You Should Know Their Names
Nafissatou Diallo was working long hours as a housekeeper at the Sofitel when she was assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then managing director of the International Monetary Fund. She had come to America from Guinea with her daughter after her husband died, hoping that she would have a better life. After the news of her assault became public, medical reports describing her naked body were published in the press, as was the name of her daughter.
Nafissatou was 32 and terrified that she would lose her job if she spoke out. She had no ability to read or write in any language and needed to take care of herself and her daughter.
After much media scrutiny, Vance’s office dropped her case. Nafissatou decided to tell her story.
Nafissatou did not get justice because Vance’s office prioritized the well being of her assailant, a powerful and wealthy international executive, over her well-being. Vance’s office decided the case themselves, instead of letting a jury decide.
Maria di Toro was at a bar called Jeremy’s Ale House having a drink with Greg Kelly, the son of former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, in October of 2011. After two drinks, she suddenly felt severely impaired, and as the condition worsened she lost track of what was happening. She has little memory of what happened next, but knows she woke up partially undressed and vomiting in her nearby office.
Di Toro became pregnant from the encounter. She decided to report the rape to the local police precinct. The NYPD recused itself from the case because of Kelly’s father, and it was shuffled to the Manhattan DA’s office. The deck was already stacked against Maria because law enforcement chose to protect Kelly.
Less than a month later, Martha Bashford, then chief of Cy Vance’s sex crimes unit, announced in a letter to Kelly’s lawyer that no crime had been committed.
Linda Fairstein, Bashford’s predecessor has claimed that because Maria was able to sign a bar bill and walk she couldn’t possibly have been impaired enough to be unable to consent, which is either a stultifyingly ignorant display of the office’s knowledge of how date rape drugs work, or an intentional decision to drop a case to protect the son of a former NYPD commissioner — or both.
Maria was dragged through NYPD-friendly tabloids for months, painted as a woman who drank too much and regretted it later. She was a 29-year-old paralegal with a degree in philosophy but tabloids sneeringly described her an “aspiring model-actress”. She weathered it for a long time, and then decided to tell her own story. “I was always like a puny little thing, but I always stood up for myself … And I didn’t this time. And it’s eaten away at my core every day.”
Maria did not get justice because Vance’s office prioritized the well being of her assailant, a powerful and famous broadcaster and son of an NYPD commissioner, over her well-being. Vance’s office decided the case themselves, instead of letting a jury decide.
Evelyn Yang was seven months pregnant when she was sexually assaulted by her OB-GYN, Dr. Robert Hadden. Marissa Hoeschtetter was having a follow up exam after the birth of her twins when he assaulted her. Evelyn and Marissa are two of nineteen women and counting who were patients of Hadden and have accused him of sexual assault. Hadden was indicted on charges of assaulting six of them, and Vance’s office inexplicably allowed Hadden to plead to charges against just two of the patients in a deal that only required him to give up his medical license. He got no jail time, no probation, and Vance’s office sought the lowest level status of sex offender classification, against the recommendation of a state panel, and despite his obvious serial predation, continuing to put women at risk.
Hadden’s survivors who were not part of the plea bargain were told, falsely, that their cases were outside of the statute of limitations. They were not able to pursue justice for themselves because Vance’s office told them, inaccurately, that they could not.
Hadden’s attorney, Isabelle Kirshner, has donated over $6000 to Vance’s campaign, including a $250 donation on the day she filed her defense response to the allegations against her client. Her firm, Clayman & Rosenberg, has donated over $40,000 to Vance’s campaign account.
Marissa chose to tell her story, and has become a tireless advocate for survivor’s rights, calling for reform in the Manhattan DA’s sex crimes unit. She wants to ensure that other women receive justice where she did not.
Evelyn made her story public when her husband Andrew Yang, who is a presidential candidate, began receiving letters from women who had similar assault experiences. As she told CNN:
“Something about being on the trail and meeting people and seeing the difference that we’ve been making already has moved me to share my own story about it, about sexual assault.”
Evelyn and Marissa and the other survivors did not get justice because Vance’s office decided to prioritize the well-being of their assailant, a wealthy and well-connected Manhattan doctor over their well-being, and ensured that he was protected from accountability, against the recommendations of the state.
Many of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims are still unnamed because they are minors. They are unable to tell their story. But of those victims, 23 women have testified in court after Epstein’s death that Epstein, abused, manipulated, and assaulted them.
“We will always carry irreparable damage and pain throughout our lives after this,” said one survivor, speaking under the pseudonym Jane Doe. “It’s something that’s never going to go away. Whoever we marry in our life, whatever future we have in our life, it’s always going to be something that’s always there for us.”
Jennifer Araoz, who spoke under her own name, said, “He robbed me of my dreams. He robbed me of my chance to pursue a career I always adored. He stole my chance at really feeling love because I was so scared to trust anyone for so many years that I had such severe anxiety. I didn’t want to leave my house, let alone my bed.”
When Epstein’s case wound its way through the Manhattan DA’s office originally, Vance’s office went out of its way to protect Epstein.
Jennifer Gaffney, one of Vance’s ADAs and Deputy Chief of the Sex Crimes Bureau argued that Epstein should be given the lowest possible sex offender status, which would preclude him from having to register as an offender. Even the judge was taken aback. “I have never seen the prosecutor’s office do anything like this,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ruth Pickholz told Gaffney. “I have done many [cases] much less troubling than this one where [prosecutors] would never make a downward argument like this.”
Vance claims publicly that he was not aware of the case at the time, a claim that strains credulity considering the high profile nature of the case, which was covered by every major media outlet in virtually every medium. And if Vance was unaware, that speaks to his lack of competency in managing his office.
But, as reported in The New York Post, some law enforcement sources found this utterly implausible. “This is very unusual,” one said. “There is no way Vance didn’t know. The question is why — and who asked for the favor.”
If history is any indication, the office did what it has been doing for some time: it put the interests of a wealthy, powerful and well-connected assailant above the lives and well-being of the multiple women he assaulted.
In October 2014, Iasha Rivers, a member of the board of directors of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, left Sharpton’s birthday party with a colleague and attorney Sanford Rubenstein. They went to Rubenstein’s Upper East Side penthouse and had a drink. Rubenstein gave the colleague $100 for a cab home as Iasha began to feel foggy. She lost consciousness and when she woke up, Rubenstein was raping her. She found multiple bloody condoms next to her in the bed. She dressed and left the apartment.
After experiencing vaginal bleeding for the rest of the day, Rivers went to Methodist Hospital. Nurses there found her injuries to be consistent with sexual assault and performed a rape kit.
After investigating, Vance dropped charges, despite the forensic evidence, because, as his spokesperson said, “Given the available evidence, the degree of the complainant’s recollection of what occurred at the suspect’s apartment, and the results of the toxicological testing, neither the provable facts nor the applicable law support a prosecution in this matter.” The implications of this are the same as the implications for other cases Vance dropped, like Maria del Toro’s: if you’re a woman who’s unconscious or otherwise incapable of understanding controlling what’s happening to you when you’re being assaulted, your assault doesn’t matter. If a wealthy and powerful man wants to assault you and get away with it, all he has to do is ensure that you’re incapable of perfectly recalling the assault.
Iasha did not get justice because Vance’s office chose to prioritize the well-being of her assailant over her life and well-being.
Multiple sex workers were assaulted by Michael Golden, a detective in the NYPD, who conducted over 1000 sex work stings and roughly 150 arrests of sex workers. In the course of this work, he also engaged in sexual contact with sex workers before arresting them. He was charged in a departmental trial of and pled guilty to engaging in sex acts with six undocumented sex workers, and was suspended without pay.
Despite this, Vance declined to press charges, citing a lack of witnesses and evidence. In the view of Vance’s office, sex workers apparently do not qualify as witnesses.
These women did not get justice because Vance’s office chose to protect their assailant, an NYPD detective, at their expense.
Harvey Weinstein
Mimi Haleyi, a Weinstein Company production assistant, met Weinstein in 2004, when she was in her 20s. Weinstein repeatedly made sexual overtures toward her, which she continually rejected. At the same time, he made promises to her regarding her career, so she maintained the relationship, hoping that his promises would materialize. Weinstein invited her to his home, and when she arrived, they watched television as he made sexual advances toward her. Haleyi told Weinstein that she was having her period. He pushed her into a bedroom, removed her tampon and forced her into oral sex.
Haleyi is one of the victims in the case Vance is pursuing against Weinstein. And the prosecution only comes after a tsunami of negative media attention, and multiple instances of Vance’s office refusing to pursue justice for a long line of women who were assaulted by Weinstein, came to Vance’s office for help, and were denied it.
One of these women was Lucia Evans. In 2004, she was a student at Middlebury College and an aspiring actor. She met Harvey Weinstein at a club and gave him her phone number. He called, repeatedly, late at night, asking to meet. She refused over and over again, offering instead to meet with casting executives during the day. When he took her up on that offer, she thought she’d hit her big break, but when she showed up for the meeting, instead of seeing the female executive that she’d been promised, it was just her and Weinstein alone in a room. They discussed her career and then Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him.
After Lucia’s allegations appeared in The New Yorker, NYPD arrived at her home, asking her to file a complaint. Over several months, police and prosecutors investigated her case, and brought her back to the crime scene in Weinstein’s old office. She cooperated and testified before the grand jury, securing an indictment against Weinstein for his crime against her in May of 2018.
By October of that same year, Vance had dropped charges for her assault, claiming that she had been inconsistent in telling her story. Lucia’s lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, said, “The decision to throw away my client’s sexual assault charges says nothing about Weinstein’s guilt or innocence. Nor does it reflect on Lucia’s consistent allegation that she was sexually assaulted with force by Harvey Weinstein. It only speaks volumes about the Manhattan DA’s office and its mishandling of my client’s case.”
Paz de la Huerta had just begun a two season run on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire in 2010 when she began to have uncomfortable interactions with Weinstein. After running into each other in a bar, Weinstein insisted on driving her home and then invited himself up for a drink. Once inside her apartment, Weinstein raped her. Later that year, he returned to her home and raped her a second time. NYPD interviewed her and believed that her case should be prosecuted, but Vance’s office declined to file charges.
Melissa Thompson alleges she was raped by Weinstein in 2011 when he invited her to what she expected to be a business meeting. She met with Weinstein in his office to pitch him business. She made a video recording of the meeting on her laptop, which documented Weinstein sexually harassing and groping her. At the end of the meeting, he suggested they meet for a drink in at the Tribeca Grand later that day, at 5.30pm.
Melissa agreed, believing that they would finalize a deal. When she arrived, Weinstein led her to his hotel room and raped her. She has met with Vance’s office, and not only is Vance not investigating this crime, he’s refused to allow her to testify against Weinstein in the cases he is pursuing, because she emailed and texted him after the rape. This reasoning directly mirrors the logic in the dossier Weinstein’s lawyers sent to prosecutors smearing his victims.
In 2015, Vance declined to press charges against Harvey Weinstein for groping Italian model Ambra Battilana. Ambra worked with NYPD to capture an audio recording of Weinstein admitting to the crime, but even with a clear audio confession, Vance’s office declined to prosecute.
Vance’s sex crimes bureau chief, Martha Bashford, also confrontationally interviewed Ambra, asking questions about previous allegations of sexual assault in Italy that had been turned up by a private investigator — wildly inappropriate behavior that added to Ambra’s trauma. Vance pointed to Ambra’s previous statements about that assault when explaining why he dropped the case, despite, again, Weinstein’s open admission that he committed the crime.
One of Weinstein’s lawyers, Elkan Abramawitz, was a friend and donor to Vance, and another, David Boies, donated $10,000 to Vance shortly after the charges were dropped.
Aside from these well-known cases, there are another four incidents that Vance has refused to press charges for:
In the late 1970’s, Harvey Weinstein forced Cynthia Burr to perform oral sex on him in the hallway of a Manhattan building.
In the late 1970’s, Hope Exiner d’Amore worked for Weinstein in his concert promotion business in Buffalo. He brought her to New York City to meet people in the film industry. When they arrived at the Park Lane hotel, where they’d be staying, Weinstein told her a mistake had been made and only one hotel room had been booked. That night, he raped her.
In 2011, Lacey Dorn moved to Manhattan after graduating from Stanford University, where she worked on two documentaries. She met Weinstein at a party and when she turned away from him after saying goodbye, he groped her buttocks and genitals.
In the early 90s, Weinstein offered Annabella Sciorra a ride home after a dinner. She accepted, and shortly after she entered her apartment, she heard a knock on the door. She cracked the door open to see who it was, and Weinstein pushed the door open, walked through her apartment (presumably looking to see if anyone else was there) and then violently raped her. Vance is not prosecuting Weinstein for her assault, but she will testify against him.
Over and over again, on multiple occasions, Vance’s office prioritized the well-being of a powerful and wealthy film executive over the life and well-being of the many women he assaulted. He is prosecuting Weinstein now, but only after years of going out of his way to avoid it, mostly glaringly in one instance where he had a rare unimpeachable taped confession.
Weinstein could not have asked for a better legal defender than Cy Vance as a prosecutor.
Weinstein’s survivors will hopefully get justice now. They should have gotten it long ago, and that they didn’t is a travesty directly attributable to the priorities and actions of Vance and his office.
These are only a few of the women Vance’s office has failed. Not all survivors are capable of telling their stories, and this is a small subset of the women who’ve made their stories public.
Many of the wealthy, powerful men Vance has protected are serial predators who went on to harm more women after Vance let them off the hook. Vance’s office should be held accountable for every single instance of assault that happened as a result.
And there are more powerful, wealthy predators who the office has never even investigated. You know their names too. Here are a few:
- Matt Lauer
- Jann Wenner
- Knight Landesman
- Patrick Witty
- Howie Rubin
- Charles Payne
- Antonin Kratochvil
- Jeff Fager
- Junot Diaz
- Barry Lubin
- James Levine
- Dustin Hoffman
- Mario Batali
- Ken Friedman
- Russell Simmons
- A.J. Calloway
All survivors deserve justice, and it is not appropriate or ethical for the Manhattan DA’s office to use them as pawns to attempt to curry favor with the rich and powerful. We also cannot have a corruptible DA who can be persuaded to look the other way on sexual assault with well-placed campaign donations.
I am not afraid of rich and powerful men, and I do not need or want them to write me checks. And I believe that when crimes are committed, they must be prosecuted.
We must be on the side of justice, not power.
