The New York City police is investigating actress Paz de la Huerta’s allegations of rape against producer Harvey Weinstein, and believes that her claim is credible, Variety reported. In a Vanity Fair article on Thursday, de la Huerta had alleged that Weinstein had raped her twice in 2010 in her apartment. Chief of detectives Robert Boyce said on Friday that investigators are gathering evidence issue an arrest warrant for Weinstein.
“She put forth a credible and detailed narrative to us,” Boyce told reporters. “We then sought to garner corroboration — this happened seven years ago — and we found corroboration. We have an actual case here.” If the allegations had been more recent and if Weinstein were still in New York, he would have been arrested, Boyce added.
The producer has voluntarily sought rehabilitation in a facility outside the state.
Describing the first incident, which allegedly took place in November 2010, de la Huerta told Vanity Fair: “It wasn’t consensual … It happened very quickly.” The second assault occurred a month later, she claimed. “I was so terrified of him. I did say no, and when he was on top of me I said, ‘I don’t want to do this’,” she said. A spokesperson for Weinstein has stated that the producer “unequivocally denies” all accusations of non-consensual sex made against him.
Multiple allegations against Weinstein are also being investigated by police departments in London and Los Angeles. He was removed from The Weinstein Company, which he cofounded with his brother Bob, and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Producers Guild of America and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. After the allegations against Weinstein surfaced, several prominent Hollywood figures, including director James Toback and actor Kevin Spacey have also been accused of sexual harassment.
Dustin Hoffman has also been accused of sexual misconduct on the sets of Volker Schlöndorff’s 1985 TV movie Death of A Salesman by writer Anna Graham Hunter. Hoffman apologised to Hunter in a statement, but Schlöndorff, has now come to the defense of the actor, claiming that he just being “a clown” and a “kidder”.
“Slapping her butt on the way to the car, with driver, stage manager and PAs around, may have happened, but again in a funny way, nothing lecherous about it,” the director said in a statement sent to several websites. “He was teasing the young, nervous interns, mostly to make them feel included on the set, treating them as equals to all the senior technicians. She may have got it wrong, confiding it to her diary then, but as a grown-up 30 years later she should know that his was no ‘sexual harassment’, and not call him a ‘predator’.”