By Aaron Miller-
New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman has filed a lawsuit against shamed movie producer Harvey Weinstein, his brother Bob Weinstein and their film production company.
The law suit filed yesterday, Sunday, is extremely damning in extent and substance. It will make an of his present or past employers ashamed to have ever been involved with his exploitative and coercive operations.
A suit of deep and widening ramifications, it alleges serious violations of civil rights, human rights and state business laws.
The extensive law suit also alleges that Weinsteins created “a years-long gender-based hostile work environment, a pattern of quid pro quo sexual harassment, and routine misuse of corporate resources for unlawful ends.
The duration of the alleged misconduct was from about 2005 through at least in or about October 2017.
INVESTIGATIONS
The complaint comes after four months of investigation and as the company seemed to be nearing a $500m sale to a group led by Maria Contreras-Sweet, who led the Small Business Administration for Barack Obama.
Harvey Weinstein stands accused of sexual misconduct investigations in four separate jurisdictions in the wake , but he denies all of them.
The 39-page suit alleges that the unlawful conduct took two primary forms.
The first allegation is that as CEO of the Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein “repeatedly and persistently sexually harassed female employees at TWC by personally creating a hostile work environment that pervaded the workplace and by demanding that women engage in sexual or demeaning conduct as a quid pro quo for continued employment or career advancement”.
The second allegation is that Harvey Weinstein repeatedly and persistently used his position, female employees and the resources at his disposal as a co-CEO, to serve his interests in seeking sexual contact with women seeking employment at the company.
“The Weinstein Company repeatedly broke New York law by failing to protect its employees from pervasive sexual harassment, intimidation, and discrimination,” said Schneiderman in a statement.
He added that any sale of the company “must en
sure that victims will be compensated, employees will be protected going forward and that neither perpetrators nor enablers will be unjustly enriched.”
Among the specific allegations against Harvey Weinstein, who is currently undergoing rehabilitation in Arizona, is that he threatened employees with violence, touted his connections to powerful political figures and asserted that he had contacts within the Secret Service “that could take care of problems”.
New York prosecutors also allege that, at Weinstein’s direction, the company employed one group of female employees primarily tasked wit the duty of accompany Weinstein to events and to facilitate sexual conquests. The entourage was known to witnesses as Weinstein’s “wing women”.
Some members were flown in from London to New York to teach assistants how to dress and smell more attractive to the executive.
A second group of assistants, according to the complaint “were compelled to take various steps to further Harvey Weinstein’s regular sexual activity, including by contacting ‘Friends of Harvey’ and other prospective sexual partners via text message or phone at his direction and maintaining space on his calendar for sexual activity.”
A third group were forced to facilitate Weinstein’s sexual conquests, and to follow through on HW’s promise of employment opportunities to women who met with Weinstein’s favor. This compelled service “demeaned and humiliated them, contributing to the hostile work environment,” the complaint says.
One employee told the company HR department that “only female executives are put in these positions with actresses with whom Weinstein has a ‘personal friendship,’ which to my understanding means he has either had or wants to have sexual relations with them”.
A particularly conspicuous instance cited pertains to 2015 in which Weinstein allegedly requested that a female employee to go to his hotel room at the end of the day to set up his phone and devices for the next day, or another alleged work reason.
All the while Weinstein was pursuing his excessive, immoral, and illegal sexual exploits, he did not contemplate his manipulative actions will constitute the setting for his dramatic downfall. A downfall that will probably bring his empire to its knees, and ruin any future prospects he may have had.
Weinstein’s reputation has been completely ruined ever since the revelations that add him to the list of sexual predators who abused their power, using it to exploit women for his selfish sexual gratification. He will now pay a very high price for it, one he won’t recover from very easily.
Upon her arrival, Weinstein allegedly appeared naked under a bathrobe and asked the employee for a massage. When the employee said no, he cajoled, badgered and insisted until she relented and, against her wishes, submitted to massaging him out of fear of employment-based retaliation.
On another occasion, Weinstein allegedly exposed himself to a female employee and made her take dictation from him while he leered at her, naked on his bed.
Among other behavior, assistants were allegedly required to possess copies of a document known as the “Bible,” an assistant-created guide to Weinstein’s likes and dislikes, and a list of his “friends” with directions for assistants on how to arrange his extensive and frequent “personals”, a code for sexual encounters.
The suit alleges that Weinstein “frequently targeted vulnerable, aspiring models, actresses, and entertainers as sexual conquests, using access to the company and other industry opportunities that purportedly would be made available by his female executives, acting at his direction, as a bargaining chip in return for sexual favors”.
Weinstein, the suit alleges, used female executives’ participation in these meetings to lend an “official” air to his encounters. But female executives at the company quickly came to understand that some of the meetings that they were required to attend were not for legitimate business purposes.
On one occasion, the employees were allegedly instructed to discuss with the women career opportunities or a “career trajectory” they “knew were not appropriate for the women, eg English-speaking roles with women who did not speak fluent English”.
The suit goes on to claim that the company and brother Robert “Bob” Weinstein, co-owner and CEO of the Weinstein Company, are liable “because they were aware of and acquiesced in repeated and persistent unlawful conduct by failing to investigate or stop it”.
Benjamin Brafman, Harvey Weinstein’s defence attorney, said: “We believe that a fair investigation by Mr Schneiderman will demonstrate that many of the allegations against Harvey Weinstein are without merit.”
“While Mr Weinstein’s behavior was not without fault, there certainly was no criminality, and at the end of the inquiry it will be clear that Harvey Weinstein promoted more women to key executive positions than any other industry leader and there was zero discrimination at either Miramax or TWC.”
He went on: “If the purpose of the inquiry is to encourage reform throughout the film industry, Mr Weinstein will embrace the investigation. If the purpose however is to scapegoat Mr Weinstein, he will vigorously defend himself.”
DEFENCE
Those accused of professional or sexual misconduct always claim innocence and put up a defence, but copious allegations from a plethora of sources is always very suspicious against the accused.
GUILTY
In almost all cases, the accused are guilty as hell, they would have to be the victim of a highly organised and expensive collusion to be innocent. Weinstein has a challenging order to nullify these allegations. Allegations signed off as legitimate in a law suit by the Attorney general will require more than brilliant lawyers to successfully reverse.