Harvey Weinstein Indicted On Sex Crime Charges, DA Says

NEW YORK, NY — A Manhattan grand jury indicted the disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein on sex crime charges Wednesday. Weinstein is charged with two counts of rape and one count of a criminal sexual act stemming from two incidents nine years apart, according to the indictment.

"This indictment brings the defendant another step closer to accountability for the crimes of violence with which he is now charged," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a statement.

Weinstein was arrested and arraigned Friday amid a continuing investigation into his alleged sex crimes. Published allegations that Weinstein raped, assaulted and harassed dozens of women over the course of his career as an acclaimed film producer helped spark the #MeToo movement.

The indictment accuses Weinstein of forcing one victim — identified by The New Yorker as the former actress Lucia Evans — to perform oral sex on him in 2004. He's also charged with first- and third-degree rape for forcing an unidentified woman into sex in March 2013.

Weinstein is next due in court July 30.

In a statement, Weinstein's attorney, Benjamin Brafman, noted that the charges in the indictment match those in the criminal complaint prosecutors brought last week. The district attorney's office did not allow Weinstein's lawyers additional time to prepare him for testimony to the grand jury, Brafman said.

"Mr Weinstein intends to enter a plea of Not Guilty and vigorously defend against these unsupported allegations that he strongly denies," Brafman said, according to a copy of the statement posted to Twitter. "We will soon formally move to dismiss the indictment and if this case actually proceeds to trial, we expect Mr Weinstein to be acquitted."

After a closed-door court hearing Tuesday, Brafman reportedly said Weinstein was in a years-long romantic relationship with the woman he is charged with raping in 2013. Such a relationship would not preclude the possibility that Weinstein raped the woman.

In an apparent response to Brafman's remarks, Vance said, "The defendant’s recent assault on the integrity of the survivors and the legal process is predictable."

"We are confident that when the jury hears the evidence, it will reject these attacks out of hand," he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the day of the week on which Harvey Weinstein was indicted. It was Wednesday, not Thursday.

(Lead image: Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan Criminal Court on May 25, 2018. Photo by Steven Hirsch-Pool via Getty Images)