Oscar winner Mira Sorvino and other Hollywood stars reacted to a decision by the New York Court of Appeals to overturn Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape verdict.
In a post on X on Thursday, Sorvino wrote that she was “horrified” by the court’s decision to overturn the 2020 rape conviction of Weinstein due to the court’s failure to give the disgraced movie mogul a fair trial by allowing allegations from accusers not connected to the charges against him to testify.
“Day after #DenimDay honoring sexual violence survivors, Harvey Weinstein’s conviction overturned, due partly to ‘Molineux witnesses’ testifying to prior bad acts, like lioness Annabella Sciorra,” Sorvino’s post read, referring to a term meaning “witnesses in a trial who are allowed to testify about criminal acts that the defendant has not been charged with committing,” The New York Times noted.
“Since when don’t courts allow evidence of pattern of prior bad acts to be admitted?” she added. “He’s a prolific serial predator who raped/harmed 200+women! Disgusted w/justice system skew [to] predators not victims.”
Horrified!Day after #DenimDay honoring sexual violence survivors,Harvey Weinstein’s conviction overturned,due partly to molyneux witnesses testifying to prior bad acts,like lioness Annabella Sciorra.Since when don’t courts allow evidence of pattern of prior bad acts to be… pic.twitter.com/yIoF6u76da
— Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) April 25, 2024
In a second post, the actress wrote, “Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction overturned by New York court of appeals, retrial ordered, dissenting opinions speak volumes,” and included an Entertainment Weekly article with the voice of one of the dissenting judges, who claimed in her dissent that “fundamental misunderstandings of sexual violence perpetrated by men known to, and with significant power over, the women they victimize are on full display in the majority’s opinion.”
“By whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative, by ignoring evidence of defendant’s manipulation and premeditation, which clouded issues of intent, and by failing to recognize that the jury was entitled to consider defendant’s previous assaults, this Court has continued a disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence,” she added.
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Following the appeals court announcement, the Silence Breakers, a group of Harvey Weinstein survivors, released a statement about the “unjust” decision.
“The news today is not only disheartening, but it’s profoundly unjust,” the statement read. “But this ruling does not diminish the validity of our experiences or our truth; it’s merely a setback. The man found guilty continues to serve time in a California prison. When survivors everywhere broke their silence in 2017, the world changed. We continue to stand strong and advocate for that change…”
Actress Ashley Judd, who was the first to make allegations against Weinstein in 2017, called the news “unfair to survivors,” the Times noted. “We still live in our truth,” Judd said. “And we know what happened.”
It’s “a terrible reminder that victims of sexual assault just don’t get justice,” Katherine Kendall, an actress who made allegations against Weinstein, said. “I’m completely let down by the justice system right now. I’m sort of flabbergasted. But the important thing is that we do not stop speaking out. Our culture needs to keep supporting silence breakers.”
Actress Amber Tamblyn, who also spoke out during the #MeToo movement, called the decision “a loss to the entire community of women who put their lives and careers on the line to speak out.”