Yahoo News The Harvey Weinstein verdict is a first, tentative step on the path to justice
History teaches us to consider the counter-factual: what if the jury in the Harvey Weinstein trial in Manhattan had acquitted him of all charges? True, the disgraced movie producer would still be facing a separate prosecution in Los Angeles. But we would already be reading well-sourced accounts of Weinstein’s “ordeal”, his smug relief that “justice had been served” and his plans for the future.
Worse still, a signal would have been sent around the world; a greenlight to every workplace sexual harasser, every rapist who knows his victim (which is most of them), every sex pest in a position of power.
Imagine if Weinstein — a man against whom scores of women had the courage to testify, the personification of everything the #MeToo campaign has been fighting — had walked free from the New York courtroom. Truly, it would have been a disastrous moment in this global quest for justice and social progress. It would also have been a dreadful blow for public confidence in the legal system. In this case, two-and-a-half years after the Weinstein revelations triggered an online uprising, the rule of law itself was on trial.
And let us be candid — these are not happy times for that indispensable prop of the social order. The populist Right regards the rule of law as an optional extra. Witness President Trump’s promises of pardons to his cronies and, during his impeachment, to himself. Witness, in this country, Priti Patel’s reportedly rough treatment of officials who have the temerity to remind her of legal constraints.
At the same time, the rise of identity politics has encouraged the belief that the legal system is yet another expression of power and privilege masquerading as a bulwark of equal rights. Weinstein’s acquittal across the board would have accelerated this collapse of confidence.
The movie mogul was, indeed, found not guilty of two counts of predatory sexual assault and one of first-degree rape. But he was convicted of the third-degree rape of Jessica Mann, an aspiring actress, and a count of criminal sexual act in the first degree against Mimi Haley, a former production assistant. He is now a convicted rapist, behind bars, awaiting a sentence of five to 25 years. This is not all that might have been hoped for — justice prevailed selectively, and by the skin of its teeth — but it is so much more than nothing.
Every successful social justice movement has had a powerful legal strand: black civil rights in the Sixties, the original women’s equality movement, the many campaigns for LGBTQ+ people. The engine of change is cultural — conspicuously so in the case of #MeToo. But there must also be visibly effective legal guardrails so that those who violate the rights that have been secured, in often lengthy struggles, face the full weight of criminal sanction.
To quote the principle often attributed to Robert F Kennedy when he was US Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964: “Secure convictions.” What he meant was: Ensure that the legal system is seen to protect the vulnerable, to uphold social decency, and (perhaps above all) to stand up to power.
The Weinstein case has tested that principle to its limits. Posing preposterously as the true victim, leaning improbably on a walking frame during the trial, this vicious man has ensured for decades that the women he preyed upon faced public humiliation, career failure and a future of solitude and surveillance. The prosecuting authorities dithered for far too long. Small wonder that the jury’s verdict was awaited in a spirit of pessimism by so many — habituated to a system that was stacked in favour of powerful men.
Those who speak of the post-MeToo era reveal only their ignorance of how much remains to be done
Weinstein’s conviction, therefore, should be a cause of relief — but not of complacency. On both sides of the Atlantic, the hurdles that stand between a woman who has been sexually assaulted or raped and the successful prosecution of her assailant are still dauntingly numerous. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network in the US, three out of four women who are assaulted do not report the crime. In this country, over the past five years, rape offences reported to the police have risen by about 65 per cent. Yet the proportion making it to court has more than halved.
Demands for victims to hand over mobile phones and medical records have certainly encouraged many to withdraw from investigations. The Crown Prosecution Service in the UK has been accused of “cherry picking” cases, giving greater weight to conviction targets than to the imperatives of natural justice.
In an especially damning phrase, Harriet Wistrich, director of the Centre for Women’s Justice in the UK, has spoken of the “virtual decriminalisation of rape”.
All of which shows that we are still in the foothills of necessary change. Those who speak of the “post-#MeToo era” reveal only their ignorance of how much remains to be done. The Government’s review of rape cases is welcome, but only as a recognition that there is a huge structural problem which needs to be addressed, not only by investigation but by radical action.
It is possible both to welcome the Weinstein verdict, and to recognise that it is only a first, tentative step on the path towards justice. We are light years away from the legal reforms and cultural consensus that are required to deal with the systemic inequities disclosed by the #MeToo uprising.
It will be the work of many decades, and the deciding factor will not be good intentions — necessary as they are — but the most precious commodity of all in any process of social change: namely, stamina.
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