Harvey Weinstein Sentenced To 23-Years Imprisonment
Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 23-years imprisonment for rape and sexual assault.
Weinstein was convicted on two counts: criminal sex act for the 2006 assault on the production assistant and rape in the third degree for a 2013 attack on another woman.
He was acquitted of the more serious charges against him of first-degree rape and two counts of predatory sexual assault.
“It takes a very special kind of evil to exploit connections to leverage rape,” said the 2013 rape accuser.
“Rape is not just one moment of penetration. It is forever,” added the woman, who recalled a moment during the trial when she left the witness stand in tears and then could be heard screaming from an adjacent room.
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“The day my screams were heard from the witness room was the day my voice came back to its full power,” she said.
Weinstein, who has maintained that any sexual any sexual activity was consensual, showed no visible reaction to the sentence.
Beforehand, he broke his courtroom silence with a rambling plea for mercy in which he said his “empathy has grown” since his downfall.
The executive behind such Oscar-winning films as “Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction” became Exhibit A for the #MeToo movement after years of whispers about his alleged behavior burst into public view in The New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017.
More than 90 women, including actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Salma Hayek and Uma Thurman, eventually came forward to accuse Weinstein of sexual assault and sexual harassment. The takedown energized the #MeToo campaign of speaking up about sexual assault and holding perpetrators accountable.
