Former American producer and Hollywood king Harvey Weinstein, who was arrested for sexual assault and rape in the United States, was rushed to hospital for heart surgery in New York, ABC News reported on Monday, September 9.
“Mr. Weinstein was rushed to Bellevue Hospital last night due to numerous medical symptoms.”said in a press release, obtained by the channel, its communicators that “They confirmed an intervention and a heart operation” after experiencing chest pain over the weekend.
His representatives stressed that their client, aged 72, suffered “A large number of important health problems that require medical follow-up” – including diabetes, high blood pressure and spinal stenosis – while incarcerated at Rikers Island jail in New York, awaiting a retrial in November on charges of rape and sexual assault.
Outright annulment of a conviction
Harvey Weinstein is due to attend a new court hearing in Manhattan on Thursday after the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office presented new evidence of sexual assault in the 2000s to a grand jury – citizens who participate in the investigation phase with the prosecutor – in early September. Weinstein could therefore be charged again at the end of the week.
A hearing in New York in July, during which he appeared physically disabled and pushed in a wheelchair, set a new trial for Nov. 12.
The former producer, arrested in 2018, was hospitalized in July for Covid and pneumonia in both lungs, his representatives said. He was also admitted to a hospital in New York at the end of April, just after the resounding annulment of a first conviction in 2020 for the 2013 rape of an actress, Jessica Mann, and the 2006 sexual assault of a production assistant, Mimi Haleyi. A turn of events experienced as an affront and a setback for the #metoo movement, launched with the Weinstein case, against sexual and sexist violence against women.
Sentenced to sixteen years in prison
Despite the New York verdict being overturned, he remains in custody awaiting sentencing in Los Angeles in 2023 to sixteen years in prison for other cases of rape and sexual assault.
British prosecutors announced on Thursday that they had dropped sexual assault charges brought in the United Kingdom against the co-founder of the Miramax film studios and The Weinstein Company. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in a statement that after reviewing the investigation, “There are no longer any realistic prospects for conviction”in this case which referred to alleged sexual assaults on a woman in August 1996.
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The 2017 revelations about the former Miramax boss’s sexual assaults caused a worldwide shock and liberated the voices of many victims. More than 80 women have accused him of harassment, sexual assault or rape, including Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd. Harvey Weinstein has always maintained that the sexual relations were consensual.
