NEW YORK — Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after a jury found him guilty last year of committing a criminal sexual act against a former production assistant.Weinstein’s sentencing on Wednesday for sexually assaulting Miriam Haley followed a legal odyssey spanning more than six years, when New York’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction. A second jury found Weinstein guilty again at a retrial last year.Once among the most powerful figures in the entertainment industry, Weinstein was an Oscar-winning producer whose hits included “Shakespeare in Love,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Chocolat.” But his downfall came quickly after sexual assault allegations in 2017 set off the #MeToo movement.Weinstein, 74, is expected to appeal and maintains that he never raped or sexually assaulted anyone. He is now likely to remain behind bars well into his 80s. Seated in a wheelchair, he was quickly moved out of the courtroom after the sentencing, while some of his accusers hugged and brushed away tears.In a victim-impact statement in court Wednesday morning, Haley, 49, said the assault had had a “devastating effect on my life and sense of security that may never go away”.Though Weinstein denied the rape allegations, he apologized to “anyone I may have hurt by my actions”.Weinstein has already spent several years jailed in New York, where he has faced three trials over rape and abuse allegations. He was convicted in a separate sex-crime case in Los Angeles.This is the second time he has been given a prison sentence in the Miriam Haley case. Weinstein was first convicted and sentenced in 2020, but New York’s highest court overturned the conviction in 2024, along with another involving actress Jessica Mann. The court ruled that Weinstein did not get a fair trial.He was retried and convicted again last year on a single charge of a criminal sexual act against Haley.Weinstein is currently being held in a prison ward at New York’s Bellevue Hospital for a series of ailments reported during his incarceration.Weinstein fell from grace in 2017 after the New York Times and the New Yorker revealed multiple women’s allegations of sexual assault stretching back decades. The accusations against him sparked the #MeToo movement, but New York prosecutors have had to navigate a twisting path in securing convictions and sentences.In the 2020 trial, Haley testified that Weinstein had assaulted her in a bedroom in his Manhattan apartment in 2006. Haley was a production assistant on the Project Runway television series at the time.On charges related to Mann, juries could not reach a verdict, and he was found not guilty in another charge involving model Kaja Sokola.After testifying in the retrial last year, Haley told the BBC she felt compelled to take the stand.”I just thought, I have to stand up for myself. I have to stand up for the truth,” she said.Weinstein is still awaiting sentencing in the California, where he was convicted in 2022 of raping and sexually assaulting an actress in a hotel room in 2013.An appeals court ordered he be re-sentenced in the case after the New York convictions were overturned.Weinstein has consistently denied the allegations against him, and said he believes he will be proven innocent.On Wednesday, Judge Curtis Farber criticised the former Hollywood mogul as he announced the 15-year sentence.”You took what you wanted by force and you have never accepted responsibility,” Farber said.
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