Hollywood film producer, Harvey Weinstein has been charged in Los Angeles with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in separate incidents over a two-day period in 2013.
The 67-year-old now faces new felony charges of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a statement.
The charges came hours after Weinstein appeared in a New York court for the start of his criminal trial on similar charges in a separate case and after his attorney, Donna Rotunna said any new charges would be “highly prejudicial” to a jury in the New York case.
According to the criminal complaint, Weinstein and a woman attended a Hollywood film festival on February 17, 2013, and later that night, he knocked on her hotel room door and was allowed entry into her room. Once inside, they talked briefly before he allegedly attacked the woman, forced her to perform oral sex on him, digitally penetrated her vagina and raped her, the complaint says.