After getting convicted and found guilty of rape and sex offenses, Harvey Weinstein complains of chest pain and asks for medical care. He’s currently being treated for Bellevue Hospital Center. However, 11 of the accusers calls it foul and says that Weinstein is a good actor. In a press conference, the victimized woman Rosanna Arquette, Lauren Sivan, Sarah Ann Masse, Melissa Sagemiller Nesic, Louisette Geiss, Louise Godbold, Lauren O’Connor, Larissa Gomes, Katherine Kendall, Jessica Barth, and Caitlin Dulany warned about foul-play.
“I personally felt like he’s a very good actor,” Geiss said during the Q&A portion of the presser. “This is a man who knows how to manipulate the press and clearly he’s done so with his iconic walker; let’s just say I know women who are literally dying who are also victims and I say let’s give them the help. If he’s got to go to the hospital it should be in jail, that kind of hospital, not one where he has his own suite.”
Masse added, “I thought maybe he’s experiencing panic attacks, something all of us have experienced for decades after his abuse,” as Sivan noted how because of his health problems, Weinstein will likely be out of jail while his lawyers appeal the case.
“I think we should all take a moment to realize that if that this wasn’t Harvey Weinstein and was just anyone that didn’t have money and power and couldn’t afford world’s best attorneys, they would be in jail, they wouldn’t get to go to the hospital,” she said. “If you’re convicted of two felonies in New York, you’re taken to jail, that’s typically what happens, and if you’re not, then you’re getting special treatment.”
Reporters also asked the Silence Breakers what they thought about public accusations that Meryl Streep knew about Weinstein’s behaviour, supported by street art that has popped up throughout Los Angeles with Streep’s face and the words, “She knew.”
“I’ve seen the art and it angers me that the target would be a woman — it’s just taking it right off of Harvey again and the men that were complicit,” Kendall said. “To think that because she did a movie with him she knew all of his gossips is preposterous, he was probably busy doing her work and people can have things hidden from them; I’m not sure what street artist did that but I don’t think it was Banksy.”
Masse elaborated, “Just because a man abuses hundreds of women doesn’t mean that he abuses every woman that he’s ever worked with, so it is possible for a woman to have worked with him and be treated with respect by him. I’m sure Meryl Streep didn’t know. She’s been very supportive and when he tried to use her in the press against us, she came out and repudiated it, so let’s not make this about the women.”
As the survivors thanked the women who testified during the New York trial, Dulany reflected on Monday’s significance: “The best part of my day was going to the grocery store and seeing a little girl running around and I said, ‘The world has changed, you will have a different world because of what happened today. It is not the same and will never be the same for survivors everywhere.'”
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