Harvey Weinstein has been hit with six new sexual assault charges in his Los Angeles criminal case, the L.A. District Attorney’s Office announced on Friday.
The amended complaint added an additional three felony counts of forcible rape and three felony counts of forcible oral copulation; Weinstein now faces a total of four counts each of forcible rape and forcible oral copulation, two counts of sexual battery by restraint and one count of sexual penetration by use of force. If convicted, Weinstein faces up to 140 years to life in prison.
The six new charges stem from accusations that Weinstein raped a woman at a Beverly Hills hotel between September 2004 and 2005 and raped another woman, twice, in November 2009 and November 2010 at a Beverly Hills hotel.
“I am thankful to the first women who reported these crimes and whose courage have given strength to others to come forward,” L.A. District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a statement. “The willingness of these latest victims to testify against a powerful man gives us the additional evidence we need to build a compelling criminal case.”
The amended complaint does not name any of the five alleged victims and is based on incidents from 2004 to 2013. But at least one woman has publicly come forward with her account: model Lauren Young, who also testified as a “prior bad acts” witness in Weinstein’s New York criminal trial. On the stand, Young said Weinstein had groped her, masturbated in front of her and ejaculated onto a towel in a hotel bathroom at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills in 2013.
Weinstein was first charged in L.A. with one felony count each of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint based on the accounts of two women who alleged that Weinstein sexually assaulted them in 2013. In April, the criminal complaint was updated to include another count of sexual battery by restraint based on an accusation that Weinstein sexually assaulted a third woman in 2010 at a Beverly Hills hotel.
Weinstein is currently serving out a 23-year prison sentence in New York after being found guilty of a first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape. An extradition hearing is scheduled for Dec. 11.
When reached by TheWrap, Juda Engelmayer, a spokesperson for Weinstein, said he could not comment until he learned more about the charges.
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