Movie actor Julia Ormond has sued convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, her talent agents, Weinstein’s employers Miramax and Disney, claiming that she was sexually assaulted.
The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, uses the state’s Adult Survior’s Act, a unique statute that offers sexual assault victims a limited window to seek monetary damages against their attackers or institutions that harbored them, regardless of when the offense took place.
“Ormond is deeply troubled by the fact that her sexual assault was entirely preventable,” the lawsuit alleges. “Through the passage of the Adult Survivors Act, Ormond can finally have her day in court.”
Ormond is best known for her roles in “Legends of the Fall” and “First Knight.” Her lawsuit alleges that in 1995, Weinstein went to her Manhattan apartment after a business meeting and lured her into giving him a massage. The suit claims Weinstein then masturbated and forced Ormond to give him oral sex.
Weinstein has been accused of more than 100 similar incidents. He was convicted of rape in Califorina in 2023 and in New York in 2020. Weinstein, 71, is currently serving a 23-year-sentence in Mohawk Correctional Facility. Calls and emails to Weinstein’s attorneys were not returned.
Typically, civil lawsuits can only be brought within three years of the alleged incident. New York’s Adult Survior’s Act, which went into effect last November and ends next month, removes those statute of limitations. Lawyers say roughly 300 cases have been filed under New York’s law, though hundreds more were likely settled privately.
“On December 1st, if you haven’t filed a claim by then the window will close and that will be a problem,“ said Mariann Wang, a lawyer who specializes in sexual abuses.
“Women who experience sexual assault often feel so much shame for so many years that they cannot really confront it and process it, or understand the depth of the harm that they’ve experienced from it.”
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