I’m sure I wasn’t the only one concerned that Harvey Weinstein would skate. But his lawyer asked jurors to do what they knew was right — and they did.

There were many points in Hollywood predator/producer Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial when it was possible to think that maybe not much had changed after all.

Oh, here comes the same old tired defense, so high priced and yet straight off the rack. And there goes the same old creaky demand that the victim explain why she didn’t run. Or scratch him, or poke his eyes out. And what possible reason could there be for answering the door in a cotton nightgown if not in hopes of being thrown on the floor?

But then, in more of a miracle than if Weinstein had ditched his walker and dashed up the courthouse steps, it turned out that Monday really was, as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said, “a big day” and “a new day” for all survivors of sexual violence. 

The women who testified about what Weinstein had done to them, Vance said, have “changed the course of history” and “pulled our criminal justice system into the 21st century.”

The powerful can be held to account

First, Vance himself had to be pulled. Five years ago, he declined to prosecute Weinstein on a groping charge, even after hearing audio of a confession.

But this finally is a new day for victims. Because while most of us who’ve been attacked never get to hear the word “guilty” applied to our rapists, we did get to see at least partial justice done this time. 

What more than 90 women did in coming forward, what six women did in testifying, and what threereporters did in bringing this story to light in the first place showed that even the most prolific and powerful abuser can be brought to account. 

Together, they stopped this one “vicious, serial sexual predator,” as Vance called him. And proved, as the DA said, that cross-examinations tearing into victims and survivors on the witness stand “will no longer work in this day and age.”

That last part is the best news of all.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt nervous when the verdict came in, worried that despite all the evidence against Weinstein, he’d skate anyway, and give victims just one more reason not to report or speak up or ever ever trust the system.

British actress Lysette Anthony: Weinstein’s victims, like me, can’t be silenced

But then, he didn’t. All of his money and all of his machinations (it isn’t every woman-hating thug who has the means to hire former Mossad agents to dig up dirt on his victims) couldn’t erase the truth of the testimony against him. 

In the end, the jury did see past Weinstein lawyer Donna Rotunno’s highly traditional attempts to put her client’s victims on trial. 

Jurors did ‘what they know is right’

Jurors saw past the ancient argument that this was just “regret renamed as rape.” They saw past Rotunno’s shameless Newsweek op-ed asking them to “look past the headlines.” Well, except for the part of her piece bemoaning “the mocking of Mr. Weinstein’s walker, the unflattering courtroom-artist sketches of his body, the countless critical op-eds and biased stories, and the convenient timing of the politically motivated charges in Los Angeles.”

She asked them to “do what they know is right.” And you know, they did, and found him guilty of a criminal sexual act against a former production assistant and of rape in the third degree against a former actress who had a full blown panic attack on the witness stand.  

Henneberger first-person: Don’t judge Brett Kavanaugh accusers. I covered the police and didn’t report my own rape.

After deliberating for five days, the jury also found him not guilty of first-degree rape and of two counts of predatory sexual assault. 

But he is in jail now. He is a convicted felon, and a man who will never violate another woman. He’ll never again send a target a box of chocolate penises, or have the power to kill a career, or make a woman so anguished that she paints a wall red with her own blood.

“You’ll never make it in this business,” Dawn Dunning, one woman who tried to escape him, testified that Weinstein told her. “This is how this industry works.”

Or it was, anyway.

Melinda Henneberger is an editorial writer and columnist for The Kansas City Star and a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors. Follow her on Twitter:  @MelindaKCMO

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