Harvey Weinstein rushed to hospital following breathing issues

Los Angeles, July 2 (IANS) Disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein has developed “breathing issues”, and is said to be in a hospital. The producer is “resting and recovering at the hospital where he will stay at least for the next few weeks”.

His health deteriorated in the past week while the former film mogul was being held at Rikers Island prison, reports ‘Deadline’.

He is receiving treatment at Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward in Manhattan. Weinstein is being held at Rikers as he awaits sentencing in September for a 2025 sexual assault conviction.

TMZ was first to report the health update, describing it as “heart failure due to pneumonia”. He has had multiple health scares over the past few years.

New York prosecutors recently chose not to pursue a rape charge against the disgraced 74- year-old producer for a fourth time.

As per ‘Deadline’, the case had already been tried three times, once resulting in an overturned conviction and twice in hung juries.

Weinstein’s other convictions, including another sexual felony in New York and others in California, still stand.

Harvey Weinstein faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct beginning in 2017, after investigations by The New York Times and The New Yorker brought widespread attention to claims from numerous women.

He was accused by many women of sexual harassment, assault, and rape; he denied non-consensual sexual activity and denied many of the allegations. In 2020, he was convicted in New York of a criminal sexual act and third-degree rape and sentenced to 23 years in prison. That conviction was overturned in 2024 by the New York Court of Appeals, which ordered a retrial, citing trial errors.

Separately, in 2022, Harvey Weinstein was convicted in California of rape, forcible oral copulation, and sexual penetration involving one woman, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. The cases became a major part of the wider Me Too movement.

–IANS

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