Thirteen more women have come forward with allegations of rape and sexual harassment against disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
In a shocking exposé by Ronan Farrow for the New Yorker, Farrow details Weinstein’s alleged decades-long history of threatening aspiring actresses and employees if they refused his sexual advances.
Three of the women who spoke with Farrow said Weinstein raped them, one of which later refused to speak on the record. Four more women said they experienced unwanted touching and four others said Weinstein masturbated in front of them or exposed himself.
Current and former Weinstein Company employees admitted to the New Yorker many at the company knew of Weinstein’s behavior towards women and said some employees acted as “honeypot[s]” to attract women to meetings with Weinstein only to leave the women alone with the producer.
One of the more serious allegations comes from Italian actress and director Asia Argento who alleged that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her.
She said she did not come forward earlier out of fear Weinstein would “crush” her.
“I know he has crushed a lot of people before,” Argento told the New Yorker. “That’s why this story—in my case, it’s twenty years old, some of them are older—has never come out.”
Argento said she later had a consensual sexual relationship with Weinstein because she felt “obliged.”
“I felt I had to,” she said. “Because I had the movie coming out and I didn’t want to anger him.”
Another woman, Lucia Evans, alleged Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004. Evans was an aspiring actress at the time and had heard rumors about Weinstein’s behavior but agreed to meet him at Miramax’s New York office after she was told a female casting agent would be present.
However, she said she was left alone with Weinstein despite the building “being full of people.”
“He forced me to perform oral sex on him…I said, over and over, ‘I don’t want to do this, stop, don’t.'”
She added, “He’s a big guy. He overpowered me.”
Actress Rosanna Arquette revealed she met Weinstein at a hotel in Beverly Hills to pick up a movie script. When she arrived Weinstein’s room, she said he was wearing a white bathrobe and soon asked her to give him a massage.
She said she offered to recommend a good masseuse for him, but she claims he then grabbed her hand and placed it on his erect penis.
Arquette said rejecting Weinstein’s advances hurt her career.
“He made things very difficult for me for years,” she said. “He’s going to be working very hard to track people down and silence people…To hurt people. That’s what he does.”
Weinstein’s rep Sallie Hofmeister issued a statement to the New Yorker saying, “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances. Mr. Weinstein obviously can’t speak to anonymous allegations, but with respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr. Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual. Mr. Weinstein has begun counseling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path. Mr. Weinstein is hoping that, if he makes enough progress, he will be given a second chance.”
