Mariska Hargitay, the longtime star of TV’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, lamented a court’s decision to overturn the rape conviction of Hollywood heavyweight producer Harvey Weinstein during a speech Thursday in New York.
The actress spoke at Variety‘s Power of Women event, presented by Lifetime, where she railed at the courts for discounting the testimony of women who say they suffered abuse at Weinstein’s hands.
The disgraced Hollywood mogul chalked up a huge legal victory late last month after a New York court overturned his 2020 conviction of two felony sexual assaults.
The New York Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge in Weinstein’s case should not have allowed “prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.”
This finding flabbergasted Hargitay, who accused the court of discounting women’s voices.
“I want to talk today about reversing convictions,” Hargitay said citing Weinstein’s case. “It’s impossible to reverse my conviction that survivors matter, that what happened to us matters, and that our society must respond to survivors more compassionately, more holistically, with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of what healing means.”
“I do want to say something about the overturned Harvey Weinstein conviction,” she added. “Specifically, about the reason it was overturned: Too many women’s voices. Too many women were allowed to speak.”
“Risky to let women speak? You’re damn right it is. Too many women speaking brings change,” she said. The backlash to #MeToo is evidence of “how powerful those voices are,” she railed.
“It’s impossible to reverse my conviction that we must listen to survivors,” Hargitay exclaimed.
Hargitay launched the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004 to advocate for women who have been sexually assaulted and to support victims of domestic violence.
As part of her activism, Hargitay worked with the NFL in 2014 to create a public service ad called “No More” to bring awareness to domestic violence. The ad aired during Thursday Night Football that season.
In 2022, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, she also took to social media with a campaign in support of abortion.
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