New lawsuit alleges Harvey Weinstein raped a 17-year-old in the 90s

Four women filed a civil lawsuit against former film producer and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein on Thursday, alleging that he sexually assaulted them. According to one woman’s testimony, Weinstein raped her in 1994, when she was 17-years-old. The suit alleges that Weinstein’s brother, Robert Weinstein, their company Miramax, and Disney overlooked the abuses, and some even enabled the behavior.

Harvey Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence in the Wende Correctional Facility in Buffalo, New York, after being convicted for charges of criminal sexual act and rape. His attorneys denied the allegations made by the women. 

Just like the other accusations against him, the four women, who identify themselves as Jane Does say the producer used his position of power and threatened to damage their careers in the entertainment industry if they talked about the alleged incidents. 

Identified as Jane Doe II in the suit, a Tennessee woman says that Weinstein had called her to a hotel room to discuss her prospective career in the industry. 

The other plaintiff is a 70-year old woman from Ecuador, who claimed that when she was 34, Weinstein pinned her against the door and harassed her in his hotel room in Cannes in 1984, when she was starting her career in the film industry as a documentarian. 

The latest allegation is from a 2013 incident in which a 35-year-old Hungarian woman, who was 26 at the time, alleged that the disgraced mogul forced her to perform oral sex on him when he met her in his hotel room at the Venice Film Festival. 

Weinstein’s attorney Imran Ansari said, “Mr. Weinstein categorically denies the allegations anonymously made against him years, if not decades, later and intends to vigorously defend against them. Some of these claims, including those alleged to have occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, maybe barred by the applicable statute of limitations, and not subject to any exceptions under the law, as these plaintiffs do not appear to be complainants in Mr. Weinstein’s criminal case.”