NEW YORK — A Manhattan judge tossed a sexual assault charge against Harvey Weinstein on Thursday after evidence raised questions about one accuser’s account. Without opposition from prosecutors, the judge dismissed one criminal sexual act charge against Weinstein accusing him of forcing a woman to perform oral sex, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said.
Prosecutors admitted to Weinstein’s lawyer last month that a friend of the woman he was accused of violating — reportedly the onetime aspiring actress Lucia Evans — gave an account of the 2004 incident that was “at odds” with the woman’s.
But that doesn’t weaken the case against Weinstein overall, Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi said. The disgraced movie mogul still charged with five crimes, including rape and predatory sexual assault.
“We are moving full steam ahead,” Illuzzi said during a Thursday morning court hearing, according to the Manhattan DA’s office. “As we do with every case, we will follow the facts of law wherever they may lead, and protect those who are preyed upon as well as the integrity of the process.”
Weinstein was accused in July of assaulting and raping three women in an indictment that spanned nine years. He was first arrested in May on charges involving two of the women.
Evans was among three women who accused Weinstein of rape in an October 2017 New Yorker article that detailed his pattern of abusive conduct with women. She reportedly alleged that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him at his Tribeca office in 2004.
A woman who was with Evans that night said Evans later told her that she performed the act after Weinstein promised to get her an acting job in exchange for oral sex, according to a Sept. 12 letter from the DA’s office to Weinstein’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman.
Prosecutors also got ahold of a draft email Evans wrote in 2015 that differs from the account she gave the DA’s office, according to the letter.
But Evans told the DA’s office she never consented to any sex with Weinstein and does not remember describing the 2004 incident to the other woman, the letter says.
Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer for Evans, reportedly said the DA’s decision to “abandon” her was disappointing.
“Let me be clear: the decision to throw away my client’s sexual assault charges says nothing about Weinstein’s guilt or innocence,” Goldberg said in a statement to the Associated Press. “Nor does it reflect on Lucia’s consistent allegation that she was sexually assaulted with force by Harvey Weinstein.”
Weinstein has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex. Brafman reportedly suggested Evans should be charged with perjury.
“The integrity of these proceedings has been compromised,” Brafman said, according to the AP.
Weinstein is next due in court on Dec. 20, the DA’s office said.
The New Yorker’s and The New York Times’ investigations of Weinstein’s long history of sexual misconduct sparked a reckoning with sexual assault and abuse of power that became the worldwide #MeToo movement. The two publications won a Pulitzer Prize for their work earlier this year.
(Lead image: Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday. Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
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