Harvey Weinstein has surrendered to police to face the first criminal charges to be filed against him after months of sexual abuse allegations from scores of women that set off a national reckoning known as the #MeToo movement.
Key points:
- Weinstein is expected to be charged with raping one woman and forcing another to perform oral sex on him, US media reports
- More than 70 women have accused him of sexual misconduct, including rape
- Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone
Weinstein stepped from a black SUV and walked slowly into a Manhattan police station before a crowd of news cameras, while scores of journalists pushed up against barricades for pictures, and three helicopters hovered overhead.
He did not respond to shouts of his name.
He carried three thick books under his right arm, including what appeared to be a biography of Elia Kazan, the director of such classic Hollywood films as On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Weinstein is expected to be charged with raping one woman and forcing another to perform oral sex on him, the New York Times reported, citing unidentified law enforcement officials.
The victim in the rape case has not been identified, the Times reported, but Weinstein is set to be charged with first-degree and third-degree rape.
Two law enforcement officials told the Associated Press one case included a woman who had said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex during a meeting at his office in 2004.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the investigation.
The woman, Lucia Evans, was among the first to speak out about the film producer.
'I tried to get away'
Evans confirmed to The New Yorker that she was pressing charges.
"At a certain point, you have to think about the greater good of humanity, of womankind," she told the magazine.
Evans told The New Yorker in a story published in October that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex during a daytime meeting at his New York office in 2004, the summer before her senior year at Middlebury College.
"I said, over and over, 'I don't want to do this, stop, don't,'" she told the magazine.
"I tried to get away, but maybe I didn't try hard enough. I didn't want to kick him or fight him."
More than 70 women have accused the co-founder of the Miramax film studio and Weinstein Co of sexual misconduct, including rape, with some allegations dating back decades.
Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone.
His spokesman Juda Engelmayer and his lawyer Benjamin Brafman both declined to comment on Thursday (local time) on the imminent charges.
The charges follow a months-long investigation that involved the Manhattan district attorney's office.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance had been under enormous public pressure to bring a criminal case against Weinstein.
Some women's groups, including the Hollywood activist group Time's Up, accused the Democrat of being too deferential to Weinstein and too dismissive of his accusers.
A grand jury has been hearing evidence in the case for weeks.
The accusations, first reported by the New York Times and the New Yorker last year, gave rise to the #MeToo movement in which hundreds of women have publicly accused powerful men in business, government and entertainment of misconduct.
AP/Reuters
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