Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of rape in a trial in California.
The 70-year-old predator had been on trial in Los Angeles charged with raping and sexually assaulting two women and committing sexual battery against two others.
A jury has found him guilty of raping one woman, but not guilty of sexual battery by restraint of another woman.
The jury was unable to reach verdicts on allegations linked to the two other women.
The Oscar-winning film producer is already serving a 23-year jail sentence for rape and sexual assault after being convicted in a landmark court case in New York in 2020, which was seen as a watershed for the #MeToo movement.
However, earlier this year he was granted permission to appeal.
As such, the month-long LA trial, widely viewed as symbolic, assumed greater significance.
In their closing argument, prosecutors had urged jurors to complete Weinstein’s fall from grace, arguing it was time for his “reign of terror to end”.
In turn, his lawyer had argued the four women were untrustworthy.
Alan Jackson argued the stories of two women who Weinstein allegedly sexually assaulted on consecutive days in 2013 “simply never happened”.
He also said Weinstein’s alleged rape and assault of the other two women in 2005 and 2010 were “100% consensual” encounters that the women engaged in for career advancement.
Once one of Hollywood’s most influential figures, whose films included Shakespeare In Love, Pulp Fiction, The English Patient and Gangs Of New York, Weinstein had the power to make and break careers in the movies.
But in October 2017, in reports by the New York Times and the New Yorker, he was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women. He was also accused of reaching settlements to keep the stories quiet.
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In the months that followed, dozens more women came forward to allege incidents of rape, sexual assault and harassment by Weinstein dating back decades.
He admitted his behaviour had “caused a lot of pain”, but consistently denied all the sexual allegations made against him.
It was a moment that gave birth to the #MeToo movement as women came forward to detail incidents involving powerful figures in the entertainment industry and beyond.
The Pulitzer-prize winning expose of Weinstein by New York Times reporters has now been turned into a film, She Said, starring Carey Mulligan.
