual battery against her in 1995 and then working to tarnish her reputation in Hollywood.

The newest of the known lawsuits against Weinstein, it came years after most of the others. Ormond took advantage of New York's Adult Survivors Act, which allowed a temporary window for people who allege sexual assault to file past the state’s normal deadlines.

Weinstein's lawyers denied her allegations.

Judd, who became a hugely important figure in the takedown of Weinstein and larger #MeToo movement when she went on the record in the original New York Times story about his sexual misconduct, sued him in 2018. Like Ormond she alleged Weinstein did major damage to her career by smearing her to other filmmakers in retaliation for rejecting his sexual advances.

Her lawsuit, which came after director Peter Jackson said Weinstein told him 20 years earlier that Judd was a “nightmare” to work with when Jackson was considering her for a major role in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, accused Weinstein of defamation, sexual harassment and violating California’s unfair competition labor law.

A federal judge in 2019 threw out the sexual harassment claim, saying Weinstein and Judd, as a producer and actor discussing prospective projects, didn’t have the kind of employment relationship that the law covers. California lawmakers later expanded the statute to explicitly cover producers and directors.

Judd’s lawsuit is now on long-term hold. A judge administratively closed it last year, but it can be reopened at any time if her legal team makes a motion.

Some suits were thrown out, including one from actor Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein's earliest and most prominent accusers. She alleged he engaged in racketeering when he worked to silence her and harm her career before she publicly accused him of rape, which he has denied.

McGowan served as her own attorney in the case after firing her lawyers. In 2021, a federal judge dismissed the suit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.

The vast majority of lawsuits against Weinstein, by women from office assistants to successful actors, were brought to a close through a settlement in 2021 as part of the bankruptcy of his former film company, The Weinstein Co.

The agreement included a victims' fund of about $17 million for some 40 women who sued him. The amount was approved by a majority, but lawyers for some of them, including actor Dominique Huett, objected to it, calling the individual shares “pathetically meager” for the damage Weinstein did.

Also part of the settlement was former actor and screenwriter Louisette Geiss, the lead plaintiff in a Manhattan class action suit. She sued Weinstein in 2017, accusing him of attempting to force her to watch him masturbate in a hotel bathroom in 2008.

“In the end, you see that the judicial system is still not in the right place to take him down. It’s really society that takes him down," she told The Associated Press the year after the settlement.

The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as all of the women named here have done.

FILE - Harvey Weinstein arrives at a Manhattan courthouse for jury deliberations in his rape trial, Monday, Feb. 24, 2020, in New York. New York's highest court has overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction and ordered a new trial. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

FILE - Harvey Weinstein arrives at the courthouse during jury deliberations in his rape trial, Monday, Feb. 24, 2020, in New York. New York's highest court has overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction and ordered a new trial.(AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)

FLE - A group of women who have spoken out about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct and who refer to themselves as the "Silence Breakers," face the media during a news conference at Los Angeles City Hall, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020, in Los Angeles. New York's highest court on Thursday, April 25, 2024, has overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction and ordered a new trial. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

FILE - Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in court in Los Angeles, Oct. 4 2022. New York’s highest court has overturned Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction and ordered a new trial. The Court of Appeals ruled Thursday, April 25, 2024 that the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced him with improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case. (Etienne Laurent/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - Harvey Weinstein leaves a Manhattan courthouse after closing arguments in his rape trial in New York, Friday, Feb. 14, 2020. New York's highest court has overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction and ordered a new trial. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)