Disgraced former movie producer Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 16 more years in prison in Los Angeles on Thursday. He was convicted in December on three charges of rape and sexual assault. He already is serving a 23-year prison sentence for rape and sexual assault in New York, meaning that it is very likely that Weinstein, 70, will spend the rest of his life in prison, NPR reports. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench ordered the new sentence to be served consecutively, meaning that it will start after Weinstein completes his New York term. The woman whose testimony provided the basis of his conviction was referred to as "Jane Doe #1." She is a European model whom Weinstein raped during a 2013 Los Angeles. film festival.
Weinstein, once one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, was brought to trial in California on seven charges of rape and sexual assault involving four women between 2004 and 2013. The jury found him not guilty of one charge and could not decide on three other charges. Weinstein was initially charged in Los Angeles on eleven counts of rape and sexual assault; by the time he went on trial, prosecutors had dropped four of those charges related to a woman identified as "Jane Doe #5" because the state was "unable to proceed" with her allegations. Allegations against Weinstein by dozens of women, many published by the New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017, were a driving force behind the #MeToo movement. In his 2020 New York sentencing, Weinstein compared the #MeToo movement and his situation to the Red Scare of the 1940s and '50s, when Hollywood professionals were blacklisted for their perceived support of communism.
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