I still haven’t seen any evidence of rape. That is the basis of my original question.
That was my take. In the case I mentioned, she found her way into an indie movie (I am pretty sure it was after her stint as his secretary) and that movie went nowhere, that was it for her Hollywood career.
To some people it probably sounds like I am defending someone like Weinstein, but I am not. I think he is a reprehensible, disgusting pervert.
I understand women have had to put up with men leering at them, groping them and saying lewd things, and I am certain that many a woman has grit her teeth and grind her way through that environment because she needs the job.
But when he comes out stark naked to dictate, and you don’t simply put down the pen and quit on the spot and report it to police, you have made a calculation in your head that your potential reward is worth the risk.
Worse, you have made it even worse for every single woman who works after your time there is done. You have damned those women who come after you to have to go through the same thing.
Because you neither quit nor reported it to the authorities, you have reinforced to him that there is a calculus that his potential victims will work out in their heads, and in the worst case (for him) the woman quits. In the best case (for him) he gets to do his dirty deeds.
Just my opinion. Did he ever rape anyone? I haven’t seen evidence of that. But I have seen plenty of evidence that he has taken advantage of vulnerable women, and broken laws on things ranging from indecent exposure to sexual assault.
But sexual assault in the traditional sense is not rape. Certain places have made them the same, which I think is absolutely stupid. Forcing intercourse and feeling a breast in passing are not the same. Anyone who thinks they are (and in certain places they are) is doing victims of rape a grave and insulting disservice.