In an interview with &#8220;CBS This Morning&#8221; that aired Friday, one of the twelve jurors who found mega-producer Harvey Weinstein guilty of two of the lesser of the five charges brought against him in the state of New York offered a glimpse into what was going on behind the scenes during the five-day deliberation process and addressed some of the key arguments in the case.
On Monday, a jury composed of seven men and five women convicted Weinstein on two of five charges brought against him in the state — a criminal sex act in the first degree and rape in the third degree — but acquitted the disgraced producer on the most serious charges in the case: two counts of predatory sexual assault and one count of first-degree rape. Instead of a potential life sentence, Weinstein now faces up to 29 years in prison.
During the trial, six women testified that Weinstein had sexually assaulted them, but the charges stemmed from only two of the women&#8217;s accusations. The other four alleged victims&#8217; testimonies were intended to show a pattern of abusive behavior by the powerful Hollywood figure.
The trial, as &#8220;CBS This Morning&#8221; co-host Gayle King noted in the interview, was a pivotal moment in the #MeToo movement, but &#8220;juror number nine,&#8221; Drew, says that the movement had no impact on the jury&#8217;s decision.
&#8220;It would be an adulteration of the process to take outside factors and have that weigh on our decision-making process and eventual findings,&#8221; Drew told King, as reported by <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/harvey-weinstein-juror-verdict-not-message-about-metoo-movement/">CBS News</a>.
&#8220;We were there to do a job, to make a decision based on the information that was presented to us,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and we have absolutely no stance or voice or opinion as to any type of larger movement.&#8221;
The focus during the five days of deliberation, said Drew, was to closely examine the legal definitions of the charges and weigh those against the evidence.
The details of Jessica Mann&#8217;s testimony, he said, merited a conviction of third-degree rape, not first-degree rape, based on both terms&#8217; legal definitions.
&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t rape in the first degree. There was no physical compulsion with the threat of bodily harm or death,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;But there was no consent given, despite a lack of physical resistance, and a reasonable person should have known that there was no consent given in that instance.&#8221;
One of the key arguments of the defense was that some of the victims maintained relationships with Weinstein after the assaults, and Drew revealed that the jury wrestled early on with that contention. &#8220;In the earlier parts of the deliberation, there was huge discourse about things of that nature,&#8221; he said.
When King pressed drew if the defense&#8217;s argument factored into their decision, Drew said no. &#8220;It&#8217;s an alleged incident, not kind of this whole canvas of relationship,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s, you know, husbands can rape their wives. And it&#8217;s a complicated issue, for sure, but it was our contention that it&#8217;s one incident.&#8221;
One of the controversies that arose during the lengthy deliberations was the jurors sending a note on the fourth day to the judge asking if it was possible to be split on some of the counts and unanimous on others. The note, said Drew, was an attempt to gain clarification and probably not handled carefully enough.
&#8220;Maybe that&#8217;s our fault for the syntax of the note,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But I know now that people kind of deduced that maybe he was guilty somewhere along the line, and I&#8217;ll tell you, I was sick about it. Because, he&#8217;s a human being and he&#8217;s going home that night and knowing that he&#8217;s walking into court Monday morning and potentially not leaving.&#8221;
In reference to &#8220;Sopranos&#8221; actress Annabella Sciorra&#8217;s testimony, which was allowed as part of the prosecution&#8217;s attempt to show an alleged pattern of abuse to merit a &#8220;predatory assault&#8221; charge, Drew suggested that while her testimony was &#8220;compelling,&#8221; the prosecution did not meet the &#8220;very high burden&#8221; required for such a charge.
&#8220;But these are serious allegations, and that&#8217;s a very high burden that the prosecution took upon itself in bringing these charges,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;It&#8217;s 27 years ago, and in this country, you know, you and I and even Harvey Weinstein are innocent until proven beyond a reasonable doubt of the opposite.&#8221;
As for Weinstein&#8217;s decision n0t to take the stand, Drew said that while he &#8220;wanted him to,&#8221; the decision did not impact the process because they focused on &#8220;what we had in front of us,&#8221; rather than conjecture.
The focus, Drew said in summary, was to avoid &#8220;groupthink&#8221; and to try to maintain complete &#8220;objectivity&#8221; in the process, which he said he feels he personally was able to accomplish despite the high-profile and highly charged nature of the case. (<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/harvey-weinstein-juror-verdict-not-message-about-metoo-movement/">See the interview here</a>.)

Harvey Weinstein

Juror Reveals What Was Going On Behind The Scenes During Harvey Weinstein Trial

Hollywood

MeToo

Rape

Sexual Assault

In a lengthy Instagram post published Wednesday, British singer Duffy revealed that her sudden departure from the music industry in the late 2000s was due to a traumatic experience in which she was allegedly drugged, raped, and held captive for multiple days.
&#8220;You can only imagine the amount of times I thought about writing this,&#8221; Duffy started the post. &#8220;The way I would write it, how I would feel thereafter. Well, not entirely sure why now is the right time, and what it is that feels exciting and liberating for me to talk. I cannot explain it.&#8221;
&#8220;Many of you wonder what happened to me,&#8221; she continued, &#8220;where did I disappear to and why.&#8221;
After a journalist contacted her, the singer explained, &#8220;he found a way to reach me and I told him everything this past summer. He was kind and it felt so amazing to finally speak.&#8221;
&#8220;The truth is, and please trust me I am ok and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days,&#8221; revealed Duffy.
&#8220;Of course I survived,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The recovery took time. There’s no light way to say it. But I can tell you in the last decade, the thousands and thousands of days I committed to wanting to feel the sunshine in my heart again, the sun does now shine.&#8221;
Duffy said she only came forward now to tell her story because she &#8220;did not want to show the world the sadness in my eyes.&#8221;
&#8220;I asked myself, how can I sing from the heart if it is broken?&#8221; the post continued.  &#8220;And slowly it unbroke.&#8221;
The singer revealed that the audio interview she recorded with the unnamed male journalist will be released in coming weeks.
&#8220;I have a sacred love and sincere appreciation for your kindness over the years. You have been friends. I want to thank you for that,&#8221; the singer signed off, adding: &#8220;Please respect this is a gentle move for me to make, for myself, and I do not want any intrusion to my family. Please support me to make this a positive experience.&#8221;
As noted by <a href="https://variety.com/2020/music/news/duffy-british-pop-sensation-reveals-assault-reason-absence-1203515398/">Variety</a>, Duffy had a budding career in the late 2000s, seemingly &#8220;poised for the kind of massive neo-soul career that Adele has enjoyed in her wake.&#8221; But since her departure from music, until now, Duffy &#8220;usually ended up pointing to statements she made during and after the promotion cycle of her second album about her disaffection for all that came with being a star&#8221; to explain her absence from the industry.
Duffy is best known for her 2008 hit single “Mercy,” which peaked at No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/singer-duffy-raped-drugged-held-captive-days">Fox News</a> reported, adding that the musical talent earned a Grammy award for best pop vocal album for “Rockferry&#8221; in 2008. Duffy also stacked up two &#8220;two more nominations in the same year for best new artist and best female pop vocal performance with &#8216;Mercy,'&#8221; Fox noted.
Duffy released another album in 2010, titled &#8220;Endlessly,&#8221; before largely leaving the industry, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/26/entertainment/duffy-instagram-post/index.html">CNN</a> noted.
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</a> 
 <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B8_95uYhFMQ/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">You can only imagine the amount of times I thought about writing this. The way I would write it, how I would feel thereafter. Well, not entirely sure why now is the right time, and what it is that feels exciting and liberating for me to talk. I cannot explain it. Many of you wonder what happened to me, where did I disappear to and why. A journalist contacted me, he found a way to reach me and I told him everything this past summer. He was kind and it felt so amazing to finally speak. The truth is, and please trust me I am ok and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days. Of course I survived. The recovery took time. There’s no light way to say it. But I can tell you in the last decade, the thousands and thousands of days I committed to wanting to feel the sunshine in my heart again, the sun does now shine. You wonder why I did not choose to use my voice to express my pain? I did not want to show the world the sadness in my eyes. I asked myself, how can I sing from the heart if it is broken? And slowly it unbroke. In the following weeks I will be posting a spoken interview. If you have any questions I would like to answer them, in the spoken interview, if I can. I have a sacred love and sincere appreciation for your kindness over the years. You have been friends. I want to thank you for that x Duffy Please respect this is a gentle move for me to make, for myself, and I do not want any intrusion to my family. Please support me to make this a positive experience.</a>
<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by @<a href="https://www.instagram.com/duffy/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> duffy</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2020-02-25T18:12:57+00:00">Feb 25, 2020 at 10:12am PST</time>
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British Singer Duffy

Singer Duffy Reveals Sudden Departure From Music Industry: ‘I Was Raped And Drugged And Held Captive’

Music

After five days of deliberations following a highly publicized trial, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been convicted on two of five charges brought against him in the state of New York — a criminal sex act in the first degree and rape in the third degree — but acquitted on the most serious charges in the case, two counts of predatory sexual assault and one count of first-degree rape, which could have put him away for life.
The jury of 12 people — seven men and five women — presented their decision Monday morning after five days of much-scrutinized deliberations.
&#8220;Harvey Weinstein, the powerhouse film producer whose downfall over sexual misconduct ignited a global movement, was found guilty on Monday of a felony sex crime and rape after a trial in which six women testified that he had sexually assaulted them,&#8221; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/nyregion/harvey-weinstein-verdict.html">The New York Times</a> reports. &#8220;But the jury acquitted Mr. Weinstein of the two top charges against him, predatory sexual assault.&#8221;
As explained by <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/harvey-weinstein-found-guilty-1279731">The Hollywood Reporter,</a> in New York State, an individual &#8220;can be convicted of predatory sexual assault when a jury has determined that the person committed a first degree rape, criminal sexual act or aggravated sexual abuse against more than one other person.&#8221;
Weinstein faces up to 25 years in prison for the first-degree sexual assault conviction and up to four years for the third-degree rape conviction, <a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20200224161417-cln8q">Reuters</a> reports.
The verdict followed a reported deadlock on the two most serious charges on Friday, but apparent unanimity on the three lesser charges: criminal sex act, first-degree rape, and third-degree rape. The jury ended up agreeing to convict him on two of the three lesser charges, a first-degree criminal sex act and third-degree rape.
<div>
&#8220;Mr. Weinstein sat between his lawyers looking straight ahead when it was announced that the jury had reached a verdict,&#8221; the Times reports. &#8220;Four court officers stood behind him, and Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, sat nearby in the front row of the courtroom.&#8221;
According to the Times, Wesintein &#8220;appeared unmoved as the verdict was read.&#8221;
&#8220;He was found not guilty on the two counts of predatory sexual assault, which suggests that one or some jurors did not believe the testimony of Annabella Sciorra, an actress best known for her work in &#8216;The Sopranos,'&#8221; the Times suggests.
The case against Weinstein in New York involved the accusations of two women: former television production assistant Miriam Haley, who testified that he forced oral sex on her in 2006 at his apartment in Manhattan, and former actress Jessica Mann, who accused him of raping her in 2013 in a hotel room in the city.
&#8220;Ms. Mann and Ms. Haley both acknowledged that they continued to see Mr. Weinstein after the alleged assaults and later had consensual sex with him, testimony that complicated the prosecution’s case,&#8221; the Times reports.
Four other women — Sciorra, Dawn Dunning, Tarale Wulff, and Lauren Young — were allowed to testify against Weinstein in the trial, though no charges were brought in connection to their claims.
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The Hollywood Reporter notes that Weinstein&#8217;s lawyers said they would accept a partial verdict on Friday, but the prosecutor leading the case rejected the offer, prompting Judge James Burke to order the jury to continue to deliberate.
While the New York case now awaits sentencing, Weinstein is the subject of another case in California, where a Los Angeles County jury is considering similar charges against him.
This article has been revised for clarity and expanded to include more details about the case.
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</div>

Harvey Weinstein Convicted On Two Of Five Charges, Acquitted Of Most Serious Charges

Internet porn empire Pornhub has come under fire in recent days for featuring videos of rape and sex trafficking victims on its platform.
In an <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/time-to-shut-pornhub-down">explosive op-ed</a> in the Washington Examiner on Sunday, Laila Mickelwait noted &#8220;several shocking cases of sex trafficking and child rape films that were hosted on Pornhub&#8221; over the past few months, including one involving a 15-year-old girl who was missing for up to a year until her mother discovered 58 videos of her being hosted on the site. The girl&#8217;s trafficker was eventually spotted in a 7-Eleven surveillance video before police arrested him. Another case involved Michael Pratt, owner of GirlsDoPorn, who coerced 22 women into performing sex acts on camera; the acts were later posted to Pornhub.
&#8220;These women sued GirlsDoPorn and won a $12.7 million lawsuit against the company,&#8221; reported Mickelwait. &#8220;According to a federal indictment, Pratt and his co-conspirators produced child pornography and trafficked a minor. Pratt reportedly fled the United States for New Zealand and is currently wanted on a federal warrant.&#8221;
So how does Pornhub factor into this? Does the site in any way bear responsibility for these women being sex trafficked for the purpose of exploitation on its platform? According to Mickelwait, the site hosts up to six million videos per year that collectively generate a whopping 42 billion visitors and huge ad revenue. Throughout all this, the site &#8220;has no system in place to verify reliably the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic content it hosts.&#8221;
&#8220;In fact, all that is needed to upload pornography onto Pornhub is an email address,&#8221; writes Mickelwait. &#8220;No government-issued ID is required, not even to become &#8216;verified&#8217; with its trusty blue checkmark that makes everything seem a-OK. It took me under 10 minutes to create a user account and upload blank test content to the site, which went live instantly. I could have then gone on to become Pornhub-verified, and all I would need to do is send a photo of myself holding a paper with my username. That’s it.&#8221;
Beyond that, a simple search for &#8220;teen porn&#8221; on the site yields hundreds of videos featuring girls who look very young, complete with &#8220;braces, pigtails &#8230; and extremely young faces.&#8221; Some girls are even shown &#8220;holding teddy bears and licking lollipops.&#8221;
According to a recent investigation by <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9393zp/how-pornhub-moderation-works-girls-do-porn">VICE Motherboard</a>, Pornhub&#8217;s alleged &#8220;high-tech solution&#8221; meant to stop the spread and posting of such videos is all but useless:
<blockquote>Pornhub claims that victims of nonconsensual porn — as many of the Girls Do Porn videos are — can easily request to remove videos from the site, and that those videos can be &#8220;fingerprinted.&#8221; Broadly speaking, video fingerprinting is a method for software to identify, extract, and then summarize characteristic components or metadata of a video, allowing that video to be uniquely identified by its &#8220;fingerprint.&#8221;
But a Motherboard investigation found that this system can be easily and quickly circumvented with minor editing. Pornhub&#8217;s current method for removing Girls Do Porn videos and other forms of non-consensual porn not only puts the onus of finding and flagging videos almost entirely on potentially-traumatized victims — those victims can&#8217;t even rely on the system to work.</blockquote>
Dr. Ann Olivarius, founder of McAllister Olivarius, bluntly stated that Pornhub essentially has no incentive to regulate such videos so long as they continue to pad its bottom line.
“The core problem is that image-based abuse videos (so-called revenge porn), and coerced videos such as Girls Do Porn, are a significant part of Pornhub and other sites’ business models,&#8221; said Dr. Olivarius. &#8220;They are massively popular with users and with site owners, and either free or incredibly cheap to produce. What, exactly, is the incentive for a site like Pornhub to remove one of their most popular products?&#8221;

Pornographic video sharing website Pornhub logo is seen on

Pornhub Under Fire After Videos Of Rapes, Sex Trafficking Victims Posted To Site

Human Trafficking

Internet

pornography

Charges were expected to be dropped against an orthopedic surgeon and his girlfriend on Friday after the Orange County district attorney said he wanted to dismiss the case and claimed his predecessor had “manufactured” the case. In a stunning twist, however, a judge declined to dismiss the charges based on the district attorney’s word and instead said he needed more time to decide whether he will grant the dismissal.
As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/charges-dropped-against-couple-accused-of-drugging-raping-1000-women-prosecutor-says-predecessor-manufactured-case">reported</a>, Grant Robicheaux and his girlfriend Cerissa Riley, a substitute teacher, were accused luring women to their Newport Beach, California home, drugging them, and then raping them. From The Daily Wire:
<blockquote>In September 2018, then-district attorney Tony Rackauckas said during a press conference that investigators had “hundreds” of videos taken from the couple’s phones showing evidence that they had drugged and raped the women and then filmed the crimes. He was asked during that press conference whether the number could approach one thousand, and Rackauckas said, “I think so.”
Rackauckas lost his re-election bid a few months later. The new DA, Todd Spitzer, decided to re-investigate the case after he saw an unsealed deposition from Rackauckas explaining that he hoped the case against Robicheaux and Riley would help him get re-elected.</blockquote>
Spitzer reopened the case, and said during a press conference that a “team of prosecutors with a combined 175 years of experience determined there is no provable evidence that Robicheaux and Riley committed any sexual offense.” Spitzer then accused his predecessor of manufacturing the case.
“The prior District Attorney and his chief of staff manufactured this case and repeatedly misstated the evidence to lead the public and vulnerable women to believe that these two individuals plied up to 1,000 women with drugs and alcohol in order to sexually assault them—and videotape the assaults,” Spitzer said.
“As a result of the complete case review I ordered beginning in July, we now know that there was not a single video or photograph depicting an unconscious or incapacitated woman being sexually assaulted,” he added.
A judge on Friday said he needed more information about the case and the alleged evidence behind it before dismissing the charges, ABC 7 <a href="https://abc7.com/5912292/">reported</a>. Spitzer remained hopeful that the judge would eventually dismiss the case, saying the judge “has been involved in this case from its inception and it is completely reasonable that he would want a thorough understanding of the facts.&#8221;
The judge, according to ABC 7, added that politics were evident in the case and he needed to sort through the competing claims. As the outlet reported, both sides must submit final argument briefs by March 19. The next hearing is set for April 3.
An attorney for the accused couple, Philip Cohen, told the outlet that even if the charges are dismissed the defendants have had their lives ruined.
&#8220;The biggest problem in this case continues &#8211; what do Grant and Cerissa do with the rest of their lives and what confidence can the public have that they are not rapists, they&#8217;re not monsters, that they&#8217;re not villains?&#8221; Cohen said.
Then, of course, there are the attorneys representing women claiming to be victims of the couple.
&#8220;This gives us an opportunity to also evaluate the information to understand why the DA is making the decision that they&#8217;re making and for us to object if we&#8217;d like to judge if we&#8217;d like that charge to remain,&#8221; said one of the accuser’s attorneys, Mike Fell.

Grant Robicheaux Cerissa Riley

Judge Refuses To Dismiss Charges Against Couple Accused Of Drugging And Raping 1,000; DA Had Said Predecessor ‘Manufactured’ Case

California

Crime

On Friday’s episode of The New York Times&#8217; podcast “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/podcasts/the-daily/weinstein-trial.html">The Daily</a>,” Donna Rotunno, a Chicago-based attorney who has represented dozens of men accused of sexual misconduct, was asked in a pre-recorded interview about her decision to now defend disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein. 
&#8220;My role in this is to represent him in a criminal case, and as I&#8217;ve said multiple times, there&#8217;s a difference between sins and crimes. You can believe that Harvey Weinstein is a sinner, and you can believe that he did things that you wouldn&#8217;t do or you wouldn&#8217;t like, but my question here is does that rise to the level of a crime,&#8221; Rotunno told Megan Twohey, the Times reporter who co-wrote the 2017 Weinstein investigation. 
“I think quite often, we look to the accusers and we talk about the effects that these things have on their lives, but we do not look at the effects that these types of allegations and accusations have on the person being accused,” said Rotunno. 
Rotunno remains particularly concerned with the long-term effects that sexual misconduct accusations have on men, invoking an observation her mother made about the media’s rush to condemn three Duke University lacrosse team players for a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/lacrosse/2013/02/28/duke-2006-rape-allegations/1953607/">gang-rape allegation</a>: “When those boys die someday, their obituary is going to say the Duke Lacrosse players.” 
To clients who once felt hopeless, Rotunno’s legal acumen has made a world of difference. In 2013, Rotunno represented high-end fashion designer Elhadji Gueye, who was arrested when an acquaintance filed a police report alleging sexual assault, a charge Gueye maintained was filed only after he refused to pay her $50,000 in hush money, according to <a href="https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/February-2018/The-Defender/">Chicago Magazine</a>. 
When police requested as evidence the clothing she was wearing at the time of the alleged rape, the accuser didn’t submit the pajama bottoms, and later told the court she didn’t know where they went. But during cross-examination, Rotunno pointed to a peculiarity, revealed by a security camera that recorded the accuser’s alleged hush money request: “Of all the clothes in your closet, the ones you choose to wear to meet your ‘rapist’ were the pants you were raped in?” 
Rotunno believes her pointed question led the jury to a prompt not-guilty verdict, and reflected on the trial during the Times’ interview: “He wins, but what do you win? You win your case in criminal court, and then you have to worry about building your reputation back, if you can, where people are then willing to come back and frequent your establishment.”
According to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nishitajha/harvey-weinstein-lawyer-donna-rotunno-daily-times-interview">Buzzfeed News</a>, after the interview aired on Friday, &#8220;prosecutors argued it violated Judge James Burke&#8217;s previous order directing lawyers to not discuss the case and the witnesses in public.&#8221; Rotunno claims the interview was recorded &#8220;a long time ago&#8221; and didn&#8217;t know when it would air, but the New York Times claims the interview was recorded on January 28 and that Rotunno knew it would air Friday.
When it concerns the man who sparked the #MeToo movement, the court of public opinion has been swift and decisive. But while nearly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/05/us/harvey-weinstein-trial.html">80 women</a> have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, ranging from unwanted groping to forcible rape, the charges in the Manhattan trial are specific and concern only two criminal accusers. 
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/weinstein-jury-forced-to-review-his-nude-photos-following-intersex-vagina-allegation">The Daily Wire</a> previously reported, Jessica Mann, a former actress who is now a hairstylist, claims she consensually entered into a relationship with Weinstein after he forced her to permit him to perform oral sex. 
“I made the decision to be in a relationship with him,” said Mann, according to <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2020/01/jessica-mann-harvey-weinstein-trial-testimony.html">Vulture</a>. “And part of that was because I was sexual with very few people. I entered into what I thought was going to be a real relationship with him — and it was extremely degrading from that point on.”
Mann has also alleged that Weinstein violently raped her at a New York City hotel in 2013; Weinstein maintains that all encounters were consensual, and his defense team has produced emails from Mann showing that she maintained contact with him for years, and would provide him with updated contact information on multiple occasions. 
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/harvey-weinstein-accuser-he-ripped-out-my-tampon-and-performed-oral-sex-on-me">The Daily Wire</a> previously reported, Weinstein has also been accused of forcibly performing oral sex on Mimi Haleyi, a production assistant for Project Runway, at his apartment in 2006. 
In total, Weinstein faces five criminal counts, including rape and predatory sexual assault, in connection with alleged assaults against the two accusers. He faces up to life in prison if convicted. 
This report has been updated to include additional information about the nature of the interview, including a statement by Rotunno and the New York Times about it&#8217;s timing and release.

Harvey Weinstein Trial Continues In New York

Lead Weinstein Attorney Speaks Out: Here’s Why I Defend Men Accused Of Rape

Lawsuit

Prison

Sexual Harassment

Charges have been dropped against an Orange County, California, surgeon and his girlfriend who were accused of drugging and raping upwards of 1,000 women.
In 2018, orthopedic surgeon Grant Robicheaux and his girlfriend Cerissa Riley, a substitute teacher, were accused of luring women to their home in Newport Beach, drugging them until they were unconscious, and then raping them. In September 2018, then-district attorney Tony Rackauckas said during a press conference that investigators had “hundreds” of videos taken from the couple’s phones showing evidence that they had drugged and raped the women and then filmed the crimes. He was asked during that press conference whether the number could approach one thousand, and Rackauckas said, “I think so.”
Rackauckas lost his re-election bid a few months later. The new DA, Todd Spitzer, decided to re-investigate the case after he saw an unsealed deposition from Rackauckas explaining that he hoped the case against Robicheaux and Riley would help him get re-elected.
“A team of prosecutors with a combined 175 years of experience determined there is no provable evidence that Robicheaux and Riley committed any sexual offense,” said in a press release quoted by <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/da-clears-grant-robicheaux-and-cerissa-riley-couple-accused-of-drugging-and-raping-women?ref=scroll">The Daily Beast</a>.
The resulting investigation found no evidence to support the charges against the surgeon and his girlfriend. Further, Spitzer accused his predecessor of manufacturing the case.
“The prior District Attorney and his chief of staff manufactured this case and repeatedly misstated the evidence to lead the public and vulnerable women to believe that these two individuals plied up to 1,000 women with drugs and alcohol in order to sexually assault them—and videotape the assaults,” Spitzer said in a statement.
“As a result of the complete case review I ordered beginning in July, we now know that there was not a single video or photograph depicting an unconscious or incapacitated woman being sexually assaulted,” he added.
Also at the news conference, Spitzer said that while he “didn&#8217;t create this situation but it&#8217;s my responsibility to fix it.&#8221;
&#8220;Doing justice is not always pretty. It&#8217;s not pleasant many times. This is not pleasant at all,&#8221; he added, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/05/us/grant-robicheaux-california-surgeon-girlfriend-rape-allegations-charges-dropped/index.html">according to CNN</a>. &#8220;But these are important decisions that affect people&#8217;s lives.&#8221;
A defense attorney for the couple, Philip Cohen, told reporters that while he didn’t “want to be overly dramatic or hyperbolic,” the “mere filing of this case has destroyed irreparably two lives.”
“He has become persona non grata with an entire city, an entire state—and I don’t want to be exaggerating—but probably an entire country,” he added.
The couple, along with their attorneys, repeatedly denied the allegations against them, saying the sex was consensual and that they were swingers.
For his part, Rackauckas said in a statement to CNN that he believed the accusers based on the evidence he had.
&#8220;I just feel terrible for the women who had the courage to come forward and give their evidence to the authorities in this case,&#8221; his said in the statement.
&#8220;It&#8217;s hard for them to make these reports about things that were so very humiliating in the first place then have to relive the pain,&#8221; he added. &#8220;Certainly, any prosecutor should think long and hard before dismissing such a case where multiple women have independently come forward and subjected themselves to the hard process of (baring) their souls to the authorities.&#8221;

Charges Dropped Against Couple Accused Of Drugging, Raping 1,000 Women; Prosecutor Says Predecessor ‘Manufactured’ Case

false accusations

We hear a lot about the rape-kit backlog in America. Many activists believe that getting through the backlog will help put rapists behind bars. That might certainly be the case, but another reason to get through the backlog is to exonerate wrongfully imprisoned men.
In 1984, an 18-year-old woman was raped by three men on the roof of a housing project in Manhattan, The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2020/01/29/wrongful-conviction-overturned/">reported</a>. The woman would eventually lead police to the apartment where Rafael Ruiz was staying when the attack occurred.
She told police that on the day of the rape she had met a man her boyfriend knew while out in the Bronx. She knew the man as “Ronnie,” and he took her to the 16th floor of the building, where two other men joined him and they forced her onto the roof to take turns raping her. The woman later showed police the apartment where Ronnie had gathered the other two men. When police knocked on the door, Ruiz’s brother and sister-in-law answered, and told police Ruiz and one of the other brothers had visited recently. Police found Ruiz and brought him in for questioning. They took his picture and used it in a photo lineup to show the victim. The photo array proved to be leading, as Ruiz was the only man included with a hairstyle that had been described by the victim, the Post reported. She identified him and was then taken into a room to personally identify him from the other side of a one-way mirror. Ruiz was wearing the same clothes as in his photo, which made it easier for the victim to mis-identify him.
“Ruiz was charged with rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and robbery. No one else was ever indicted in connection with the assault,” the Post reported.
Ruiz refused to take a deal and was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to a maximum of 25 years in prison. He served his full term and was released in April 2009, the Post reported. He was also required to register as a sex offender for life.
Former district attorney William Tendy Jr. attempted to reinvestigate Ruiz’s case while he was in prison. He found a man he believed was the real “Ronnie,” who lived on the same floor of the apartment building where Ruiz had been identified and better fit the description of the man who led the assault. Tendy believed the victim identified the wrong man and contacted the Innocence Project. They, along with the conviction review unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, reinvestigated the case and were able to get the rape kit tested. DNA was not widely available in 1984, but the victim’s rape kit had been preserved for 25 years, allowing scientists to test it and determine that Ruiz could not have been one of the attackers.
On Tuesday, Ruiz was finally exonerated. He <a href="https://www.innocenceproject.org/innocence-project-exonerated-rafael-ruiz-nyc/">told</a> the Innocence Project he wanted to dance to celebrate.
“Sometimes when I feel really happy, I just do it,” he said. “I don’t care about my knees or anything. I just do a little break dance.”

DNA testing

Rape Kit Test Exonerates Man Imprisoned For 25 years

On Monday, Jelani Maraj, brother of famed rapper Nicki Minaj, was sentenced 25 years to life for repeatedly raping his then-11-year-old stepdaughter.
&#8220;A judge convicted Jelani Maraj of predatory sexual assault and child endangerment in November 2017. The victim testified during the trial that Maraj repeatedly raped her in 2015 while her mother was at work,&#8221; the <a href="https://apnews.com/5843c95f464f7195256c42b3ce83e384">Associated Press</a> reported.
According to <a href="https://www.revolt.tv/news/2020/1/27/21083986/jelani-maraj-sentence">Revolt</a>, the child claimed the first assault took place in April 2015 inside Maraj&#8217;s bedroom.
“He told me to take off my pants. &#8230; He told me to come under the covers with him, and he started to caress my back,” the child said, according to the outlet. “He took off his boxers … after that, we had <a href="https://www.revolt.tv/news/2020/1/6/21054044/harvey-weinstein-charged-two-counts-sexual-assault">sex</a>.”
“I was on my forearms on the bed and my pants were pulled down,&#8221; the girl added.
The abuse continued even after the child&#8217;s brother allegedly walked in on an assault. The victim said she told her brother not to say anything to their mother.
&#8220;Prosecutors have said DNA evidence recovered from the girl’s pajama pants was linked to Maraj. The girl’s younger brother also testified at the trial that he witnessed one assault,&#8221; the AP report added.
Maraj, who was convicted in 2017, reportedly pleaded for a &#8220;second chance&#8221; in the courtroom, highlighting his alcohol problem.
His defense team also noted that Maraj &#8220;suffered from health issues including hypertension, gout and anemia and requested the minimum sentence of 10 years to life,&#8221; the AP said.
According to <a href="https://thegrapevine.theroot.com/nicki-minajs-brother-jelani-maraj-sentenced-to-25-years-1841302924">The Root</a>, &#8220;Maraj’s attorney appealed conviction in 2018, claiming that there was jury misconduct. The judge ruled in October that the defense did not meet the necessary burden of proof.&#8221;
A <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/nicki-minaj-set-to-testify-at-brothers-child-rape-trial/">Pitchfork</a> report in 2017 said Minaj was set to testify on behalf of her brother.
&#8220;Nicki Minaj plans to take the witness stand in defense of her brother Jelani Maraj in his on-going child rape case, a lawyer for Maraj confirmed to Pitchfork today,&#8221; Pitchfork outlined at the time. &#8220;Maraj plead not guilty after being indicted of felony sexual assault against a child in April of 2016. According to the lawyer, he intends to make the argument that the alleged victim and her mother tried to &#8216;shake down&#8217; Nicki to the tune of $25 million &#8216;to make the charges go away.'&#8221;
It&#8217;s unclear if Minaj did testify, though she did reportedly pay her brother&#8217;s $10,000 bail in 2015 shortly after he was arrested, according to the <a class="gnt_ar_b_a" href="http://pagesix.com/2015/12/05/nicki-minaj-bails-out-her-brother/" data-t-l="|inline|intext|n/a">New York Post</a>.
As noted by <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2015/12/04/nicki-minajs-brother-arrested-rape-charges-involving-child-under-13/76799100/">USA Today</a>, the rapper posted a photo of herself hugging her brother at his wedding to Jacqueline Robinson in August 2015.
&#8220;Jelani, I love u more than you&#8217;ll ever comprehend,&#8221; the Instagram post was captioned.
&#8220;I would cross the ocean for u,&#8221; a post on another photo said. &#8220;I would go &amp; bring u the moon. Promise u. For u I will. I love my brother so much man.&#8221;
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</a> 
 <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/6tcnXpL8bQ/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">Jelani, I love u more than you&#39;ll ever comprehend. 😢</a>
<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nickiminaj/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Barbie</a> (@nickiminaj) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-08-23T03:03:45+00:00">Aug 22, 2015 at 8:03pm PDT</time>
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Nicki Minaj

Nicki Minaj Brother Sentenced After Repeatedly Raping 11-Year-Old Stepdaughter

Jail

In the wake of Kobe Bryant&#8217;s tragic death in a helicopter crash, reactions from the media have run the gamut — with his status as a sports icon existing alongside the fact he was accused of raping a woman back in 2003.
&#8220;Westworld&#8221; star Evan Rachel Wood has endured a public scolding on social media since Sunday for hailing the ill-fated basketball star as both a &#8220;sports hero&#8221; and a &#8220;rapist.&#8221;
“What has happened is tragic. I am heartbroken for Kobe’s family. He was a sports hero. He was also a rapist. And all of these truths can exist simultaneously,” <a href="https://twitter.com/evanrachelwood/status/1221542230457905152" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Wood said</a>.
&#8220;Beloveds, this was not a condemnation or a celebration,&#8221; she later added. &#8220;It was a reminder that everyone will have different feelings and there is room for us all to grieve together instead of fighting. Everyone has lost. Everyone will be triggered, so please show kindness and respect to all.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Beloveds, this was not a condemnation or a celebration. It was a reminder that everyone will have different feelings and there is room for us all to grieve together instead of fighting. Everyone has lost. Everyone will be triggered, so please show kindness and respect to all.
&mdash; #EvanRachelWould (@evanrachelwood) <a href="https://twitter.com/evanrachelwood/status/1221878619485532160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 27, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Evan Rachel Wood was referencing the fact that Bryant had been accused of rape in 2003 — charges that were eventually dismissed after his accuser told prosecutors that she would not testify in court. <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/evan-rachel-wood-kobe-bryant-sports-hero-rapist-tweet-hours-death">Fox News</a> provided more details:
<blockquote>Wood was referencing an incident from 2003 outlined in a 2016 article from <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/woman-accuses-bruce-lindahl-suspected-chicago-area-serial-killer-of-rape?ref=scroll" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Daily Beast</a> in which a 19-year-old woman accused Bryant of choking and sexually assaulting her in a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/category/us/us-regions/west/colorado" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Colorado</a> hotel room. Bryant was arrested and charged with sexual assault and false imprisonment at the time, but the criminal case was ultimately dropped when the accuser refused to testify and agreed to hear Bryant issue a formal apology in court, which he had his lawyer read.</blockquote>
Fans of Kobe Bryant responded to Wood&#8217;s tweet with outrage, denouncing her for &#8220;white feminism&#8221; and even &#8220;veiled racism.&#8221;
&#8220;Evan. We met as kids &amp; I grew up in the same industry has you and have admired your work from afar these past few years. On camera and off. But this tweet? How f***ing dare you?&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/KylaPratt/status/1221609060031553536?s=20">tweeted</a> actress Kyla Pratt.
&#8220;This is an absolutely disgusting comment that reeks of white feminism, narcissism and veiled racism. You took this tragedy and made it about yourself,&#8221; said one Twitter user.
&#8220;And this is where the #MeToo movement has gotten out of control &#8230; attacking a man who literally just died less than 24 hours ago, with his little girl! Was it proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he raped somebody? Did he go to jail? Was he charged?&#8221; said another user.
Other Twitter users pointed out that Evan Rachel Wood had previously worked with director Woody Allen on &#8220;Whatever Works.&#8221; Allen, of course, has also been accused of sexual abuse, although he has never been charged or convicted.
Evan Rachel Wood is not alone, of course, in her mentioning of the Kobe Bryant rape allegation. Washington Post reporter Felica Sonmez <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wapo-reporter-suspended-after-tweeting-on-kobe-bryant-rape-case-report-her-post-wasnt-the-problem">also referenced</a> it at the time of his death, an action that culminated in a series of events that led to her suspension reportedly after she publicly shared a screenshot from her email inbox that revealed the names of her professional critics.

Premiere Of Disney&#8217;s &#8220;Frozen 2&#8221; &#8211; Arrivals

‘Westworld’ Star Evan Rachel Wood Slammed For Hailing Kobe Bryant A ‘Rapist’ And A ‘Hero’

Evan Rachel Wood

Kobe Bryant

The 15-year-old girl who claimed she was raped while jogging during the day will now face charges.
The girl, whose name has not been released, faces two counts of “false reporting of a crime to police,” WWSB <a href="https://www.mysuncoast.com/2020/01/15/teen-girl-who-north-port-police-say-made-up-story-about-being-sexually-battered-now-facing-charges/">reported</a>. The first count relates to her initial claim of sexual battery and the second refers to another claim she made about a physical assault a few days later.
The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/florida-teenager-claimed-she-was-sexually-assaulted-while-jogging-she-just-admitted-she-made-it-up">reported</a> that the girl claimed she was out jogging near her neighborhood when a man attacked and raped her and then fled in a black four-door car. She gave police a DNA sample and worked with a sketch artist to come up with a drawing of the man she claimed had attacked her. She said her attacker was a white, 36- to 38-year-old man about 5’8” with dark hair and a goatee.
Josh Taylor, a police spokesman, initially <a href="https://www.fox13news.com/news/police-teen-sexually-assaulted-while-jogging-in-north-port">told Fox 13</a> that authorities believed it “was a targeted attack” on the teen based on her accusation. Taylor added that the “DNA will tell a lot,” but that it would take time, leaving a potential attacker “roaming the streets.”
The girl made the accusation on January 6, prompting police to spend the next week investigating her claim.
“The North Port Police Department said it spent the next week investigating the teenager’s claims by speaking with neighbors and business owners in the area. Police determined something just wasn’t right about the girl’s story – they couldn’t find any witnesses or video of the alleged incident despite it taking place in broad daylight,” The Daily Wire reported.
When police spoke to the girl again after finding no evidence of her claims, she admitted to making up the story. Police then issued a statement to the media, saying it would “continue to investigate all reports such as this with the rigor and respect they deserve.”
The statement also called out false accusations.
“False reports of this nature are not taken lightly and can impact the perception of real reports of sexual battery,” the statement said. “Anytime we have a report this serious, we simply can not take the chance of failing to educate the public when necessary.”
WWSB reported that “a sexual assault kit and exam found no internal or external injuries.”
After the girl admitted to lying about the initial report, police were again called out on January 13. This time the girl told them that around 7:20 p.m. she let her dog out only to be pushed to the ground by an unknown man, who then ran off. She told police the push knocked her out and that the next thing she remembered was a friend waking her up, WWSB reported.
Detective interviewed her the next day and she admitted making that story up as well.
Police initially told Fox 13 after the girl’s first story that they would focus on getting her whatever help and support she needed. It appears now that police might actually take seriously the false accusations, though punishment will likely be minimal.

Teenage girl jogging in city park

Florida Teenager Who Allegedly Lied About Sexual Assault Will Face Charges

Florida

On July 24, 1975, a woman in Reston was violently attacked and raped.
The attack occurred around 4:30 a.m. The victim testified at trial that she was alone in her apartment that night and that she had previously left her balcony door open. She said she woke up and saw a man standing next to her bed, who allegedly told her that if she did what he told her to do he wouldn’t hurt her. She said the room was too dark for her to see the man clearly. He went on to sexually assault and rape her. The victim said that after the rape the man asked her several questions but she was too frightened to answer. He then stole money from her purse and left.
The first person the woman called was her boyfriend, who arrived at her home 25 minutes later. He called the police, who arrived 10 minutes after that. The investigator assigned to the case collected “the clothing that the victim wore during the attack and the clothing the victim put on after the attack,” according to the <a href="http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opnscvwp/1171286.pdf">petition</a> for a writ of actual innocence filed on March 7, 2019.
The woman was taken to the hospital, and DNA samples were taken and placed in the property room at the police station. The woman worked with police to create a sketch of the man she believed attacked her. She was presented with a photo lineup but could not identify her attacker.
Two months later, on September 24, Fairfax police officers interviewed a witness for an unrelated crime. This witness was shown the police sketch created for another crime and asked this witness if she knew anyone who resembled the sketch. She said the man looked like her brother’s friend, Winston Lamont Scott.
Scott’s photo was then shown to the rape victim in a second photo lineup and she identified him as her attacker. Scott was arrested on September 29, 1975 and charged with “one count of rape, one count of carnally knowing the victim with the mouth, and one count of burglary,” court documents said. Scott pleaded not guilty to all counts.
A local pathologist who testified against Scott said he performed a sexual assault examination on the victim but found no evidence of recent trauma, however, he did collect a semen sample he said had been deposited “within a relatively short period of time.” Another witness, an expert in “bodily secretions” testified that she found sperm in the jeans the victim wore shortly after the attack. Scott’s attorneys tried to have the first expert’s evidence stricken since he only ended up finding that Scott and the victim had the same blood type. Defense attorneys also argued against the chain of command for the victim’s jeans.
Scott was 19 at the time of the crime, and testified that he helped a friend paint their parents’ house on the day before the attack, then ate dinner at a shopping mall and was out with his friends until about 11:30 p.m. He then returned to his friend’s house to sleep. He testified he did not leave the house and had no car at the time. He said woke up around 8:00 a.m. the next to continue painting. Scott’s friend and his friend’s mother testified that Scott was at their house the night the crime was alleged to have occurred, and that the victim’s apartment was nearly five miles away.
Scott was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He served five years and was paroled, The Richmond Times-Dispatch <a href="https://www.richmond.com/news/local/crime/compensation-bill-has-been-filed-to-pay-nearly-to-man/article_00ac8584-4860-589e-a4b9-5c69992d47d1.html">reported</a>.
In 2010, the DNA collected from the victim back in 1975 was finally testified and did not identify Scott’s genetic profile. It would be another seven years before Scott was officially excluded by DNA. The Virginia Supreme Court exonerated Scott in March 2019, providing him the writ of actual innocence.
Now Virginia legislators are hoping to pass <a href="g">a bill</a> that would pay him $160,000 for his wrongful conviction.
“Provides relief in the amount of $159,535 to Winston Lamont Scott, who was wrongfully convicted of rape, carnal knowledge, and burglary in 1976. Mr. Scott served over five years in prison. In March 2019, the Supreme Court of Virginia issued a writ of actual innocence to Mr. Scott and vacated his convictions based upon previously unavailable DNA evidence. The bill also allows Mr. Scott to receive career and technical training within the Virginia Community College System free of tuition charges, up to a maximum of $10,000,” a summary of the bill states.

Man in handcuffs

He Was Falsely Accused Of Rape In 1975. A Virginia Bill May Get Him $160,000 In Compensation.

Virginia

A Warwick, Rhode Island, pastor admitted to falsely accusing a 13-year-old boy of raping his 13-year-old girlfriend and violating an order that prohibited him from contacting the girl.
Her false accusations against the boy led to him being held at a juvenile detention facility and being forced to wear an electronic monitoring device, The Providence Journal <a href="Rhode%20Island%20Training%20School">reported</a>. The pastor, Kelly Shannon, 48, is also a Christian rock singer, but what she has admitted to and has been accused of are anything but Christian.
Shannon pleaded “no contest” in exchange for reducing a charge of possessing child pornography down to a charge of “fraudulently using a computer to send and receive photographs,” the Journal reported.
Police found photos of a teenage boy’s erect penis on Shannon’s phone, The Metro <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/09/scheming-christian-rocker-48-avoids-jail-falsely-accusing-boy-13-rape-12033153/?ito=article.amp.share.top.twitter">reported</a>. The ordeal began when Shannon started helping the boy and his girlfriend with their homework and taking the boy out for various trips. At some point, Shannon performed a fake marriage ceremony for the young couple. The boy’s mother found out about the fake ceremony and took away his phone. Shannon reportedly bought him a new one, which the mother also found. The mother then got a restraining order against Shannon.
Shannon, according to the Journal, threatened the boy with arrest if his mother didn’t get the restraining order lifted.
This is when Shannon accused the young teenager of raping his girlfriend. She went so far as to tell the young girl what to say in order to back up the claims. Shannon is also accused, according to Metro, of making the girl perform sex acts with other young boys and coaching her on how to perform those acts. The girl reportedly told teachers at her school that Shannon had asked her to lie about being raped, prompting school officials to call the police.
Shannon has also been accused of taking nude photos of a female teenage relative, which she then reportedly passed around to young boys that she knew.
In court, the teenage boy said that he thought he was “a good judge of character, but at 13, I didn’t have the trust-your-gut instinct I wish I had.”
“[Shannon] was someone that mastered the art of deception and manipulation. I trusted her, an adult figure, and unknowingly over time became a victim in her web of lies,” the boy said, according to a transcript from Metro. “It would take a hundred pages to list all your lies, manipulations, and abuse of the legal and justice system. You may have a few years of punishment, but I have to live with what you did to me for the rest of my life.”
The Journal reported that they boy is now “suffering from PTSD, anxiety, anger and trust issues in the aftermath” of what Shannon had done to him.
So, what punishment did Shannon end up receiving for what she did? Essentially, nothing.
She was facing five years in prison (still a short amount of time for what she did) for the computer charge. Instead, she will serve 18 months on home confinement while the remaining three-and-a-half years were suspended with probation. She also received one year of home confinement for each of the false reports she made to police, but her sentences are to be served concurrently, meaning she only received two years of home confinement for falsely accusing a teenager of rape, possessing child pornography, and allegedly forcing a teenage girl to perform sex acts.
Shannon’s plea deal led to five additional charges being dropped, and most infuriating of all, she won’t have to register as a sex offender. No man in a similar position would get such a deal.

Teenage boy

Woman Who Falsely Accused A 13-Year-Old Of Rape And Allegedly Distributed Child Porn And Groomed A Teenage Girl For Sex Gets NO Jail Time

Children

The advent of DNA testing helped free hundreds of wrongfully convicted men. The Innocence Project <a href="https://www.innocenceproject.org/dna-exonerations-in-the-united-states/">reported</a> that there have been 367 DNA exonerations to date, starting with the first one in 1989. Thanks to advancements in science, new DNA exonerations are still happening.
In 2002, Kerry Robinson was convicted of raping a 42-year-old woman in February 1993. Robinson, who was 26 at the time of his conviction, had been accused of breaking into her home with two other teenagers. Robinson would have been about 17 at the time of the rape.
CBS46 reported that ” Robinson was never identified as a suspect by the victim, yet Tyrone White and a friend were.”
“Still DNA testing confirmed two people involved in the incident, White and the victim,” the outlet continued. “At the time, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation DNA analyst said he was unable to conclude that Robinson had contributed to a remaining mixture of DNA. Still the 26-year-old was sentenced to two decades in prison for rape.”
After Robinson’s conviction, the DNA samples were sent to an additional 17 analysts, CBS46 reported. “12 concluded Robinson&#8217;s DNA was not present, four were unable to draw a conclusion and one agreed with the GBI&#8217;s testimony,” the outlet reported.
This did nothing to help Robinson, even though the overwhelming majority concluded his DNA was not found at the scene. In 2018, Robinson finally received the help he needed. A new DNA analytical tool found that “the results instead indicated that a random African-American&#8217;s DNA is 1,800 times more likely than Robinson&#8217;s DNA to explain the mixture of DNA in the rape kit,&#8221; CBS46 reported.
“In September 2019, Robinson filed a motion for a new trial, stating that Tyrone White provided courts with a false testimony that was also contradicted by the victim&#8217;s recount of the incident. A district attorney heard Robinson&#8217;s case and dismissed all charges and requested his release,” the outlet continued.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/dna-analysis-frees-man-wrongfully-convicted-rape-after-years/wBL5V2AGm9JEh4Ik1tlJrJ/">reported</a> that the theory surrounding Robinson’s conviction was that he was the “ringleader” behind the woman’s assault in 1993. The strongest evidence against Robinson was false testimony from the GBI, which claimed Robinson’s DNA was likely contained in a mixture of DNA found in the rape kit taken from the victim. The actual ringleader, Robinson contended, gave false testimony to implicate him because Robinson had previously turned the man over to police in connection to a different case.
“District Attorney Shealy’s actions reflect the justice that we fight for, and we hope others follow this lead,” said Georgia Innocence Project attorney Jennifer Whitfield. Whitfield represented Robinson along with Rodney Zell, who had been fighting for Robinson’s freedom for 15 years.
“When the government takes steps to ensure that convictions have integrity, it helps improve the credibility of our legal system overall,” Whitfield added, according to the AJC.
“Modern DNA technology has further confirmed what we’ve known for a long time: Kerry Robinson is an innocent man,” Zell told the outlet, adding that “We wish Kerry’s mother were here to see this day.”
Robinson was released from prison Wednesday afternoon, greeted by his relatives, including his son and sister.

hand in handcuffs

He Was Convicted Of A Rape He Didn’t Commit And Spent 18 Years In Prison. He Was Just Released.

A British teenager has been found guilty of falsely accusing 12 Israeli men of gang raping her at a Cyprus resort in July.
The woman waited several hours after the alleged incident on July 17 to report it to police. The men were arrested shortly after. The Telegraph <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/30/british-woman-19-found-guilty-lying-gang-rape-cyprus/">reported</a> that two weeks later, the woman was questioned by Cyprus police for eight hours. The outlet reported the woman did not have a lawyer or family member present during this time. During her questioning, the woman admitted to making up the claims and even signed a document retracting her initial accusations and apologizing.
The woman was arrested and the men were soon released. The woman made a statement to authorities that she had agreed to have sex with one of the men and that others filmed it. She told them she made up the gang-rape accusations because she was embarrassed.
The woman’s passport was confiscated and she lost her place at a U.K. university due to the trial proceedings. Her lawyers claimed she was innocent and suffered from trauma due to the alleged incident. The woman claimed in court that she had agreed to have sex with one of the men, referred to only as Sam, but his friends entered the room during the encounter. She said she shouted “no” when they entered.
“I said I am not doing that and told them all to go,” she said, according to The Telegraph. “They left for a few seconds and Sam told me to lie on the bed and he got on his knees and put them on my shoulders.”
She claimed the men held her down and raped her.
“I tried to cross my legs. I was trying to throw my arms about,” she said in court. “I don’t know how many of them raped me. I couldn’t see.”
A forensic pathologist testified in court that he found DNA traces from four of the Israeli men on the woman, but it is unclear where those traces were found. The pathologist said the rape kit examination presented in court did not test the woman’s clothing. DNA, however, can be left on a person’s body in any number of ways that do not include rape. They could have been deposited through contact via the man she agreed to have sex with, for example. She could have been near the men earlier and obtained the DNA traces.
Women’s rights groups naturally claimed the woman was a rape victim who was being silenced. A court determined beyond a reasonable doubt that the woman lied, yet “believe all women” activists insisted she was a victim. The activists have used every cliché in the book to excuse the woman’s inconsistent stories and her admission that she made up the allegations.
An attorney for the falsely accused men has told media outlets that they plan to sue the woman for damages, the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/30/british-teen-who-accused-12-men-of-gang-rape-in-cyprus-found-guilty-of-lying/">reported</a>. Attorney Nir Yaslovitzh, who represented the Israelis, called for the woman to receive a “harsh sentence” to deter “all those accusers who find it OK to make up false” allegations.
The woman faces a $1,900 fine and up to a year in prison.
Despite her conviction, media outlets are not revealing the woman&#8217;s name.

False Accuser

She Claimed 12 Israeli Men Raped Her At A Cyprus Resort. She Was Just Found Guilty Of Lying About The Incident.

United Kingdom

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) proposed legislation on Tuesday that would close what he called a “loophole” in rape law.
Cuomo claimed that prosecutors cannot bring rape charges against an accused person if an accuser voluntarily consumes alcohol. Cuomo’s proposal would change the state’s definition of those who cannot legally consent to sexual activity to include someone who is conscious but allegedly too drunk to consent. Keen observers will notice how vague the idea of being “too drunk to consent” may be.
“While New York has some of the most aggressive laws in the nation when it comes to combating this insidious disease, a loophole in current law allows rapists to walk free and vacate their heinous crimes based on a legal technicality,” Cuomo told The Associated Press in <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-york/articles/2019-12-17/governor-wants-to-close-intoxication-loophole-in-ny-rape-law">a statement</a>. “Our laws must protect the people of this state — not condone rape as a punishment for consuming alcohol.”
This new law does what college campuses around the country already do – treat alcohol consumption as a negating effect on consent. It essentially turns all drunk sex into rape, and allows anyone who consumed any amount of alcohol to claim they couldn’t consent.
It also only punishes one side of the equation – whoever the accusation is made again. Often, both parties are drunk, making a law like this pretty meaningless if properly followed, because if both parties are drunk, both parties are both victims and rapists.
Of course, that is never how such a policy is upheld. Never forget Duke University dean Sue Wasiolek, who years ago <a href="http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/a-duke-senior-sues-the-university-after-being-expelled-over-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct/Content?oid=4171302">infamously testified</a> that when both parties are drunk, “assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex.&#8221;
Given the #MeToo movement and “believe all women” supporters, it is clear this law from Cuomo will be used against any man for any reason a woman chooses. It will not be used only by true victims, it will be used for vindictive purposes and by women who have been led to believe that making bad choices after consuming alcohol is akin to rape.
This law only applies to sex. Women who consume alcohol and make the bad choice of getting behind the wheel of a car can’t claim they shouldn’t be punished because they can’t be held accountable for their actions while drinking alcohol.
Criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield reacted to Cuomo’s proposed law in <a href="http://blog.simplejustice.us/">a blog post</a>, saying: “One can be incapacitated by being drunk, or being drugged, but the key to the law is being incapacitated. Drunk, alone, doesn’t do it.”
Greenfield went on to explain that the new law indicating that merely being “drunk” gets someone out of responsibility for their actions doesn’t end at sex or drunk driving:
<blockquote>But it doesn’t stop there. Rob a store? Get drunk first, and it’s not your fault. Before, it you were capable of performing the criminal act, then you weren’t too incapacitated to do so, as proven by the fact that you did so. But now, if ordinary drunkenness vitiates the capacity to consent, precludes a woman from having the adult agency to make a decision to engage in sex, then it similarly precludes the formulation of intent to do anything. Either drunk matters or it doesn’t.
In the context of drunk driving, courts have dealt with the problem of people being so severely intoxicated as to be incapable of formulating the requisite mens rea by holding that they made their choice when the drank alcohol to excess. They started out sober and chose to become less so, and less so, until they were intoxicated.
They had a volitional decision to make, to drink alcohol to a state of drunkenness where they compromised their judgment. There is no rational way to distinguish culpability for criminal conduct while drunk from the capacity to consent while drunk. This was done “for the children,” using the same rhetoric about letting drunken criminals walk free and do harm that’s now turned around to abrogate consent to sex after the fact.</blockquote>

Drinking alcohol

New York Governor Cuomo Proposes New Law That Allows Women To Claim They Were Raped After Consuming Alcohol

Alcohol

New York

A claim that has permeated throughout the culture and infected law enforcement is that prosecuting women who lie about being raped or sexually assaulted will hurt women who have actually been raped or sexually assaulted. The theory is that real victims won’t come forward for fear of being prosecuted even though there’s no evidence to suspect that real victims become fearful when fake victims are held accountable for their lies.
Prosecutors in Lawrence, Kansas, however, have taken the claim to heart and have dropped false reporting charges against at least three women.
The situation began in mid-September, when a female University of Kansas student told police she had been raped the night before. She said at the time she had been drunk and didn’t remember much of the encounter and didn’t want to press charges. She gave them access to her phone and her text messages suggested the encounter was consensual but a “mistake.”
It appeared to police that the woman was trying to get back at her ex-boyfriend by sleeping with his friend, and only claimed it was rape after an acquaintance threatened to tell people about the sexual encounter. The woman threatened this acquaintance by saying: “I’m pretty sure it was borderline rape and I have the bruises and statements to prove it so if you want to go there let’s do it.” As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/she-told-cops-she-was-raped-text-messages-showed-ashe-schow">reported</a>, bruises do not form immediately after an injury and could have been caused by other actions.
The woman’s text messages showed her joking about the incident. She later claimed she was making light of the incident because she was “unable at the time to admit she had been raped.” She then started “remembering” the incident and started saying she had tried to tell her ex-boyfriend’s friend “no” and tried to leave but that he held her down.
The woman was arrested for making a false report, but prosecutors <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kansas-prosecutors-to-drop-false-rape-charges-for-fear-real-victims-wont-come-forward">dropped the charges</a> against her in November, citing fears that real victims would be afraid to come forward.
Now, a month later, prosecutors have dropped charges against two more women who allegedly made false claims. The Associated Press <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/kansas/articles/2019-12-10/2-more-false-reporting-cases-dropped-in-kansas-college-town">reported</a> that two other cases of false reporting were dropped. Little is known about the two other cases, but the AP reported that one involved a woman who said she was raped and the other involved claims of domestic violence.
The Kansas City Star <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article237679439.html">reported</a> that the charges against the other two women were brought in the past two years but were dropped after the newspaper asked prosecutors about them. The Star reported that police officers in Lawrence are not trained properly to respond to claims of sexual abuse.
Media outlets are using the situation in Lawrence to further their cause of believing all women, with the Star and the AP focusing on low percentages of arrests in reported rape cases. Rape is notoriously difficult to prove in many cases, but that doesn’t prove it is handled differently than other reported crimes or that women are not being believed. These outlets also point to the low percentage of what they call “false accusations,” but they mislead readers because they are actually referring to cases where the false accusations were proven. It is even more difficult to prove a negative, so using such a number seeks only to give readers the false impression that false accusations are rare. The truth is we don’t know how many accusations are false and can never know.

couple in bed

Kansas Prosecutors Drop False Accusation Charges, Claiming Real Victims Would Be Hurt

Kansas

In his first interview since being sentenced in September 2018 to 3 to 10 years in prison for charges of aggravated indecent assault involving the drugging and molestation of Andrea Constand in 2004, comedian and actor Bill Cosby, 82, predicted that he would be forced to serve out his full sentence because &#8220;they’re not going to hear me say that I have remorse.&#8221;
&#8220;I have eight years and nine months left,&#8221; Cosby told National Newspaper Publishers Association’s <a href="http://www.blackpressusa.com/">BlackPressUSA.com</a> in a phone interview published Sunday. &#8220;When I come up for parole, they’re not going to hear me say that I have remorse. I was there. I don’t care what group of people come along and talk about this when they weren’t there. They don’t know.&#8221;
The ruling against him, the comedian told NNPA&#8217;s Stacey M. Brown, was all a &#8220;set-up&#8221; and the jury rigged.
&#8220;It’s all a set up. That whole jury thing. They were imposters,&#8221; he said. As alleged evidence, Cosby pointed to &#8220;the woman who blew the whistle,&#8221; the potential juror who said she overheard another juror declare before the trial began that &#8220;he&#8217;s guilty.&#8221;
&#8220;Then she went in and came out smiling, it’s something attorneys will tell you is called a payoff,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I know what they’ve done to my people. But my people are going to view me and say, ‘that boy looks good. That boy is strong.’ I have too many heroes that I’ve sat with. Too many heroes whom I listened to like John Henrik Clarke, Kenneth Clark, and Dorothy Height. Those people are very strong, and they saw the rejection of their people. This is political. I can see the whole thing.&#8221;
The &#8220;Cosby Show&#8221; star spent a lengthy portion of one of the multiple 15-minute-limited calls through SCI Phoenix&#8217;s phone system describing his sense of &#8220;mission&#8221; in prison, which he suggested is trying to instill some personal accountability in the other prisoners through his role as a featured speaker with SCI Phoenix&#8217;s <a href="https://www.customink.com/fundraising/sciphoenixmannup2019">Mann Up</a> prisoner empowerment program.
Calling his cell his &#8220;penthouse,&#8221; he said he goes to &#8220;lay down and start to think about how I can relay a message and give it on Saturdays so that they would hear it and feel it.&#8221; He noted that he frequently has to tell other inmates that he&#8217;s &#8220;not a psychologist&#8221;; rather, he is &#8220;an educator.&#8221;
Asked if he believes he&#8217;s reaching people, Cosby said yes, &#8220;because they want to be reached; they’re in prison.&#8221; While he tells people he doesn&#8217;t know the secret to success, he says he does know &#8220;the secret to failure&#8221;: trying to &#8220;please everybody.&#8221;
In response to Brown&#8217;s question about how he &#8220;did not let them break&#8221; him, Cosby said it was his &#8220;spirit,&#8221; which has remained strong despite the situation.
While Cosby expressed no &#8220;remorse&#8221; for the actions in 2004, he did suggest that his famous <a href="http://www.eightcitiesmap.com/transcript_bc.htm">&#8220;Pound Cake&#8221; speech</a> delivered that year should not have been directed to the entirety of the African American community, rather to a more narrowed portion of it: the type of people who end up at SCI-Phoenix.
&#8220;The mistake I made [in the speech] is making it sound like all the people were making the infractions, and that’s not true,&#8221; he said. But what he said in the speech, he stressed, has a &#8220;light&#8221; behind it.
As for the current state of the African American community, he described it generally as &#8220;under siege&#8221; and resulting in what he was trying to warn people about in 2004. &#8220;This thing with the drugs and the different pockets of the neighborhoods where it’s going on,&#8221; he said. &#8220;When you look at what drugs are doing… things that make these people drive around and shoot into crowds.&#8221;
&#8220;The insanity of what is the cause to the brain by all the drugs these people are dealing with,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;It’s exactly what I warned them about in 2004. They’ve thrown education out the window. They’ve thrown respect for the family out the window, and they’re blaming each other for what’s going on. There is post-traumatic stress syndrome, and there are also bad manners.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bill-cosbys-spokesman-explodes-wild-racially-james-barrett">Bill Cosby’s Spokesman Explodes In Wild, Racially-Charged Rant</a>
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Bill Cosby

Bill Cosby Breaks Silence, Gives First Prison Interview: No ‘Remorse’

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested an illegal alien who was previously jailed for alleged rape and other criminal charges.
Jesus Romero-Bisos was released by the Philadelphia Police Department on October 17 even though ICE had placed an immigration detainer. Philadelphia police had arrested Romer-Bisos “or the criminal offenses of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse by forcible compulsion, unlawful contact with a minor/sex offense, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault without consent, sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child, corruption of minors, indecent assault of a person less than 13 years old, reckless endangerment of another person and harassment,” ICE <a href="https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-captures-illegal-alien-released-philadelphia-custody-despite-detainer-criminal">reported</a>.
Romero-Bisos was also charged “in a second scheme of criminal conduct with unlawful restraint with serious bodily injury, indecent assault without consent, simple assault and harassment.
Despite these charges and the immigration detainer, the Philadelphia police department released Romero-Bisos. The police department told The Daily Wire that all inquiries regarding Romero-Bisos’ release were being referred to the office of Philadelphia Mayor James Kenney. The mayor’s office did not immediately return a Daily Wire inquiry.
Three weeks later, on November 8, deportation officers with ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) found Romero-Bisos and arrested him. He is currently in ICE custody pending immigration proceedings.
“ICE is willing to work with local law enforcement at all times,” said ICE Philadelphia Field Office Director Simona Flores-Lund. “ICE shares the city’s ultimate objective to protect public safety and national security while simultaneously preserving the critical community-police bond. Unfortunately, elected officials are putting politics before the law, and most significantly before the safety of the communities they swore to serve.”
Philadelphia is a sanctuary city, meaning it won’t cooperate with federal immigration officials to deport illegal immigrants. As ICE explained, these policies put citizens at risk by allowing potentially dangerous individuals into the communities. The organization said that the lack of cooperation from local law enforcement increases “the likelihood that other individuals previously not targeted for arrest will be taken into ICE custody.”
This incident has occurred even though ICE field agents in Philadelphia arrested 45 illegal immigrants in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia. As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ice-offices-across-the-country-arrested-hundreds-of-criminal-illegal-immigrants-last-week">reported</a>, most of the illegal immigrants arrested had previous criminal histories, “including driving under the influence and sex-related crimes.”
“ERO deportation officers are committed to enforcing the immigration laws set forth by our legislators,” said Simona Flores-Lund, field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Philadelphia at the time of the arrests. “Targeted operations like this reflect the vital public service that ERO officers do every day to protect the nation, we will continue to conduct similar operations, while seeking to ultimately remove criminal aliens with a final order of removal and other immigration fugitives who pose a threat to public safety.”
Many of the illegal immigrants arrested by ICE at the time had been released from prison despite detainers requested by federal immigration officials.

Anti-ICE activists

ICE Arrests Illegal Alien Released From Prison Despite Rape Charges

Illegal Immigration

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

A common tactic for the “believe all women” crowd is to claim that prosecuting false accusations will lead real victims to avoid reporting a crime. The mental gymnastics it takes to achieve the claim ignores the fact that false accusations actually hurt real victims because they make people less inclined to believe the next victim. Thus, false accusations need to be prosecuted to deter further criminals.
As it stands now, there is virtually no punishment for a woman who falsely accuses a man of sexual assault. The charge for such a false accusation is usually a misdemeanor charge for filing a false police report, a charge that doesn’t take into account the enormous toll the false accusation takes on the actual victim.
Now prosecutors in Kansas are feeding into this culture by dropping the charges against a woman police believe fabricated a rape claim in order to get back at her ex-boyfriend for moving on with his life. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/she-told-cops-she-was-raped-text-messages-showed-ashe-schow">previously reported</a>, the woman called police before entering a hospital for a rape examination. She gave police access to her phone, which quickly proved to them that the sex between the woman and her ex-boyfriend’s best friend was consensual. Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson said the messages showed the University of Kansas student “fabricated the rape story to effect the relationship between herself and the victim … and her ex-boyfriend.”
“The State believes the evidence presented at the preliminary hearing, including: the testimony of (the victim), (her ex-boyfriend), law enforcement officers, and evidence collected by law enforcement, specifically, text messages from the Defendant to her friend … indicate the sexual encounter … was consensual,” Branson said in a statement.
The woman <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article234717197.html">told</a> the Kansas City Star that her messages joking about and downplaying her sexual encounter were due to her inability “at the time to admit she had been raped.”
The woman only called the incident rape the next day after one of her acquaintances said they would tell people what happened. The accuser texted this person back, saying, “I’m pretty sure it was borderline rape and I have the bruises and statements to prove it so if you want to go there let’s do it.”
Those bruises were on her arms, legs, and neck. She had been drinking the night before and said she didn’t remember how she got them. Bruises tend to show up 1 to 2 days after an injury, not hours.
The woman was arrested for making a false accusation, even though she told police she did not want to press charges. Police investigated anyway due to the seriousness of her allegations. Her legal fees have been paid for by a legal defense fund created during the #MeToo movement.
The Chicago Tribune <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-bc-us--false-rape-report-20191029-story.html">reported</a> that prosecutors are dropping the charges against the woman because of the “cost to our community and the negative impact on survivors of sexual violence cannot be ignored.&#8221;
&#8220;We are concerned this case, and the significant amount of misinformation surrounding it, could discourage other survivors from reporting their attack,&#8221; Branson said in a new statement. &#8220;That is unacceptable.&#8221;
Branson failed to address what dropping the case meant for victims of false accusations. As it stood, the woman only faced up to 23 months in jail for a felony false reporting charge. Had the male student been arrested, he faced decades in prison.
As is typical, media outlets won’t name the woman because she claims to be a victim of sexual assault.

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