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Harvey Weinstein, the onetime Hollywood superstar who epitomized the culture of pervasive sexual misconduct by powerful men that sparked the #MeToo movement, was sentenced Thursday for raping an actress in Los Angeles in 2013 16 years in prison.
Weinstein was sentenced in a Los Angeles court, where a jury found him guilty of rape, forced oral sex and sexual assault with a foreign object in December.
The charges stem from the February 2013 assault at a Los Angeles hotel on a former model and actress, identified in court as Jane Doe 1.
The woman told the judge Thursday that she had been a “very happy and confident woman” before Weinstein raped her. Then, “I lost my identity. I was heartbroken and empty and alone,” she says, fighting back sobs.
Weinstein, the powerful co-founder of U.S. film production and distribution company Miramax Films, is serving a 23-year prison sentence for a sexual misconduct conviction in New York.
The allegations against Weinstein fueled the #MeToo movement, which encourages women to speak out in the media, politics and elsewhere about sexual harassment and abuse by powerful men. The movement, which went viral on social media in 2017, aims to break a culture of silence that has long allowed such behavior to go unchallenged.
Weinstein, who made “Pulp Fiction,” “Shakespeare in Love” and other successful independent films, said all of his sexual encounters were consensual and pleaded not guilty in the Los Angeles case.
Speaking in court Thursday, Weinstein did not know Doe 1 and argued that she falsified the accounts for money.
“It’s a made-up story. Jane Doe 1 is an actress. She can open tears,” Weinstein said from a wheelchair.
“Please don’t sentence me to life in prison,” he told the judge. “I beg your mercy.”
Dave Ring, an attorney for Jane Doe 1, said Weinstein’s 16-year sentence gave her “an end and a relief because she knew Weinstein was going to spend the rest of his life in a prison that belonged to him. “
The jury acquitted Weinstein of charges related to the second alleged victim, but failed to reach a unanimous verdict on the charges of the other two accusers.
One of them is documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, now the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has revealed she was the rape victim known in court records as the Doe Four.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench declared a mistrial on the stalled charges.
Defense attorneys argued that the women voluntarily had sex with Weinstein because they believed Weinstein would advance their careers, in part because of what they said was the “casting couch” culture that prevailed in the film industry. In two of the cases, they said the alleged sexual encounters were fabricated.
Weinstein was convicted of sexual misconduct in February 2020 in New York. He was extradited from New York to a Los Angeles prison in July 2021. Weinstein is appealing his conviction and prison sentence in New York.
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