Harvey Weinstein Charged with 3 New Counts of Rape in California
REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
Hollywood film producer and rapist Harvey Weinstein has been charged with six new sexual assault counts, including three charges of forcible rape.
On Friday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced in a press release that the disgraced former movie mogul has been charged with three new felony counts each of forcible rape and forcible oral copulation for incidents that allegedly involved two victims more than a decade ago in Beverly Hills.
“I am thankful to the first women who reported these crimes and whose courage have given strength to others to come forward,”Lacey said in a statement. “The willingness of these latest victims to testify against a powerful man gives us the additional evidence we need to build a compelling criminal case.”
Weinstein now faces a total of four counts each of forcible rape and forcible oral copulation, two counts of sexual battery by restraint and one count of sexual penetration by use of force, involving five victims for crimes that span from 2004 to 2013, according to the press release.
The most recent charges include an incident between September 2004 and September 2005 where Weinstein allegedly raped a woman at a hotel in Beverly Hills.
He is also accused of raping a second woman on two separate occasions in November 2009 and November 2010 at a hotel in Beverly Hills.
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Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York, where a jury found him guilty of criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree.
In January, the 68-year-old was charged by California authorities with sexually assaulting two women during separate incidents in 2013.
This is the second time the criminal complaint against Weinstein has been amended to include additional counts. The first being in April, when the complaint was amended to add a charge that he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman at a Beverly Hills hotel in May 2010.
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Weinstein has not yet entered a plea to the California charges. In his defense at his New York trial — and in his response to allegations of assault raised by more than 80 women that arose following 2017 exposés in The New York Times and The New Yorker — Weinstein, through his attorneys and spokespeople, has said that he only engaged in consensual sexual encounters.
“Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances,” his spokesman said in a previous statement to PEOPLE, addressing a central claim made by some of his accusers.
California prosecutors are seeking temporary custody of Weinstein from New York and have an extradition hearing set for December 11. If convicted of the charges in California, Weinstein faces up to 140 years to life in state prison.
