Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of the production-and-distribution companies Miramax and the Weinstein Company. These companies are responsible for movies such as “The King’s Speech,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “The Crying Game,” “The English Patient,” “Django Unchained,” “Kill Bill,” and more.
In Hollywood, Harvey is the guy people treat as royalty. But that should not the case, he’s been accused of sexual assault by multiple women.
For more than twenty years, Weinstein has also been trailed by rumors of sexual harassment and assault. Just recently, there has been an escalating number of claims of sexual harassment against the disgraced movie mogul.
Two decades ago, Harvey invited Ashley Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what the young actress expected to be a business breakfast meeting. Ashley was directed to go to his room, where he allegedly was in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or she could watch him shower.
“How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein?” Ashley Judd said she remembers thinking.
There were also reports by Filipino-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, where Weinstein was caught on tape in a police sting operation. She went to New York police because of a prior encounter in Harvey Weinstein’s office when she said he lunged at her, groping her breasts, and tried to put a hand up her skirt.
In the audio from the sting operation, you can hear Ambra Battilana Gutierrez ask Harvey Weinstein why he had touched her breast the previous evening. Harvey answered “I’m used to that. Come on. Please.” He added: “Don’t ruin your friendship with me for five minutes.”
A few days after the New York Times’ report on Harvey Weinstein, the New Yorker has published an investigation by Ronan Farrow that includes more allegations and systematic intimidation and serial sexual harassment and assault by Harvey Weinstein.
Some of the key claims in the article:
- Actress Lucia Stoller, then a college student, says Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him during what was billed as a casting meeting at the Miramax offices in 2004.
- Actress-director Argento alleged that Weinstein invited her to what was supposed to be a party at a hotel on the French Riviera in 1997. When she arrived, only Weinstein was there. After changing into a bathrobe, he forcibly performed oral sex on her. Argento entered into what she describes as a years-long coercive sexual relationship with him. “After the rape, he won,” she told Farrow.
- Actress Sorvino says that Weinstein tried to give her a massage and “chas[ed] her around” in a hotel room at the Toronto Film Festival in 1995, and later showed up at her New York apartment in the middle of the night. She believes her rebuff of his advances damaged her career.
- Gutierrez, an Italian model and beauty pageant contestant, says she was groped by Weinstein during a meeting in 2015. She reported the assault to the New York Police Department, and the next day, wearing a wire, met with Weinstein at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. In audio footage obtained by the New Yorker, Gutierrez objects to Weinstein’s behavior the day before and an agitated Weinstein can be heard telling Gutierrez, “I’m a famous guy … I’m used to that,” and repeatedly urges her not to “embarrass” him. Despite the recording, the Manhattan district attorney declined to pursue criminal charges, possibly because Gutierrez had once attended a party thrown by Silvio Berlusconi and was not considered “credible.”
- French actress Emma de Caunes alleges that in 2010, Weinstein invited her to his hotel room in Paris to discuss a book he wanted to adapt. He emerged from the bathroom naked and with an erection. She fled the room.
- Actress Arquette says she went to the Beverly Hills Hotel in the early ’90s to get a script from Weinstein. He showed up at the door in a bathrobe and asked for a massage, then placed her hand on his erect penis. She says her career suffered after she rejected Weinstein.
- According to employees, Weinstein often enlisted female executives as “honeypots” to attend meetings with actresses and models in order to make them feel safe, but then would be dismissed.
- Assistants kept track of these young women, who were filed under the label “F.O.H.” — “friend of Harvey.”
