Harvey Weinstein accused of sexually assaulting 16-year-old girl
Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, 66, has been accused of sexually assaulting a minor in an updated class action lawsuit filed in a New York court on Wednesday.
He denied the accusation through his lawyer Ben Brafman, who told industry magazine Variety that the claim was "preposterous".
The complainant, identified anonymously as Jane Doe, said she is a resident and citizen of Poland who met Weinstein when she was 16 at an event with her modelling agency in New York in 2002.
He gave her his business card and invited her to lunch three days later, offering to pick her up with his driver.
"Instead of taking them to a restaurant, Weinstein's driver dropped the two at Weinstein's Soho apartment," the complaint added.
She realised they were alone, whereupon he began "aggressively and threateningly demanding sex".
The woman alleged that Weinstein forced her to touch his genitals while he bullied and cajoled her, telling her he had the power to make her career.
She said he made advances and harassed her for nearly a decade, until 2011, harming her mental and physical health.
Said Mr Brafman: "Like so many other women in this case who have already been exposed as liars, this latest completely uncorroborated allegation that is almost 20 years old will also be shown to be patently false."
DIRECTOR UNDER PROBE
In a separate case, French prosecutors have opened a sexual assault investigation into French-Tunisian film director Abdellatif Kechiche, whose 2013 film Blue Is The Warmest Colour won top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, a legal source said on Wednesday.
The BFM news channel said a 29-year-old woman had complained about being assaulted by him in an apartment in Paris in June after attending a dinner party with him.
She claims she fell asleep after consuming several alcoholic drinks and woke up to find herself partially undressed and being molested by Kechiche, 57.
He "categorically denies these allegations from a person whose only way of making a name for herself is by playing the victim", his lawyer Jeremie Assous said.
Blue Is The Warmest Colour, a three-hour film about an aspiring painter (Lea Seydoux) and her intense erotic relationship with a teen student (Adele Exarchopoulos), was tarnished by a row between Kechiche and his leading ladies.
Seydoux complained that she felt like a "prostitute" when filming the movie's lengthy, explicit sex scenes and described the experience of shooting with Kechiche as "horrible". - AFP
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