from thefreeonline on 26th April 2024 by Claytoonz
—Weinstein and Cosby were eventually convicted after a multitude of depraved attacks on women, yet big money and endless appeals have freed them. No wonder women don’t often report rapes in the US.
A lot of rape victims never report their rapes because most men, and a lot of women, won’t believe them. They often face persecution, especially if the perpetrators are extremely powerful men. It took years to get charges and trials against rapists like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.
The case against Harvey Weinstein helped launch the #MeToo movement. He was convicted in 2020. This morning, the New York Court of Appeals overturned the ruling and ordered a retrial, ruling that the judge in the original trial improperly allowed testimony about allegations that weren’t part of the case.
The court wrote in a 4-3 decision, “We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.”
What will this court do next? Overturn the verdict of the E. Jean Carroll case?
Victim Blaming and Fat Wallets enable Macho Predators to Impumity
The good news here is that Weinstein will remain in prison because he’s serving a 16-year sentence on a separate case in California, where he was convicted in 2022 of rape, forced oral copulation and sexual misconduct.
The New York case sentenced him to 23 years. He was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a former production assistant, Mimi Haleyi, in 2006, and rape in the third degree for an attack on actress Jessica Mann in 2013.
Dissenting judge Madeline Singas wrote in her opinion that reversing Weinstein’s conviction amounted to “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative” and “continued a disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”
One of those in this disturbing trend was the case of Bill Cosby, another that helped start the #MeToo movement, that was overturned in 2021 after he was convicted of sexual assault in 2018 In Pennsylvania.
Cosby had served three years of a ten-year sentence when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor meant he never should have been charged even though over 50 women have accused him of sexual assault and rape.
There don’t seem to be any plans to retry Cosby who is now free to return to pushing roofies and Jell-O.
The #MeToo movement may have lost steam over the past few years but the #WarOnWomen seems to be gaining strength.
The Free 