There were many points in Hollywood predator/producer Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial when it was possible to think that maybe not much had changed after all.
Oh, here comes the same old tired defense, so high priced and yet straight off the rack. And there goes the same old creaky demand that the victim explain why she didn’t run. Or scratch him, or poke his eyes out. And what possible reason could there be for answering the door in a cotton nightgown if not in hopes of being thrown on the floor?
But then, in more of a miracle than if Weinstein had ditched his walker and dashed up the courthouse steps, it turned out that Monday really was, as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said, “a big day” and “a new day” for all survivors of sexual violence.
The women who testified about what Weinstein had done to them, Vance said, have “changed the course of history” and “pulled our criminal justice system into the 21st century.”
