Harvey Weinstein’s accusers responded with shock and defiance Thursday to news that the disgraced producer’s New York rape conviction was overturned.
Louise Godbold, who accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, told The Daily Beast she was “shaking” Thursday morning after receiving the news.
“We thought it was finished,” she said in a text message. “We thought we could finally move on. Today’s news ignites all the panic, the fear, the confusion of the original trauma.”
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But, she added, “he can’t overturn our truth even if he manages to overturn his conviction.”
The New York Court of Appeals ruled in a 4-3 decision Wednesday to throw out his 2020 conviction, deciding that outside witnesses should not have been allowed to testify for acts that were not on trial. The decision means the Manhattan DA’s office will have to re-try the case, which may require the survivors who testified to once again take the stand.
At a press conference Thursday afternoon, actress and Weinstein accuser Ashley Judd called the decision “an act of institutional betrayal.”
“I stand shoulder to shoulder with women with bloody knees,” she said. “Male sexual violence may knock us down, but we get right back up and together are in this struggle for freedom from male entitlement to our bodies.”
The news was doubly devastating for Ambra Gutierrez, a model who reported Weinstein to the New York Police Department in 2015. The district attorney at the time declined to press charges.
“If the DA had taken my case seriously in 2015, we wouldn’t be here,” Gutierrez said in a statement. “This is an on-going failure of the justice system—and the courts—to take survivors seriously and to protect our interests.”
A group of at least 10 Weinstein accusers calling themselves the Silence Breakers released a joint statement calling the decision “disheartening” and “profoundly unjust,” but emphasized that it “does not diminish the validity of our experiences or our truth.”
“When survivors everywhere broke their silence in 2017, the world changed,” they said. “We continue to stand strong and advocate for that change. We will continue to fight for justice for survivors everywhere.”
Lindsay Goldbrum, an attorney at Outten & Golden LLP who represented six Weinstein victims including Taralê Wulff, who testified at the New York trial, called the decision “a leap backward for the rule of law.”
“The three brave women who testified as Molineux witnesses had nothing to gain personally from participating in the trial,” Goldbrum said in a statement. “Their only goal was to give a voice to dozens of other women who suffered so much. Today’s ruling unfortunately casts a dark shadow on their bravery and will undoubtedly deter future sexual assault victims from coming forward.”
Others who came forward during the #MeToo movement that the Weinstein allegations ignited offered their sympathy and solidarity with survivors.
Carre Otis, a supermodel who says she was assaulted by Gerald Marie, the former head of Elite Models, said the decision showed how Gutierrez and other survivors’ complaints should have been taken more seriously when they first came forward.
“We would like to say that at this point things are different, but we can honestly say that at this point it’s more of the same,” she told The Daily Beast. “If you look at what’s going on, we’re in really dark times that have gone backwards.”
“It’s embarrassing, actually,” she added. “They should be embarrassed that a perpetrator this blatant, this widespread, this far reaching, isn’t going to be punished.”
Despite their heartbreak, the survivors maintained that the decision should reinvigorate the #MeToo movement and be a catalyst for change.
Gutierrez called on New York lawmakers to make permanent the Adult Survivors Act, a law passed in 2022 that temporarily opened a “lookback window” for survivors of sexual abuse to file civil cases outside the statue of limitations. And Otis called on the legislature to pass the Fashion Workers Act, a bill that would—among other things—create workplace protections for fashion models.
Speaking at the same press conference as Judd on Thursday, Tarana Burke, an activist who started the MeToo movement, urged activists to keep pushing forward.
“Moments like this underscore why movements are necessary,” she said. “This is why the work has to keep happening, why we keep going, because [when] these brave women broke their silence, millions and millions and millions of others found the strength to come forward and do the same.”
She added: “That will always be the victory, this doesn't change that.”
