Harvey Weinstein, facing at least five years in prison after a New York jury found him guilty of sex crimes, still has more charges to deal with in California.
Prosecutors in Los Angeles charged Weinstein in early January with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in separate incidents over a two-day period in 2013.
It’s not clear how the verdict in the New York case will impact the LA case. No hearings are scheduled, according to Greg Risling, spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, and prosecutors in LA declined to comment on Monday’s verdict.
Weinstein was found guilty in New York of committing a criminal sex act in the first degree involving one woman and rape in the third degree involving another. The jury acquitted him on the more serious charges of predatory sexual assault.
Weinstein has denied all allegations of “nonconsensual sexual activity” related to the New York case and other claims made against him.
What prosecutors say happened in LA
In Los Angeles, the disgraced movie producer faces felony charges of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint, according to the January statement by LA County District Attorney Jackie Lacey.
Those charges were announced just hours after Weinstein appeared in a New York court for the start of his criminal trial there.
According to the criminal complaint, Weinstein and a woman attended a Hollywood film festival on February 17, 2013. Later that night, he knocked on her hotel room door and was allowed entry into her room. Once inside, they talked briefly before he allegedly attacked the woman, forced her to perform oral sex on him, digitally penetrated her vagina and raped her, the complaint says.
The woman said she did not disclose the assault because he threatened her life if she spoke, the complaint says. The charges of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by use relate to that incident.
Two days later, on February 19, Weinstein met with a woman and her acquaintance for a business meeting at a hotel eatery in West Los Angeles, the complaint says. Weinstein persuaded the two to accompany him to his hotel suite, and one woman unwittingly followed him into the bathroom, the complaint says.
He allegedly took off his clothes and prevented her from leaving, and then he held her in place by her breast as he masturbated, the complaint says. He faces a charge of felony sexual battery by restraint for that incident, Lacey said.
More than 40 cases were investigated
In the LA case, the two victims reported these incidents to police in 2017, and they were presented to the district attorney’s office for criminal charges later that year. Lacey said that the charges were announced today, years later, because of the challenge of the specific cases.
“It was very challenging to get those victims to open up and tell us what they needed to tell us. For some of them it was embarrassing, it was terrifying, and so until then we were just working to see if we could get the evidence needed to get to court,” she said.
Neither of the two women had previously come forward with their allegations, prosecutors said in January.
It was just a coincidence that the charges were announced the same day as the start of his New York trial, Lacey has said.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has previously said that eight women had come forward against Weinstein. Lacey said in January that three of those cases were outside of the statute of limitations and two led to the charges.
Once a powerful Hollywood mogul, Weinstein’s career collapsed in October 2017 after The New York Times and The New Yorker reported numerous accusations of sexual harassment and assault against him.
More than 80 women have since come forward with stories of Weinstein using his power and influence to take advantage of young female assistants and actresses over several decades.
The LA case against Weinstein is the first criminal case to be filed by the task force Lacey created in 2017 in response to allegations in the entertainment industry, she has said. Her office investigated more than 40 cases and most were declined because they fell outside the statue of limitations or evidence was insufficient.
CNN’s Cheri Mossburg, Eric Levenson and Stella Chan contributed to this report.
