Ahead of the disgraced movie mogul’s trial, which starts on January 6, at least 80 women – who have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct - plan to attend the trial in person as they gird themselves for attacks by his lawyers
Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial in New York County’s Supreme Court will begin next week on Monday, January 6, 2020, more than two years after The New York Times and The New Yorker first broke stories about the disgraced movie mogul’s sexual misconduct toward women. And as the historic trial nears, some of Weinstein victims are all set to attend it and are prepared for attacks by his lawyers.
Weinstein, who pleaded not guilty at his first indictment in August 2019, faces five felony counts: two counts of predatory sexual assault, one count of first-degree criminal sexual assault, one count of first-degree rape and one count of third-degree rape. The charges stem from accusations by Mimi Haleyi and a still-unnamed woman for encounters they say occurred in 2006 and 2013.
According to actress Katherine Kendall, the last time she saw Weinstein was at a party after the 2010 premiere of The King’s Speech that she attended with a friend. “I turned a corner and there he was,” says Kendall, best known for 1996’s Swingers. “I felt my knees buckle and I wanted to leave immediately.”
Kendall has accused Weinstein of inviting her to what she thought was a professional meeting in 1993 when she was 24 where the producer was chasing her, while nude, around his New York apartment.
“Now she’s deciding whether she can stomach encountering the producer again, this time in a courtroom where he’ll face charges stemming from allegations of sexual assault and rape,” noted The Hollywood Reporter. “As the trial date nears, Kendall says she has been battling anxiety and migraines, weighing whether to travel to New York and attend the proceedings alongside other Weinstein accusers. ‘Maybe if I’m prepared for it and I get myself in the right headspace, I’ll be OK,’ Kendall says, noting that she steadies herself by avoiding negative comments on social media and sharing supportive notes with the other women.”
The Weinstein trial will mark a pivotal moment in the lives of more than 80 women who have accused the former mogul of sexual harassment or assault since October 2017 — and in the far-reaching #MeToo movement they helped spark. To show solidarity with the alleged victims, some women are planning to attend the trial and to support prosecution witnesses like actress Annabella Sciorra, who is expected to testify against Weinstein on the account of rape in the early 1990s.
One of the victims, actress, director and producer Rosanna Arquette, who plans to attend the first day of the trial as well as the days when Sciorra testifies, shared, “I believe that our presence is important right now; it’s just about supporting each other. This trial, yes, in the long run is for everyone. But this happened to us. It actually happened to our lives. Especially the rape victims, their lives have been shattered in trauma, in years of living with this. And many, many careers have been affected, including mine.”
The #MeToo movement that led to the #Time’s Up campaign [by the Weinstein accusers] has pushed for gender parity in the entertainment industry and raised more than $22 million in a legal defense fund to support lower-income women. Time’s Up President and CEO Tina Tchen said, “We would not be in this historic moment without the courage and conviction of these survivors, who risked everything. We hope that these survivors experience some small measure of justice as this trial begins… Sadly, most cases never even make it this far.”
As Weinstein’s accusers gather the courage to not only attend the trial but also make sense of it for themselves, according to these women they will be trying to make sense of it for their families as well, who have watched how the case has impacted them. Actress Larissa Gomes, who is a mother of a four-year-old boy and was sexually harassed by Weinstein at a business meeting shared, “I’ve often thought about how I explain this to my son when he’s older. I guess if he would ask me a question I would say, ‘Mommy had a very big bully and there are a lot of other women who had the same bully and we all stood up to the bully’.”
– With information from The Hollywood Reporter
