By Precious Osadebe

Former American film producer, Harvey Weinstein, was, on Thursday, sentenced to 16 years imprisonment for raping a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel room ten years ago.

A Los Angeles court handed down the punishment. Due to his separate 2020 conviction in New York for sex crimes, Weinstein is already serving a 23-year sentence.

Even though he is appealing in both instances, it makes it more likely that the 70-year-old Oscar-winning “Shakespeare in Love” producer will serve the rest of his life behind bars.

He was found guilty by a Los Angeles jury in December of forceful rape, forcible oral copulation, and sexual penetration by a foreign object of an unnamed European actress.

The once powerful film producer met with numerous young women who were trying to get into Hollywood, according to graphic testimony given in court.

Due of his then-powerful position in the industry, prosecutors claim Weinstein used and assaulted women for years while enjoying a long period of impunity.

If the women had publicly accused Weinstein at the time, they would have run the risk of losing their chances of landing future Hollywood jobs, according to the prosecution.

In the Los Angeles case, Weinstein was ultimately found guilty of assaulting one woman but freed of charges of sexual battery against a second woman.

Two more women were accused of being assaulted, one of whom was identified by her attorneys as Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the now-wife of California Governor. The jury was deadlocked on those accusations.