Shortly after Harvey Weinstein was fired from his own production company, an audio recording recently surfaced with the notorious film executive admitting to groping a Filipina-Italian model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez without her consent. The audio recording was captured during a 2015 NYPD investigation into sexual assault allegations against Weinstein and reportedly later suppressed by his attorneys.
According to The New Yorker, Gutierrez attended a meeting in 2015 with Weinstein at his offices in New York when he abruptly asked if her breasts were real before groping her chest and attempting to slide his hand up her skirt. After she protested his unwanted advances, Weinstein reportedly offered tickets to a Broadway musical that he was producing and told her to meet him at the theater later that evening.
Instead, Gutierrez reported the assault to the nearest NYPD station and eventually agreed to wear a wire after Weinstein called as she sat in a room with investigators from the Special Victims Division. Silently listening to the phone call, the officers heard the Hollywood producer berate Gutierrez for failing to attend the musical with him.
On the following day, she met Weinstein at the bar of the Tribeca Grand Hotel while secretly wearing a listening device provided by the NYPD to record any incriminating evidence from him. As Weinstein attempted to coerce her into his hotel room to watch him take a shower, Gutierrez stopped in the hallway and repeatedly refused to enter his room.
“I’m telling you right now,” Weinstein could be heard in the audio recording. “Get in here!”
“What do we have to do here?” Gutierrez asked, attempting to obtain a confession or any evidence from him.
“Nothing!” Weinstein protested. “I’m gonna take a shower. You sit there and have a drink.”
With more than a dozen accusers stepping forward with similar stories, Weinstein appeared to be using coercive methods to psychologically force the young model into his bathroom to watch him masturbate and physically assault her again. Gutierrez repeatedly refused his advances while asking to return downstairs to the bar.
“No, I can’t,” she pleaded.
“Go to the bathroom,” Weinstein ordered.
“Please, I don’t want to do something I don’t want to.”
“Go to the bath—” Weinstein repeated before sharply whispering, “Hey! Come here. Listen to me.”
As the sexual degenerate continued trying to convince Gutierrez to enter his room, he swore on his children that he would not touch her because he is a “famous guy.”
She then directly asked Weinstein, “Why yesterday [did] you touch my breast?”
“Oh, please,” he replied. “I’m sorry. Just come on in. I’m used to that. C’mon on. Please.”
“You’re used to that?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes, come in,” he coldly responded.
“No, but I’m not used to that,” Gutierrez protested.
Like a clichéd sleazy Hollywood scumbag, Weinstein persisted in threatening her career and refusing to answer her phone calls if she did not enter his bathroom to watch him take a shower. In order to discredit her as a witness for the prosecution, Weinstein allegedly retaliated against the young model by using tabloids and gossip outlets to publish stories about Gutierrez’s past connections with former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and attending one of his Bunga Bunga parties.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. decided not to prosecute criminal charges against the prominent film executive despite the fact that law enforcement sources assert they gathered more than enough evidence to charge him with sexual abuse in the third degree. After Vance failed to press criminal charges, Weinstein reportedly sent his lawyers to convince Gutierrez to sign a nondisclosure agreement prohibiting her from mentioning the NYPD audio and the sexual allegations against him.
Vance also dropped a criminal investigation into Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. after receiving a $25,000 political contribution (bribe) from their attorney, Mark Kasowitz. After returning the $25,000 donation in order to avoid the perception of bribery, Vance later received more than $50,000 in contributions from Kasowitz and his associates less than six months after dropping the case.
As more women step forward to expose the rampant abuse and systemic flaws that allow this behavior to continue unabashed for decades, actor Terry Crews recently announced on Twitter that he had also been sexually abused by a high-level Hollywood executive. On Tuesday, Crews wrote, “I understand and empathize with those who have remained silent. But Harvey Weinstein is not the only perpetrator. Hollywood is not the only business where this happens, and to the casualties of this behavior – you are not alone. Hopefully, me coming forward with my story will deter a predator and encourage someone who feels hopeless.”
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