Bob Weinstein's payment of Harvey's secret settlements detailed in New Yorker exposé

When the allegations of sexual harassment, assault and rape against Harvey Weinstein burst into the public sphere last month, Bob Weinstein said that he was unaware of his brother's harmful behavior. "I thought he was literally just going out there cheating in a pervasive way," he told The Hollywood Reporter at the time. "No way. No F-in' way was I aware that that was the type of predator that he was. And the way he convinced people to do things? I thought they were all consensual situations."

However, a new expose from The New Yorker by Ronan Farrow details that some of the payments underwriting Harvey Weinstein's settlements with accusers came from Bob's personal bank account, to hide the move from Miramax and Disney. For example, a 1990s case involving Harvey's former assistant Zelda Perkins saw Bob pay 250,000 pounds — approximately six hundred thousand dollars today — to be split between two female employees in England who accused Harvey of sexual harassment and assault.

Bob Weinstein has acknowledged the personal payout to The New Yorker, but noted that he was misled about how the money was being handled (even though the allegations were reported to Miramax). “Regarding that payment, I only know what Harvey told me, and basically what he said was he was fooling around with two women and they were asking for money,” he explained. “And he didn’t want his wife to find out, so he asked me if I could write a check, and so I did, but there was nothing to indicate any kind of sexual harassment.”

See photos of the Weinstein brothers together:

The report also outlines Harvey Weinstein's pervasive use of lifetime nondisclosure agreements — as detailed with Filipina-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez and former assistant Perkins, who both spoke to Farrow in violation of their NDAs — and also highlights how the use of such agreements perpetuates the behavior of repeat offenders while silenced victims are left to suffer. For example, Rose McGowan, who has publicly claimed that Weinstein raped her in 1997 at the Sundance Film Festival, reached a hundred-thousand-dollar settlement with Weinstein. It did not include a nondisclosure provision, but removed her right to sue Weinstein. She told The New Yorker that though she wanted to pursue charges at the time, her lawyer instead convinced her to sign the agreement. “That was very painful. ... I thought a hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money at the time, because I was a kid.”

Farrow's piece also notes how Harvey Weinstein's attorneys hired the private intelligence firm K2 to insure Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance did not press charges against Weinstein regarding Gutierrez's case in 2015. It also points to the tens of thousands of dollars in donations made by the producer's legal team to Vance's campaign's before and after his decision not to press charges.

It also includes the participation of Irwin Reiter, a longtime employee of Weinstein's and the current svp, accounting of The Weinstein Co. Reiter said he spoke out to combat the company's culture of silence: “[Weinstein] was so dominant that I think a lot of people were afraid of him, afraid to confront him, or question him, and that was the environment,” he said. “A forever N.D.A. should not be legal. ... People should not be made to live with that. He’s created so many victims that have been burdened for so many years, and it’s just not right.”

Women who have accused Harvey Weinstein:

More to come.