Harvey Weinstein under scrutiny in 8 cases alleging sexual misconduct in Los Angeles

Maria Puente | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Harvey Weinstein arrives at court in New York Harvey Weinstein arrived at a New York City courtroom Friday for a pretrial hearing in his rape and sexual assault case. (Dec. 6)

Harvey Weinstein, scheduled to go on trial in New York next month on sex crime charges, also is under a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations in at least eight cases under review in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles District Attorney's office, which has been reviewing allegations presented against Weinstein by local police agencies for nearly two years, now has eight such cases pending before its task force of specially trained deputy district attorneys assigned to evaluate the cases for possible prosecution.

The Los Angeles Police Department has presented four cases, and the Beverly Hills Police Department has presented another four since January 2018.

Under the process set up by District Attorney Jackie Lacey, the task force is supposed to review the cases and decide whether to bring or decline to bring charges. So far, no decisions have been made in any of the cases.

Ricardo Santiago, a spokesman for Lacey, confirmed the total number of cases but could not confirm if any of the cases were newly reported. He declined to provide details of the accusations.

A representative of Weinstein's defense team in the New York case declined to comment.

However, scores of accusers' stories have been made public in the two years since media exposés unleashed a deluge of allegations of sexual misconduct against Weinstein, ranging from sexual harassment and groping to sexual assault and rape in multiple jurisdictions and dating back decades.

For instance, one of his Los Angeles-area accusers, according to her lawyer, David Ring, is an Italian model/actress who said Weinstein raped her in the bathroom of her Beverly Hills hotel room in February 2013 after she attended an Italian film, fashion and art festival in Los Angeles.

“When he left, he acted like nothing happened,” the woman said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in October 2017. “I barely knew this man. It was the most demeaning thing ever done to me by far. It sickens me still. … He made me feel like an object, like nothing with all his power.”

It is not clear why the Weinstein allegations in Los Angeles have remained pending for so long.

The task force has declined to pursue charges against other accused Hollywood celebrities, including actors Kevin Spacey, Steven Seagal and Anthony Anderson, writer/director James Toback, and actor Sylvester Stallone. The reasons cited for declining prosecution include insufficient evidence and the alleged crime happened too long ago to prosecute.

Weinstein, who was indicted in May 2018 in Manhattan, has been charged with five sex crimes, including rape and predatory assault, involving two women in encounters dating to 2006 and 2013. His New York trial is scheduled to start Jan. 6.

He has pleaded not guilty and denies all accusations of non-consensual sex.