13 September 2018
Newsdesk
A video has emerged showing movie mogul Harvey Weinstein behaving inappropriately with a woman in a meeting.
Melissa Thompson joined a class action lawsuit against the producer in June (18) claiming that he raped her in a hotel in a New York in 2011, hours after they had a business meeting to discuss the software she was pitching, during which he propositioned her. At the time, she said she made a video recording of the meeting, and she has now gone public with it via Sky News.
The video shows Weinstein rejecting a handshake from Thompson and then hugging her instead and rubbing her back, and continuing to stroke her arm as they sit next to each other in front of her laptop.
During the discussion, Weinstein asks Thompson if he can flirt with her, to which she says, "Ummm we'll see, a little bit," and tells her she's "hot".
At one point, he reaches down under the table and allegedly ran his hand up her leg under her dress. He says, "Let me have a little part of you. Give it to me. It's okay, would you like to do it some more?"
The footage does not show below the table, but Thompson can be seen looking uncomfortable and telling him, "that's a little high."
Weinstein agreed to use her video technology to promote his movies in the meeting, and Thompson says she met with him in a nearby hotel bar later expecting to close the deal, but he allegedly led her to a hotel room and raped her.
In response, Weinstein's lawyer Benjamin Brafman issued a statement saying there was "nothing forceful" about the producer's behaviour in the video and it was simply "casual - if not awkward - flirting from both parties."
"Anything short of that is intended to make Mr Weinstein appear inappropriate, and even exploitative," he continued. "It was produced by Ms Thompson to bolster her position in a civil lawsuit seeking money.
"This is a further attempt to publicly disgrace Mr Weinstein for financial gain, and we will not stand for it... Facts do matter."
In an interview with Sky News, Thompson said she doesn't "think I purposely encouraged him" in the meeting. In the hotel room, she says he "would try to fight myself away from him, he would then move around to a place where he could block me in. I constantly felt trapped, no matter where I turned. He corned me, over and over again."
Over 90 woman have come forward with tales of sordid experiences with Weinstein, which range from harassment and misconduct to assault and rape. He has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.
