FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK – «The institutions have betrayed us», Ashley Judd said yesterday at a press conference in New York, the day after Harvey Weinstein’s 23-year prison sentence for sexual assault on the production assistant was overturned on appeal Mimi Haley in 2006 and for the rape of aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013. The New York Court of Appeals decided (4 against 3) that in the 2020 trial the judge was wrong to also allow the testimonies of other accusers (at beyond those two cases) and to allow the Prosecutor’s Office to question Weinstein on various elements of his past (in the end he decided not to testify).
Judd was the first actress to publicly accuse the powerful producer of Hollywood and co-founder of Miramax: in 2017 she told the New York Times that twenty years earlier she had been invited to the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills for what she thought was a business breakfast, but he made her go up to the room where, wearing only the bathrobe, he insistently asked her to give him a massage or watch him take a shower. In the same hotel other women claim to have been attacked by him. “How to get out of that room as quickly as possible without making Harvey Weinstein angry?” would have been Judd’s first thought.
Today the actress leads the protests for the revocation of the conviction, which will probably lead to a repeat of the trial, even if Weinstein meanwhile remains in prison for another sentence for sexual assault (at age 16) in California. The producer is ready to testify this time, says his lawyer Arthur Aidala, who adds: “There are very unpopular people, but we must apply the laws fairly.” Mimi Haley, according to her lawyer, will consider testifying again, even though “the trial in 2020 was exhausting and traumatic” for her.
Judd — who in the 1990s appeared in films such as “Ruby in Paradise,” “Heat” and “Norma Jean & Marilyn” — told the BBC: «It’s a difficult day for the survivors, but we live in our truth, we know what happened. When Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed me and then defamed me and interfered with my economic and creative opportunities, since I ran away from him in that hotel room in 1996, I went to the set and told the director, the screenwriter, to the agent. No one listened to me, in a system where both men and women have not only tolerated but enabled his actions. What is important about the MeToo Movement is not only that other men break the silence on violence, but that we end impunity. We need responses of institutional courage because often for survivors the betrayal and moral damage suffered within the system are worse than the sexual invasion of our bodies.”
Katherine Kendall, who said she was chased naked by Weinstein in a hotel, says the overturning of the sentence is a “terrible warning that victims of sexual assault do not get justice.” For Lindsay Goldbrum, who represents six accusers, prohibiting testimonies that are not directly connected is “a step backwards” for future cases. Tarana Burke, founder of MeToo, says the news is “devastating” but denies it is a “blow” to MeToo. “It is an appeal, which we are ready to respond to.”
