Long expected day

More than 75 women who say they survived sexual abuse had a chance Friday morning to welcome the sight of Harvey Weinstein in handcuffs. The disgraced movie mogul surrendered to New York police and was arraigned in court on charges of rape, criminal sex act, and other charges stemming from encounters with two women. Weinstein posted a $1 million cash bail and agreed to wear an electronic monitor and not travel outside New York and Connecticut.

The arrest is Weinstein’s first since the accusations against him became widespread, but it’s not the first time police have investigated him. In 2015, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance decided not to pursue charges after an Italian model reported Weinstein groped her. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in March ordered the state attorney general to look into whether Vance acted properly then. The current charges stem from allegations by an unidentified woman and former aspiring actress Lucia Evans, who said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him at his New York office in 2004.

Police in Los Angeles and London also are investigating Weinstein, as are federal prosecutors in New York. After The New York Times and the New Yorker reported on Weinstein’s alleged behavior last fall, The Weinstein Co., the production company he co-founded with his brother, fired him and declared bankruptcy. His name became synonymous with the #MeToo movement against sexual predators in Hollywood and beyond, but Weinstein’s alleged victims still had to wait for his reckoning in a court of law.

“I still have very guarded hopes,” said actress Rose McGowan, who claims Weinstein raped her in 1997. “The justice system has been something very elusive. And I hope in this case it works. Because it’s all true. None of this was consensual.” Some of his accusers have also sued Weinstein in civil court. Because statutes of limitations apply in many of the cases, women and their lawyers had to test the boundaries of civil law in trying to bring Weinstein to account.

Actress Ashley Judd invoked unfair competition laws in a suit claiming his behavior hurt her career. The suit is an attempt to “shine a light on the broader economic damages caused when individuals in positions of authority attempt to punish those who have resisted their improper advances,” said Judd’s attorney, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. Another aspiring actress sued Weinstein in federal court over accusations he abused her in Cannes, France, in 2014. Since the alleged incident happened overseas, plaintiff Kadian Noble is attempting to sue under a sex trafficking law. And a group of women got together to file a class-action racketeering lawsuit in federal court, saying Weinstein and his associates’ attempts to cover up his habitual abuse amounted to a criminal enterprise.

On Friday, defense attorney Benjamin Brafman said Weinstein vehemently denied the charges and claimed all his sexual encounters were consensual. Weinstein would be exonerated, Brafman said, if potential jurors are “not consumed by the movement that seems to have consumed this case.”

But Weinstein and #MeToo cannot be disentangled. Even if no other men in Hollywood had been accused of sexual assault since fall 2017, Weinstein has enough alleged victims to count as a movement of their own. The lawyers and associates who drafted nondisclosure agreements, arranged hotel rooms and trysts, and worked to present a false image of Weinstein as a successful and decent businessmen constituted a force of oppression on their own, and it took the strength of women coming together to fight it.

Evans told journalist Ronan Farrow as much when she described how she decided to work with detectives to build a criminal case against Weinstein: “I think the significance hit all at once.” Evans said she initially felt “proud to be a part of this movement, just knowing I could do this for everybody.”

Olympic swimmer Ariana Kukors Smith talks to reporters about her lawsuit. Associated Press/Photo by Ted S. Warren

Childhood lost

A former Olympian sued USA Swimming this week for failing to protect her from an abusive coach. Ariana Kukors Smith accused Sean Hutchison of grooming her for sexual abuse starting at age 13, leading to sexual activity with her when she was 17. She said USA Swimming officials in 2005 knew Hutchison was in an inappropriate relationship with her but did not report it to authorities.

Top officials at the organization, according to the lawsuit, also “secretly agreed that Hutchison should be specifically protected from the background check process due to the fact that pervasive rumors of his inappropriate sexually motivated behavior towards minors such as the plaintiff would inevitably surface through contacts with prior employers.” Hutchison, an assistant coach on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team, denies the accusation, which surfaced earlier this year in an online essay by Kukors Smith, and has not been charged with a crime. The office of his attorney, Brad Meryhew, said he had no comment on the lawsuit.

Kukors Smith, now 28, was the 2009 world champion in the 200-meter individual medley and placed fifth in that event at the 2012 Olympic Games. USA Swimming revealed in 2010 that it had issued lifetime bans to 46 members, mostly for sex abuse allegations. The lawsuit is another scandal for Olympic sports organizations that train youth for elite competition. Former USA Gymnastics sports doctor Larry Nassar has been imprisoned on sexual abuse convictions stemming from hundreds of accusations by former athletes. —L.L.

Olympic swimmer Ariana Kukors Smith talks to reporters about her lawsuit. Associated Press/Photo by Ted S. Warren

Bad company

Actor Morgan Freeman joined the list this week of Hollywood personalities accused of sexual misconduct. CNN interviewed more than a dozen people who said they either experienced unwanted advances and touching from Freeman or witnessed such behavior. One woman, a production assistant on the 2017 movie Going In Style, said Freeman repeatedly tried to lift up her skirt and made unwanted comments and physical contact on a daily basis during filming. The actor, now 80, issued a public apology: “I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable or disrespected—that was never my intent.” In light of the accusations, the Hollywood union SAG-Aftra said it was rethinking the lifetime achievement award it gave Freeman earlier this year. “Given Mr. Freeman recently received one of our union’s most prestigious honors recognizing his body of work, we are therefore reviewing what corrective actions may be warranted at this time,” the organization said in a statement. —L.L.

Parents beware

The producers of the film Show Dogs decided to pull it from theaters and recut it after parents sounded the alarm on an insidious and predatory story line in the kids movie. The plot sounds like a knockoff of Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality, with canines. But to prepare to compete in a dog show, police K-9 Max has to get used to having his private parts touched. So wrong on so many levels. Global Road Entertainment said it would remove two particularly objectionable scenes before re-releasing Show Dogs. “The company takes these matters very seriously and remains committed to providing quality entertainment for the intended audiences based on the film’s rating,” the company said in a statement posted on the website on the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which advocated for the film’s removal from theaters. —L.L.