A lot of rape victims never report their rapes because most men, and a lot of women, won’t believe them. They often face persecution, especialy if the perpetrators are extremely powerful men. It took years to get charges and trials against rapists like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. And even after both men were convicted, higher courts overturned the rulings. No wonder women don’t report rapes.
The case against Harvey Weinstein helped launch the #MeToo movement. He was convicted in 2020. This morning, the New York Court of Appeals overturned the ruling and ordered a retrial, ruling that the judge in the original trial improperly allowed testimony about allegations that weren’t part of the case.
The court wrote in a 4-3 decision, “We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.” What will this court do next? Overturn the verdict of the E. Jean Carroll case?
The good news here is that Weinstein will remain in prison because he’s serving a 16-year sentence on a separate case in California, where he was convicted in 2022 of rape, forced oral copulation and sexual misconduct.
The New York case sentenced him to 23 years. He was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a former production assistant, Mimi Haleyi, in 2006, and rape in the third degree for an attack on actress Jessica Mann in 2013.
Dissenting judge Madeline Singas wrote in her opinion that reversing Weinstein’s conviction amounted to “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative” and “continued a disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”
One of those in this disturbing trend was the case of Bill Cosby, another that helped start the #MeToo movement, that was overturned in 2021 after he was convicted of sexual assault in 2018 In Pennsylvania.
Cosby had served three years of a ten-year sentence when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor meant he never should have been charged even though over 50 women have accused him of sexual assault and rape.
There don’t seem to be any plans to retry Cosby who is now free to return to pushing roofies and Jell-O.
The #MeToo movement may have lost steam over the past few years but the #WarOnWomen seems to be gaining strength.
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CLAYTOONZ 
What gapened in the courts is ugly, and undeniably wrong.
But let us hope the timing is right. These ruling can help revive the #MeToo movement and hopefully remind women that they still are not as free as they should be. Voting Republican would only make that worse. All women should be voting Democrat, even the ones in Red States.
A VITE FOR BIDEN IS A VOTE FOR WOMEN’S R8GHTS!
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Amen you have put it perfectly!!
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I’ve always been shocked by how many women don’t believe other women who say they’ve been raped, or assume that they ‘must have done something’ to encourage the rape. Back in my more innocent youth there were a few times when those thoughts crossed my mind, too and I’m embarrassed to admit that. I’m not sure why I would have jumped to that conclusion – I hope it was a cultural thing, a ‘sign of the times’ or something. But whatever it was, I never assume that anymore – perhaps because I faced danger a few times myself as I got older and spent more time in the world. We need to keep fighting for ourselves, our friends, and the women we don’t know!
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I am about sick of SCOTUS. Every time you turn around they are splitting hairs or reversing something sane. Alito, Kavanaugh, Roberts, Thomas, or Gorsuch. Average Scumbags. We clearly have a partisan justice system of traitorous, Trump suck up senile old men with enlarged prostates that need to retire in Russia. I have to stop now before I start cussing and saying what I really feel.
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Glad to learn that Weinstein has a separate conviction to serve. What frustrates me about Weinstein is the number of enablers and white washers he employed to hide his crimes. Ronan Farrow has an excellent four part documentary on this. A female reporter was asked by Weinstein at a party in the 1990s what she heard about him. She boldly said “I hear you rape women.” She got a call from his handlers.
As for Cosby, that just broke my heart. I used to listen to his albums when I was a kid and watched his most successful show as America’s favorite father.
Keith
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PS – While we focus on Weinstein, Cosby, Epstein, Trump, et al for their sexual misconduct, what we overlook is what frequently happens around America when a male store manager who controls the work schedule abuses his power. The female worker needing a family friendly schedule may be pressured into succumbing to sexual advances.
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