A cop told one famous actor, “You can either follow me back to the police station, and I’ll book you in, or you can tell me whether you live in the next series of ’Game of Thrones.‘”

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Warning: This post mentions sexual assault.

According to the Guardian, 60 women and men reported being abused by Savile at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital. One woman said that, in 1977, when she was 12, she was admitted to have her tonsils removed. She met Savile outside the TV room, and she didn't recognize him because her family didn't own a TV. He walked her back to her hospital room, where they were alone, then he raped her. 

She reported it to a nurse, who allegedly warned her not to tell anyone else because it would get the staff in trouble. So, she tore a page out of her Bible and wrote down what happened, then she left the note in a postbox, hoping her family would be contacted. However, she never received a response. Twenty years later, she reached out to Savile's secretary, but, once again, she didn't receive a response.

She told investigators, "That's what's so sad. There are so many messed-up lives. Although people have built up lives – you have children, you make a life – it ruins everything: your relationships with another human being, the things you are supposed to have."

Other survivors included an 11-year-old cancer patient, a woman recovering from a skin-graft operation, and an 8 or 9-year-old girl who visited her relatives who worked at the hospital.

Then, in 2023, Kelly was sentenced to an additional 20 years in prison for three counts of enticing underage girls to engage in criminal sexual activity and three counts of producing child sexual abuse images, including an infamous video where he urinated on and sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl. The victim, who was 37 at the time of the trial, testified that, when she was a teenager, he persuaded her to have sex with him hundreds of times. However, to protect him, she lied to the police and a Cook County grand jury about their relationship. She said, "That was something I would take to my grave. ... I did everything I could to keep that a secret. It was embedded in me that this could never come out."

Nineteen years of that sentence will be served concurrently with his previous sentence.

In a statement, Weinstein said, "I appreciate the way I've behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it. Though I'm trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go."

In an additional statement, a lawyer advising him added, "He denies many of the accusations as patently false."

In 2017, The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson told Stuff.co.nz, "I recall Miramax telling us [Judd and Mia Sorvino] were a nightmare to work with, and we should avoid them at all costs. This was probably in 1998. At the time, we had no reason to question what these guys were telling us — but in hindsight, I realize that this was very likely the Miramax smear campaign in full swing. I now suspect we were fed false information about both of these talented women — and as a direct result, their names were removed from our casting list.

My experience, when Miramax controlled The Lord of the Rings (before New Line took over production of the film), was of Weinstein and his brother behaving like second-rate Mafia bullies. They weren't the type of guys I wanted to work with — so I haven't. Although his name had to be on The Lord of the Rings credits for contractual reasons, he was not involved in the movies we ended up making."

Per the BBC, Weinstein released a statement denying that he blacklisted Judd and Sorvino. He said that casting for LOTR was done by New Line Cinema, not Miramax, and that Judd was later cast in two Miramax films.

Judd tweeted, "Peter & Fran [Walsh] had me in - showed me all the creative, the boards, costumes, everything. They asked which [of] the two roles I preferred, and then I abruptly never heard from [them] again. I appreciate the truth coming out. Thank you, Peter."

Several days after the report, McGowan tweeted, tagging Jeff Bezos, "I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn't been proven. I said I was the proof... I forcefully begged studio head to do the right thing [after learning that a 'Weinstein bailout was in the works']. I was ignored. Deal was done. Amazon won a dirty Oscar. I called my attorney & said I want to get my script back, but before I could, #2 @amazonstudios called to say my show was dead."

In a previous statement, Weinstein's reps said that "any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied."

Bezos did not respond to her on Twitter, and Amazon's spokespeople didn't respond to the Guardian's request for comment.

Then, in an interview from January 2017 that the Observer obtained and released that October, McGowan said that, after a criminal lawyer told her that her case wouldn't be successful, she decided not to report the rape to the authorities. She added, "Also, I didn't want his name next to mine in my obituary; his name doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as mine when I'm dead."

She also said, "They threatened [me] with being blacklisted. I was blacklisted after I was raped, because I got raped, because I said something…but only like internally, you know... I actually have a signed document from the time of the attack. It was settled for a very small settlement, so that's an admission of guilt."

She alleged that, after his company, Miramax, took on her passion project, Frida, she had to repeatedly turn down his sexual advances. She wrote, "And with every refusal came Harvey's Machiavellian rage. ... When he was finally convinced that I was not going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had offered my role and my script with my years of research to another actress. In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn't even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.

At that point, I had to resort to using lawyers, not by pursuing a sexual harassment case, but by claiming 'bad faith,' as I had worked so hard on a movie that he was not intending to make or sell back to me. I tried to get it out of his company."

Hayek wasn't able to get the movie away from Miramax, but she fought to have it made and to tell Frida Kahlo's story. She alleged that Weinstein demanded a sex scene between Hayek and Ashley Judd's characters with full-frontal nudity.

In a statement, Weinstein's spokesperson said, "All of the sexual allegations as portrayed by Salma are not accurate, and others who witnessed the events have a different view of what transpired." The statement also said that he didn't remember pressuring her to add the sex scene and that he wasn't there during filming.

However, in 2024, Weinstein's NYC sex crime conviction was overturned by the New York State Court of Appeals, who ruled that he didn't get a fair trial because "the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes because that testimony served no material non-propensity purpose." Later that year, he faced additional charges for sex crimes in NY. In 2025, he was convicted for one count of criminal sexual act in the first degree, but the judge declared a mistrial because the jury foreperson declined to return for deliberations regarding a "no verdict" on one count of rape in the third degree.

In 2026, prosecutors in NY dropped an outstanding rape charge against Weinstein after talking with Jessica Mann, the accuser, who didn't want to go through a fourth trial. In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. said, "To be clear, we believe Ms. Mann's account and her credibility as a witness. This has been an extraordinarily taxing ordeal for her, and she has never wavered while testifying in front of two grand juries and three trial juries over the course of eight years. We thank her for her honesty and her tremendous bravery."

Mann alleged that, in 2013, Weinstein forced her to have unwanted sex with him in a hotel room. Weinstein's team argued that his sexual encounter with Mann was consensual. In a statement, his rep, Juda S. Engelmayer, said, "Harvey is relieved by today's outcome. We believe this is the result that should have been reached from the outset, had the grand jury been presented with the full scope of the emails, text messages, and other private communications."

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here. 

The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.