“I’m totally confused, men are confused about all of this issue.” Harvey Weinstein said that to a New York judge in March 2020, moments before being sentenced to 23 years. He added that he felt remorse “deeply in my heart” and that the women and he “may have different truths.” Then he was cuffed to his wheelchair and led away, while several of the women who had testified against him sobbed in the courtroom.
The Producer
Weinstein and his brother Bob formed Miramax and ran it from 1979 to 2005. That year they left to run The Weinstein Company, which they had founded in March 2005. For decades he was one of the most influential producers in Hollywood, and his productions have grossed over $10.78 billion worldwide.
The rumors were old. As early as 1998, Gwyneth Paltrow said on Late Show with David Letterman that Weinstein “will coerce you to do a thing or two.” In 2005 Courtney Love advised young actresses: “If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons, don’t go.” A 2012 episode of 30 Rock joked about it. Reporters who chased the story kept hitting the same wall, because nobody who said they had been assaulted would go on the record.
October 2017
On October 5, 2017, New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published an account of three decades of harassment and eight settlements with actresses and employees. Five days later Ronan Farrow reported in The New Yorker that Weinstein had sexually assaulted or harassed thirteen women and raped three. Over 80 women eventually accused him. Weinstein denied “any non-consensual sex.”
The women described a pattern: a hotel room or office, a pretext of discussing a career, then a demand for massages or sex. He told several that Paltrow had slept with him, though she had rebuffed him, using it as a “weapon” to pressure them. Former colleagues said assistants and agents set up the meetings, and lawyers and publicists silenced complaints with payments and threats. Farrow later reported that Weinstein hired the intelligence firms Kroll and Black Cube to spy on accusers and on the reporters.
The consequences came fast. He was dismissed from his own company and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Times and The New Yorker shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and the allegations set off the #MeToo movement.
Courtrooms
Weinstein was arrested in New York in May 2018. At the 2020 trial, a jury found him guilty of a first-degree criminal sex act against production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006, and of third-degree rape of a second woman. Judge James Burke imposed 20 years on the first count and three on the second, to run consecutively. Both main accusers had asked for the maximum; his lawyers, led by Donna Rotunno, asked for the minimum of five years and cited his failing health.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said the sentence put sexual predators “on notice.” Within hours, the Los Angeles district attorney began extradition proceedings over charges from two more accusers.
Los Angeles produced a second conviction, for rape and sexual assault, and 16 more years. But the New York verdict did not last. It was overturned on appeal in 2024 because of procedural errors. In the 2025 retrial he was convicted of one count of sexual assault. The Jessica Mann rape charge was dropped in June 2026 after hung juries at two trials and Mann’s unwillingness to go through a fourth.
Sources
- Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases – Wikipedia
- Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years in prison on rape conviction
- Harvey Weinstein
