Fox guest on Harvey Weinstein's rape conviction: “It just defied logic and common sense” that women maintained relationships with him after he raped them
Jonna Spilbor: “We need to make sure that women also take responsibility”
Published
Citation From the February 24, 2020, edition of Fox News' Bill Hemmer Reports
BILL HEMMER (ANCHOR): Jonna, you believe you're surprised they convicted on what they did. Explain that.
JONNA SPILBOR (ATTORNEY): OK, and I'll explain that so that I don't get stoned when I walk out of the building. The defense in this case was based on one word, consent. And I think the defense did an excellent job of trying to show that the accusers in this case had ongoing relationships with Harvey Weinstein that any reasonable, average person would think was a consensual relationship. And so, when you look at not the act itself that they testified to, but when you look at what they did afterward, it just defied logic and common sense.
HEMMER: In the sense that they still had a friendship? Or a relation--
SPILBOR: They had -- loving relationships. They would sign their emails, you know, “Much love." They reached out to him, they accepted gifts from him. They wanted to get in contact with him. They wanted to go to dinner with him. After he forcibly raped them? It doesn't make sense.
CAROLINE POLISI (COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL LECTURER): So, I think actually the state rebutted that argument quite well, and put on a forensic psychologist actually to testify to the ways in which sexual assault victims sometimes behave irrationally, or in ways that we might not think that they would behave. They delay reporting and things like that. Now, as Cy Vance said in his press conference, we're in a whole new era now. It's no longer the time when prosecutors will only charge that, you know, back alley rape from a stranger. This is a new era of acquaintance rape, and we're seeing that juries are able to comprehend and understand the nuances of complicated relationships when it deals with power and consent. And they're willing to take a chance and they're willing to understand those relationships.
HEMMER: Do they explain it well enough in court?
SPILBOR: I think what they accomplished in court, what the prosecution accomplished in this case is -- the culture is now going to be different. And kudos to them, that is a very good thing. We don't need to have people in positions of power taking advantage of that. But at the same time, we need to make sure that women also take responsibility and not -- I mean, it's very hard to say. A lot of these women wanted to get a foothold in their career. And for that reason, they spent time with a man who, later, they would accuse of rape.