Haley describes lasting impact in court statement
A New York court on Wednesday sentenced Harvey Weinstein to 15 years in prison for a single charge of a criminal sexual act against his former assistant Miriam Haley. The sentencing follows last year’s retrial conviction, which came after New York’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction on the same charge.
In a victim impact statement in court, Haley said the assault had had a “devastating effect on my life and sense of security that may never go away.”
Appearing in court in a wheelchair, Weinstein denied the allegations but apologized to “anyone I may have hurt by my actions.”
Weinstein was originally convicted and sentenced in the Haley case in 2020. In 2024, New York’s highest court overturned the conviction, ruling Weinstein had not received a fair trial. He was retried and convicted again last year on a single charge of a criminal sexual act against Haley.
The 2020 trial heard testimony from three women: Haley, actress Jessica Mann, and model Kaja Sokola. Haley testified that Weinstein had assaulted her in a bedroom in his Manhattan apartment in 2006, and a jury found him guilty on that charge. In the same trial, the jury found Weinstein not guilty of assaulting Sokola. No verdict was reached on an additional charge of rape related to Mann.
“I just thought, I have to stand up for myself. I have to stand up for the truth,” Haley told the BBC of her decision to testify.
Weinstein has already spent six years in prison while facing three trials in New York over rape and abuse allegations. He also has a separate conviction for sex crimes in Los Angeles.