Prosecutors in Los Angeles added six new sexual assault charges to those already filed against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who is currently serving a 23-year sentence in New York for sex crimes.
District Attorney Jackie Lacey said the new charges related to two victims and incidents that took place in 2005, 2009, and 2010.
Weinstein, 68, was initially charged in January by California prosecutors, and the complaint was amended in April to add additional charges. He’s now facing a total of four counts each of forcible rape and forcible oral copulation, two counts of sexual battery by restraint, and one count of sexual penetration by use of force.
The charges involve five victims and span from 2004 to 2013, Lacey said.
“I am thankful to the first women who reported these crimes and whose courage have given strength to others to come forward,” the district attorney said. “The willingness of these latest victims to testify against a powerful man gives us the additional evidence we need to build a compelling criminal case.”
The initial charges against Weinstein say he sexually assaulted two women in separate incidents in 2013. In April, he was charged with sexually assaulting a woman in 2010 at a Beverly Hills hotel, as CrimeOnline previously reported.
The new charges accuse Weinstein of raping one woman at a Beverly Hills hotel between September 2004 and September 2005 and a different woman on two occasions — in November 2009 and November 2010 — also at a hotel in Beverly Hills.
A Weinstein spokesperson told the Daily Beast that “Weinstein has always maintained that every one of his physical encounters throughout his entire life have been consensual and that hasn’t changed. At this moment we cannot comment on the new charges until we learn more about them.”
An extradition hearing to determine whether Weinstein will be brought to Los Angeles to face these charges is scheduled for December 11 in Buffalo, New York. Lacey said Weinstein could be sentenced to up to 140 years in a California state prison if convicted on all the charges.
Weinstein was convicted in New York on February 24 of raping an aspiring actress and sexually assaulting a production assistant and sentenced on March 11 to 23 years in prison, as CrimeOnline previously reported.
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[Featured image: Harvey Weinstein at his rape trial on February 24, 2020, in New York (AP Photo/John Minchillo)]
