Prosecutors in UK drop indecent assault charges against Harvey Weinstein
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Prosecutors in the UK have dropped indecent assault charges against film mogul Harvey Weinstein, saying there is “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”.
The Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales said on Thursday that it had decided to drop the two charges against Weinstein, which were first authorised in June 2022, without elaborating on the reason.
“We have explained our decision to all parties,” said Frank Ferguson, head of the CPS special crime and counterterrorism division.
“We would always encourage any potential victims of sexual assault to come forward and report to police and we will prosecute wherever our legal test is met,” he added.
Weinstein, 72, is currently in prison in the US after he was convicted of three counts of rape and sex crimes in California — although an earlier conviction in New York had been overturned.
His initial arrest and conviction helped trigger the global “MeToo” movement, which saw a wave of powerful men held to account for sexual harassment and abuse.
The CPS charges against Weinstein related to alleged offences committed against a woman in London in 1996. At the time of the charges, the Metropolitan Police said that the woman was in her 50s.
In total more than 100 people have made rape or misconduct allegations against Weinstein — who has always maintained his innocence — dating back decades.
A lawyer for Weinstein did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He is currently facing a potential retrial in New York after a 2020 conviction for sex crimes and rape was overturned by the New York state Court of Appeals earlier this year in a 4-3 decision that shocked social justice campaigners. Weinstein had been sentenced to 23 years in prison in that case.
The appeal outcome — which was based on the decision that testimony of alleged sexual assault given by a group of women who were not part of the case may have unlawfully swayed the jury — does not impact the 16-year sentence he is currently serving for his 2022 conviction in California.
The Metropolitan Police said that it had been informed by the CPS that the criminal proceedings against Weinstein were being discontinued and had “updated all those whose allegations formed part of this investigation”.
Additional reporting by Joe Miller in New York