Bringing the total number of accusers from the UK to 12, another woman has accused jailed producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, Daily Mail reported.
Weinstein, the 69-year-old American film producer is currently serving a 23-year sentence for rape and sexual assault in the US.
Scotland Yard is currently investigating the new allegations raised by a woman who had been employed by both the UK and US entities of The Weinstein Company. In her report, the woman has alleged that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in a hotel in Westminster, in the 1990s.
“Officers from the Met’s Complex Case Team have now received a total of 12 allegations of sexual assault from victims under Operation Kaguyak’,” said a Scotland Yard spokesperson.
As per court documents, the survivor alleged that she was “summoned to the hotel” where she was left alone with the producer, where he removed his clothes and sexually assaulted her.
Earlier, a woman had accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting her at London’s Savoy Hotel, while another had accused him of multiple assaults, including one that happened at a hotel in London.
As per the investigation, officers have received 17 allegations from 12 women, spanning from the 1990s to 2015 against the producer. They have also interviewed several victims in the US, who stated that they had been assaulted in London, during events such as movie premieres.
While serving his jail term in New York, Weinstein was charged with several cases in California in 2020, for crimes in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills from 2004 to 2013, formally being indicted on April 11, 2021. He was extradited to Los Angeles in June to face trial on 11 charges, involving five unnamed women.
Since October 2017, more than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, following which he was dismissed from Miramax, the production company he had co-founded with his brother Bob Weinstein, and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science.
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In February 2020, Weinstein was convicted of rape and sexual assault in New York. Following a trial in the Manhattan Supreme Court, he was sentenced to 23 years of imprisonment, for mainly two cases: a first-degree criminal sexual act, when he forcibly performed oral sex on a production assistant in 2006, and the other for committing third-degree rape in 2013.
Throughout, Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all the charges of sexual assault and rape and has recently filed a motion to dismiss the entire case of the 11 charges in a Los Angeles Court.