Paul Haggis Says Sexual Assault Accuser Appeared ‘Rehearsed': ‘I Most Certainly Don’t Have a Problem With Women’ In 2019, one girl who was 16 at the time says Weinberg approached her at a Starbucks just a few blocks from the high school where she and his teenaged son were classmates she recognized the boy when Weinberg, trying to reassure her that he was a decent guy, showed her a picture of his family. Bidwell tells THR that the mother of a 17-year-old called her in 2017, saying her husband had invited the girl over, then pulled her onto his couch and tried to unzip her sweater. Some of the women who Weinberg approached were minors at the time. They also engaged with law enforcement, and the LAPD’s Special Assaults Section got on the case.Īfter months of waiting, on July 14, more than a dozen agents in tactical gear took Weinberg into custody and served a search warrant on the house - the same Los Feliz home where he is accused of assaulting the women, in some cases starting off the shoots, and aggressive advances, in his young daughter’s bedroom. attorney now practicing law in Los Angeles, who took an interest in the case and assembled a group of Weinberg’s accusers for a meeting. THR says that prompted investigators to reach out to David DeJute, a former assistant U.S. Harvey Weinstein Denied Trial Delay Despite ‘She Said’ Publicity, Judge RulesĪt the time, Weinberg’s wife Hilary Bidwell, in a divorce and custody battle with her then still-husband at the time, Googled his name and “sexual assault.” She found the group to which Wilson had been posting, made contact, and a few victims agreed to supply sworn statements.īidwell hired private investigators to search for more survivors, who remained skeptical that what she was accusing him of could be true - until earlier this year, when Bidwell got a call out of the blue from a 22-year-old model named Cassidy Rouch, saying she’d been sexually assaulted by Weinberg at their house. Claire Wilson, a Los Angeles-based artist, told THR that when she posted on a private women’s Facebook group about Weinberg in 2020, it sparked an outpouring of similar stories and comments. In the end, it took a coalition of survivors who had found each other online, through personal connections or by calling Weinberg’s wife, to get the attention of law enforcement. In 2014, a woman had a rape kit administered immediately after the photo-shoot assault and filed a complaint that was ultimately dismissed for “insufficient evidence.” She was called back to the district attorney’s office later that year when another woman accused Weinberg of the exact same pattern. In one case, a woman told THR she brought along a friend to the photo shoot as a precaution both said they wound up being assaulted in the same visit. Some said they filed complaints but were never contacted (the woman accusing “Home Alone” actor Devin Ratray reports the same experience in New York) others had their cases recommended to prosecutors but they were never pursued. Underlying the horrors of the assaults described by the many victims is similar tales of police indifference and inaction that stretched across years and multiple reports against Weinberg. “It is overwhelming the amount of new women that have come forward.” “We have not scratched the surface,” one detective involved in the investigation told THR. THR said it spoke with one woman who had an encounter with Weinberg as far back as 2000 at one point in 2008, Weinberg’s wife found several nude pictures and sheets of paper in his golf bag with the handwritten names, numbers and locations of hundreds of women. There is evidence Weinberg has been engaged in this pattern for more than 20 years, and investigators suggest that the victims could number in the hundreds. Once at his home, Weinberg was repeatedly described as becoming immediately sexually and physically aggressive, pushing past spoken boundaries and often taking graphic pictures as he carried out the assaults. The exhaustive report details Weinberg’s pattern of approaching young women in public places, using his Hollywood credentials - along with scripted flattery and calculated assurances - to gain their trust and interest. Eric Weinberg, a television writer and producer for shows like “Scrubs” and “Californication” who was arrested in July for “multiple” reports of sexual assaults, is accused by more than two dozen women - many speaking on the record - of luring them to his family home, where he brazenly sexually assaulted them, according to The Hollywood Reporter in a story published Thursday.
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