BREAKING: Harvey Weinstein found GUILTY of rape and sexual assault by LA court

Disgraced movie director Harvey Weinstein was found guilty by a jury in Los Angeles on one charge of rape and two counts of sexual assault.

A jury in a Los Angeles court today, Monday, December 19, found the disgraced movie director Harvey Weinstein guilty of one charge of rape and two counts of sexual assault.

The 70-year-old was on trial in California where he stood accused of five charges of sexual assault brought by four women. The charges included two of rape, dating between 2004 and 2013, all allegedly taking place in LA County.

He was acquitted of one count of sexual battery, but on the three other counts against him, the jury was left hung.

In February 2020, the Oscar-winning film director was jailed for 23 years after a trial in New York City after being found guilty of third-degree rape and first-degree sexual assault. Earlier this year though Weinstein was granted permission to appeal against his sentence.

Facing the court in a wheelchair, Weinstein – once dubbed ‘The Most Powerful Man in Hollywood’ – heard the prosecutors urge the jury to bring his ‘reign of terror to an end’.

Defending him, Alan Jackson suggested the four women were untrustworthy. He begged the jury to believe that the charges of alleged sexual assault in 2013, brought by two of them, ‘simply never happened’.

Jackson also claimed that the 2005 and 2010 rape and assault charges from two of the other women were in fact ‘100 per cent consensual’. The women engaged freely with the producer as a way of advancing their film careers he suggested, as reported by dailymail.co.uk.

Among his accusers was Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of Gavin Newsom, the current Governor of California. She claimed Weinstein raped her in 2005 during an encounter. The others included a masseuse who Weinstein employed and then-aspiring models, all of who delivered emotional testimonies to the court.

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