D.A. Urges Judge to Consider Decades of Weinstein Allegations
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The Manhattan D.A.’s office has asked the judge who will sentence Harvey Weinstein next week to consider dozens of incidents of assault and abuse dating back to the late 1970s.
The D.A.’s office filed an 11-page memo, in which it chronicles more than 30 allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and workplace bullying against the disgraced producer.
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“These acts, viewed in the totality, establish that throughout his entire adult professional life, defendant has displayed a staggering lack of empathy, treating others with disdain and inhumanity,” wrote Assistant D.A. Joan Illuzzi. “He has consistently advanced his own sordid desires and fixations over the well-being of others. He has destroyed people’s lives and livelihoods or threatened to do so on a whim.”
Weinstein is due to be sentenced on Wednesday on two charges: first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape. He faces anywhere from five to 29 years in prison.
Illuzzi did not say how many years Weinstein should face, but she did encourage Justice James Burke to use the sentencing to send a message to others.
“The need for deterrence, of this defendant specifically and other offenders generally, is of particular importance here,” she wrote. “It is therefore totally appropriate in this case to communicate to a wider audience that sexual assault, even if perpetrated upon an acquaintance or in a professional setting, is a serious offense worthy of a lengthy sentence.”
Two women who testified at the trial — Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley — are expected to give their own statements to the court.
Weinstein will also have the opportunity to speak, though his defense attorneys have said he has not decided whether to do so.
The letter cites numerous allegations of sexual assault, many of which fit the pattern of conduct described at trial. In one case, a woman alleged that Weinstein invited her to his office for a screening in 2005. But he stopped the film halfway through, and led her to a car which took them to his apartment. There, she said that he ordered her to strip, and then chased her around the room before coercing her into holding him while he masturbated. The document also cites a masseuse who alleges that Weinstein pushed her up against a wall and masturbated while groping her breasts in 2010.
The document also cites a former executive who saw Weinstein punch his brother, Bob, during a meeting, knocking him unconscious and causing him to bleed. The document also alleges that Weinstein threatened to punch one of his board members in 2015 and threatened to kill him. On another occasion, Weinstein allegedly threatened to send someone to the board member’s office “to cut off his genitals with gardening shears.”
Many former associates are quoted calling Weinstein “volcanic,” “despicable,” “sociopathic,” and a “monster.” None of the accusers in the document are named.
The document also notes that Weinstein hired Black Cube, the private investigations firm, to “publicly discredit and shame” his accusers.
“One of the techniques it employed on behalf of defendant was to send operatives, who lied about who they were, to manipulate what the victims said about defendant,” Illuzzi wrote.
After he was fired by the Weinstein Co., Weinstein allegedly called an employee and told him to allow people in to ransack the office, the document states.
Illuzzi said that Weinstein had displayed a “total lack of remorse for the harm he has caused.”
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