Former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after a jury convicted him of committing a criminal sexual act against former production assistant Miriam Haley.
According to the BBC, Haley told the court in a victim-impact statement that the assault had a “devastating effect” on her life and sense of security, which she said may never go away.
Weinstein appeared in court in a wheelchair. He denied the allegations but apologised to “anyone I may have hurt by my actions”.
The 74-year-old has already spent several years in custody in New York. He has faced three trials there over rape and sexual abuse allegations. He was also convicted in a separate sex-crime case in Los Angeles.
This marks the second prison sentence Weinstein has received in the Haley case. He was first convicted and sentenced in 2020. However, New York’s highest court overturned that conviction in 2024, along with another conviction involving actress Jessica Mann, ruling that Weinstein had not received a fair trial.
Prosecutors later retried him. A jury convicted him last year on a single charge of committing a criminal sexual act against Haley.
Weinstein is currently being held in a prison ward at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. He has reported a series of ailments during his incarceration.
Once a high-flying Hollywood producer, Weinstein built his reputation through Miramax, the studio behind films including Shakespeare in Love. His career collapsed in 2017 after The New York Times and The New Yorker published allegations from multiple women who accused him of sexual assault spanning decades.
The allegations helped spark the #MeToo movement. But prosecutors in New York have faced a complicated legal path in securing convictions and sentences against him.
During the 2020 trial, Haley testified that Weinstein assaulted her in a bedroom at his Manhattan apartment in 2006. She was working as a production assistant on the television series Project Runway at the time.
In the case involving Mann, juries failed to reach a verdict. Weinstein was also found not guilty on a separate charge involving model Kaja Sokola.
After testifying at last year’s retrial, Haley told the BBC that she felt compelled to take the stand.
“I just thought, I have to stand up for myself. I have to stand up for the truth,” she said.
Weinstein is still awaiting sentencing in California, where a court convicted him in 2022 of raping and sexually assaulting an actress in a hotel room in 2013.
An appeals court ordered a new sentence in that case after the New York convictions were overturned.
Weinstein has consistently denied the allegations against him and has said he believes he will be proven innocent.
On Wednesday, Judge Curtis Farber criticised the former Hollywood mogul while handing down the 15-year sentence.
“You took what you wanted by force and you have never accepted responsibility,” Farber said.
