Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein faces fresh sexual assault charge

After recovering from a bout of coronavirus, disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has now been charged with an additional sexual assault count.

Los Angeles prosecutors on Friday filed a new charge against Weinstein, stemming from an alleged assault at a Beverly Hills hotel room in 2010, reports variety.com.

Weinstein is already awaiting extradition to Los Angeles to face four other charges, stemming from two incidents in hotels in February 2013. The former producer is serving a 23-year sentence in a prison in New York for rape and sexual assault.

In the new case, Weinstein is accused of “sexual battery by restraint” against a woman at a hotel room on May 11, 2010. The woman was first interviewed by detectives in October 2019.

The new charge carries a potential sentence of four years in prison, meaning that Weinstein is now facing a theoretical maximum of 29 years on the Los Angeles charges. The DA’s office was investigating two other allegations against Weinstein, but declined to file those charges because the alleged victims did not want to testify.

The DA’s office did not identify any of the women in the three cases. However, a description of one of the women who declined to testify matches Jessica Mann, the hairdresser and one-time aspiring actress who testified against Weinstein in his New York trial.

Weinstein was convicted in February of raping Mann at a DoubleTree Hotel in Manhattan in 2013. In her testimony, Mann said Weinstein had also raped her at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills about a year later. Mann broke down in tears repeatedly over the course of three days of testimony and cross-examination in New York.

In the other case that the prosecutors declined to file, an actress had alleged that Weinstein sexually assaulted her during a business meeting sometime between 2004 and 2006. The woman repeatedly told detectives that she would not testify, according to a prosecution memo.

In total, Los Angeles prosecutors reviewed eight allegations against Weinstein, and brought charges in three of them. (IANS)

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