The Facts and Fictions of Harvey Weinstein’s Arrest
“This moves from the court of public opinion into an actual courtroom. That is super cathartic for a bunch of the survivors, or even survivors who are not necessarily victimized by him.”
That was Tarana Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement, commenting on an event that has, over the past several months, seemed to toggle in its potential between the inevitable and the impossible: the arrest of Harvey Weinstein. On Friday, both against all odds and in fulfillment of them, the long-imagined event came to pass. The “disgraced mogul,” as Weinstein is so often euphemized, turned himself in to authorities in New York City—one of several jurisdictions investigating him for sexual misconduct.
The arrest of Harvey Weinstein was a seizure that seized in every sense: It shook. It disturbed the status quo. “More than seven , in its initial announcement of the news, and the was telling.It was an arrest in which hazy questions—about justice, about accountability, about , about , about American culture’s messy tangling of that which is immoral with that which is illegal—collided with : two charges of rape, one in the first degree and one in the third, against Weinstein. A charge, too, of a first-degree criminal sex act. Bond set, by prior negotiation, at $10 million, with Weinstein paying $1 million in cash to post bail. A GPS monitoring system meant to ensure that a post-arraignment Weinstein will be able to travel only between New York and Connecticut. Containment. Finally.
