The New Yorker exposé of Harvey Weinstein hits.

"From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories/Multiple women share harrowing accounts of sexual assault and harassment by the film executive," by Ronan Farrow.

I haven't seen Drudge put up his siren in a long time. The headline there is: "MAG: THREE WOMEN ACCUSE WEINSTEIN OF RAPE."

First, Farrow excuses the failure of journalists to report the stories that have surrounded Weinstein for more than 20 years:

This has been an open secret to many in Hollywood and beyond, but previous attempts by many publications, including The New Yorker, to investigate and publish the story over the years fell short of the demands of journalistic evidence. Too few women were willing to speak, much less allow a reporter to use their names, and Weinstein and his associates used nondisclosure agreements, monetary payoffs, and legal threats to suppress these myriad stories. Asia Argento, an Italian film actress and director, told me that she did not speak out until now––Weinstein, she told me, forcibly performed oral sex on her—because she feared that Weinstein would “crush” her. “I know he has crushed a lot of people before,” Argento said. “That’s why this story—in my case, it’s twenty years old, some of them are older—has never come out.”

The New Yorker story was scooped by the NYT, but Farrow says he's been working on it for 10 months. Presumably the NYT knew the New Yorker story was in the offing and got the jump on it, and Farrow stresses that he talked to 13 women, whose allegations "corroborate and overlap" with what was in the NYT and that he also has "far more serious claims."

Three women––among them Argento and a former aspiring actress named Lucia Evans—told me that Weinstein raped them, allegations that include Weinstein forcibly performing or receiving oral sex and forcing vaginal sex. Four women said that they experienced unwanted touching that could be classified as an assault. In an audio recording captured during a New York Police Department sting operation in 2015 and made public here for the first time, Weinstein admits to groping a Filipina-Italian model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, describing it as behavior he is “used to.” Four of the women I interviewed cited encounters in which Weinstein exposed himself or masturbated in front of them.

Farrow also talked to 4 actresses — including Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette — who say that they rebuffed Weinstein and may have been retaliated against.
Farrow says he talked to 16 "former and current executives and assistants at Weinstein’s companies" who said they had seen or knew about sexual assaults by Weinstein. Farrow says there was "a culture of complicity" within these companies, and that employees participated in "subterfuge" to make a young woman feel safe in a meeting and then leave her alone with Weinstein.

There follow detailed descriptions of rape, showing the tactics Weinstein used. You can go to the link to read that. Excerpt:

“It was like it was just another day for him,” [Lucia] Evans said. “It was no emotion.” Afterward, she said, he acted as if nothing had happened. She wondered how Weinstein’s staff could not know what was going on.... [T]he entire sequence of events had a routine quality. “It feels like a very streamlined process,” she said. “Female casting director, Harvey wants to meet. Everything was designed to make me feel comfortable before it happened. And then the shame in what happened was also designed to keep me quiet.”

Evans said that, after the incident, “I just put it in a part of my brain and closed the door.” She continued to blame herself for not fighting harder. “It was always my fault for not stopping him,” she said. “I had an eating problem for years. I was disgusted with myself. It’s funny, all these unrelated things I did to hurt myself because of this one thing.”...

[Asia] Argento said that, in 1997, one of Weinstein’s producers invited her to what she understood to be a party thrown by Miramax... When the producer led her upstairs that evening, she said, there was no party—only a hotel room, empty but for Weinstein: “I’m, like, ‘Where is the fucking party?’ ”...  At first, Weinstein was solicitous, praising her work. Then he left the room. When he returned, he was wearing a bathrobe and holding a bottle of lotion. “He asks me to give a massage. I was, like, ‘Look man, I am no fucking fool,’ ” Argento said. “But, looking back, I am a fucking fool. And I am still trying to come to grips with what happened.... The thing with being a victim is I felt responsible... Because if I were a strong woman, I would have kicked him in the balls and run away. But I didn’t. And so I felt responsible.”...

Mira Sorvino, who starred in several of Weinstein’s films, told me that he sexually harassed her and tried to pressure her into a physical relationship while they worked together.... Sorvino said that she struggled for years with whether to come forward with her story, partly because she was aware that it was mild compared to the experiences of other women, including another actress she spoke to at the time.....

The audio recording (embedded above) exists because Gutierrez went to the police and agreed that she "would wear a wire and attempt to extract a confession or incriminating statement." With that recording, why wasn't Weinstein charged with a crime?

“We had the evidence,” the police source involved in the operation told me. “It’s a case that made me angrier than I thought possible, and I have been on the force a long time.”

There's the story of Rosanna Arquette:

[W]hen she arrived at the [hotel] room, Weinstein opened the door wearing a white bathrobe. Weinstein said that his neck was sore and that he needed a massage. She told him that she could recommend a good masseuse. “Then he grabbed my hand,” she said. He put it on his neck. When she yanked her hand away, she told me, Weinstein grabbed it again and pulled it toward his penis, which was visible and erect. “My heart was really racing. I was in a fight-or-flight moment,” she said. She told Weinstein, “I will never do that.”

Weinstein told her that she was making a huge mistake by rejecting him, and named an actress and a model who he claimed had given in to his sexual overtures and whose careers he said he had advanced as a result. Arquette said she told him, “I’ll never be that girl,” and left.

Arquette said that after she rejected Weinstein her career suffered....