NEW YORK _ Manhattan prosecutors on Friday detailed a litany of alleged assaults carried out by convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein _ some unreported and dating as far back as the 1970s _ in urging a judge to impose the maximum sentence possible when the disgraced producer returns to court next week, according to newly filed documents.
In the memo, Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi said that prosecutors learned of dozens of disturbing incidents during the course of their two-year investigation _ accusations that Weinstein raped, sexually assaulted and verbally abused men and women as he simultaneously climbed his way to the top of Hollywood.
"Throughout his entire adult professional life, (Weinstein) has displayed a staggering lack of empathy, treating others with disdain and inhumanity. He has consistently advanced his own sordid desires and fixations over the well-being of others," the court document states.
"He has destroyed people's lives and livelihoods or threatened to do so on whim. He has exhibited an attitude of superiority and complete lack of compassion for his fellow man."
In one previously unreported incident during the summer of 1981, Illuzzi said that a young woman responding to a casting call near Central Park was directed to a hotel room where Weinstein was alone and waiting for her in a white terrycloth robe.
"Everyone calls me Teddy Bear because I'm so big and cuddly and harmless," he allegedly said to her.
Telling the woman he'd offer her the part of Faye Dunaway's younger sister in a movie he was producing if she "was willing to do what it takes," Weinstein said he needed women to "get him off" in an abnormal position due to his obesity.
The woman refused to comply. She didn't see her alleged assailant until years later when he appeared on television.
Illuzzi also writes of a male employee who suffered the wrath of the larger-than-life producer. The unnamed man told prosecutors during their investigation that he acted as a "shield" for women who Weinstein tried to lure into his orbit.
"(Weinstein) always wanted naked or scantily clad women on the movie posters. During one of these photoshoots, (Weinstein) called the employee repeatedly, asking if the female celebrity was 'naked yet,'" Illuzzi said in the document.
On one occasion, when a woman refused to have her picture taken without clothes on, Weinstein demanded that graphic designers superimpose her head onto a naked woman's body.
