Harvey Weinstein’s Los Angeles rape trial, which ended Monday with the jury finding him guilty of raping one woman, was more than a one-off parade of salacious stories about a disgraced apex predator and a ritual dragging-through-the-mud of women who said they were violated. Its savage mistreatment of female witnesses is instructive to the approximately 300,000 American women who are raped each year and consider whether to involve the criminal justice system.
According to Justice Department statistics, rape is the most under-reported, under-investigated and under-prosecuted of all violent crimes, and the least likely to result in a conviction. About 30% of survivors suffer post-traumatic stress disorder — a rate higher than that of combat veterans. This trial helps explain why many women don’t report — and it shows the searing mismatch between a defendant’s right to an effective defense and the needs of trauma survivors for safety and justice.
Weinstein has 20 years left to serve on a sentence in New York state following his 2020 conviction for rape and assault, which he is appealing. In Los Angeles, he was found guilty on three charges of rape and sexual assault, acquitted on one charge of sexual assault, and the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on three other charges. His accusers were four women — a model, an actor, a massage therapist and a documentary producer. Four other women testified as backup witnesses, describing a pattern of eerily similar predations that escalated from “business meetings” in hotel rooms to requests for naked massages and brutal sexual assaults.
