What Are Your Rights? Could Harvey Weinstein be Facing Criminal Charges?

Man 1: The following segment is sponsored by Martin Harding & Mazzotti.

Interviewer: Hollywood has been rocked by a slew of sexual allegations in recent weeks from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey. Directors and actors alike are making the news as accusers have come forward to shine a light on what they claimed is inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment, and at times even sexual assault. Now, here to help us understand our rights in the workplace is Supervising Attorney Dan Dagostino from the law firm of Martin Harding & Mazzotti. Dan welcome back.

Dan: Thank you.

Interviewer: Nice to have you here. So we’re talking about a very serious somewhat controversial topic. Eighty-seven women or so have come forward to accuse Hollywood Mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and some have gone so far to accuse him of rape. Given the severity of the allegations is there any possibility that Weinstein is actually facing any criminal charges?

Dan: I think the short answer is yes. With crimes, you know, there’s certain period of time in which you can bring, you know, the action against somebody, it’s called the statute of limitations. For first degree rape which he’ll probably be charged with, there’s no statute of limitations with regards to that, so I think the prosecution is gonna look and see what type of evidence is available because, with the time period that’s passed sometimes the evidence disappears, people’s memories fade, so they’re gonna look at that and see if they can prove the cases but I would imagine there will be several cases brought against him.

Interviewer: Now, in almost all of the Hollywood sexual misconduct cases that have come to light recently, the misconduct seems to have happened during the course of a working relationship sometimes when they were, you know, working together in a movie or something, actor is trying to obtain parts in a movie or maybe even coworkers on set. So what responsibility does an employer have to protect employees from unwanted, you know, sexual advances?

Dan: Right. The employers in general under the Human Rights Law they have an obligation to keep the, you know, the work environment free and clear of any sort of, you know, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, and, you know, in this case, you know, if they knew or they should have known that something was going on then they could be liable for what also was has happened here.

Interviewer: All right, well, Dan thank you so much for being here in answering our questions. We really appreciate it. Of course, we’ll keep an eye on this controversial topic. We’ll probably have you back in the future to talk about it.

Dan: Thank you so much.

Interviewer: All right. We got to turn to some…