Final month, police arrested the 'Scrubs' and 'Californication' writer-producer on 20 prices of sexual assault, together with rape. Talking publicly for the primary time, his alleged victims share their tales and reveal how they got here collectively to hunt justice: "He’s taken all the things he’s allowed to take from me."
Editor’s be aware: This story incorporates detailed descriptions of alleged sexual assaults.
In February 2019, Gil Ramirez put out a question on Twitter on behalf of his good friend, Avian Anderson. “Hey of us within the LA area: I've a good friend that has been requested by a Eric Weinberg to take pictures of her,” he tweeted. “Are you able to assist me do some analysis on him? Has anybody heard of him?”
Weinberg initially approached Anderson, then a 29-year-old storyboard artist, within the parking zone of a Ralphs in North Hollywood. The then-58-year-old launched himself as a writer-producer for the hit present Scrubs, along with being an beginner photographer. She remembers that he requested if she modeled and want to shoot with him.
“I feel when you simply have a look at it as an appreciation of the sculpture of your physique, you’ll actually love your pictures. It’ll be empowering for positive,” he later texted her.
Over the following week and a half, Anderson did her due diligence. Weinberg defined that he didn’t have a public portfolio of his work as a result of he didn’t need “TV execs discovering my identify subsequent to pictures of attractive fashions and actresses,” however he despatched her examples of his pictures. She appeared into Weinberg’s work historical past on-line. She corresponded with him through textual content about the kind of shoot they’d do, vetoing concepts she discovered too risqué or specific. Weinberg had her communicate with a mannequin who vouched for him.
Ramirez’s Twitter put up yielded no perception, and Anderson went to Weinberg’s Los Feliz dwelling for the shoot. A humorist as properly, she introduced some foolish props alongside along with her, together with a “real looking hen head.” “I instructed him precisely what I wished and what I didn’t need,” she says. “However he had different issues in thoughts.”
The shoot started, she says, in a room that appeared to belong to a toddler, the place Weinberg instructed her to disrobe and pose on prime of a mattress. Whereas photographing her on the mattress, Weinberg started “adjusting” Anderson’s breasts, she says.
Anderson had communicated to Weinberg over textual content that her “fundamental curiosity can be cool setups of costumes or lighting,” making clear that even for extra “provocative” pictures, she was not snug with any “bits present[ing],” in response to texts reviewed by THR. She says she went together with Weinberg’s instructions, by no means having accomplished a photograph shoot earlier than, however started cracking jokes as she grew extra uncomfortable along with her degree of nudity.
“Simply shut the fuck up, Avian, stop making this a joke,” Anderson remembers Weinberg lashing out at her. “Why do you all the time should struggle?” (A couple of days later, Anderson would element this encounter in a social media put up.)
Weinberg led Anderson upstairs, the place he positioned her in a hallway arching her again in opposition to a wall. She says he then photographed himself touching her genitals earlier than telling her, “Simply inform me when to cease.” She didn’t have time to react or reply earlier than she felt him repeatedly insert his finger into her anus, she says.
Standing 5 ft in contrast with 6-foot-2 Weinberg and weighing solely 98 kilos, Anderson says she went numb “like a lifeless fish.”
In line with Anderson, Weinberg then introduced her to his bed room and carried out oral intercourse on Anderson to offer her genitals what he known as a “glistening impact” for the pictures. She says she instructed him then — and all through the encounter — that she was asexual. With a view to deflect Weinberg’s repeated solutions of anal intercourse, she says, she carried out oral intercourse on him.
On the conclusion of the alleged assault, she remembers Weinberg standing between her and the door as she dressed, thanking her for coming over and telling her one other girl was on her means over for a shoot. “You’re not going to go to the police and inform everyone I raped you, proper?” she says Weinberg requested. She assured him she wouldn’t.
It took her three days to muster the braveness — three days of not bathing to protect the dried semen on her physique — earlier than she went to the police and submitted to a rape equipment examination. In line with the police report, “Avian A. didn't cease Weinberg at any time or state that she didn't need him to the touch or digitally penetrate her as a result of she was afraid that he would develop into aggressive or cease her from leaving. She believed that if she allowed him to do what he wished and stayed cordial with him, he wouldn't develop into aggressive.” When she returned dwelling and took a shower, seeing her nude physique for the primary time because the shoot, she vomited.
Anderson heard nothing from the LAPD within the weeks and months that adopted. In that point, she describes how her psychological well being declined, alongside along with her efficiency at work, and the way she misplaced her dream job as an artwork director on an animated present.
After which Anderson discovered concerning the Fb group.
A few 12 months after Anderson’s alleged assault, in January 2020, Claire Wilson, a 30-year-old artist in L.A., posted on a non-public Fb group of girls in Los Angeles: “I'm reaching out to see if another ladies have encountered this man Eric Weinberg. I met him over a relationship app and though the night started consensually, he later violated my consent a number of occasions and compelled me to do issues I didn’t wish to. I wish to know if anybody else has had any experiences with him. He’s a outstanding screenwriter and producer and it makes me bodily sick to assume that he in all probability does this on a regular basis.”
On Dec. 19, 2019, Wilson met Weinberg on OkCupid (he listed his age as 49, 10 years shy of the reality). They started sexting a day later, exchanging specific messages and pictures. “I’m very sexually open however not going to leap into your mattress with out at the very least a dialog or two about different issues,” she wrote him.
On Dec. 21, they met for drinks at a bar, then decamped to Weinberg’s home, however “solely to hang around and discuss,” she would later inform police. After they started kissing consensually, Wilson says Weinberg compelled her to carry out oral intercourse on him. He then pinned her on the bottom, held her arms down and compelled her to carry out different sexual acts, she says.
“I stated, ‘No, I don’t wish to try this, get off of me,’ ” she says.
After the encounter, Wilson acknowledges that she continued to textual content with Weinberg within the hopes of clarifying the damaging expertise. “We wish the individuals who damage us to repair it,” she tells THR. Weinberg dodged accountability, nonetheless, and when he indicated that he wouldn't be seeing her once more, she posted to the Fb group.
The preliminary put up — and a follow-up Wilson shared on one other non-public Fb group the place ladies provide nightlife security ideas and cautionary tales — prompted an outpouring of tales from those that stated they or somebody they knew additionally had been approached by Weinberg for pictures. Lots of these interactions, the ladies stated, resulted in sexual assault.
Inside days, the put up generated tons of of feedback, prompting Wilson to put up in different comparable women-only Fb teams. The posts and the following allegations they surfaced hinted at a long time of comparable claims of misconduct dedicated whereas Weinberg labored for a number of the hottest TV exhibits on air, together with Scrubs, Californication and Anger Administration.
When Anderson first discovered of the refrain of different accusations, she says she felt relieved — but additionally sickened. “I hoped that I used to be simply hypersensitive,” she says. “I hoped I used to be simply being hysterical.”
In interviews with THR, greater than two dozen ladies allege Weinberg approached them in L.A.-area parking tons, in grocery shops, at cafes and on sidewalks, commenting on their look earlier than itemizing his Hollywood credit and displaying them examples of his pictures, typically specific photographs. THR spoke with ladies whose claims go way back to 2000 and as far-off as Portland, Oregon, and New York.
Some say Weinberg would stress them throughout shoots into taking off clothes. He would exaggerate his authority within the trade and threaten to derail their nascent careers.
A number of ladies describe Weinberg partaking in sexual exercise with out their consent, incessantly photographing the acts as they befell.
Requested for touch upon particular allegations, Weinberg’s divorce lawyer Karen Silver provided the next assertion: “As we now have sadly seen as of late, time and time once more, a closely litigated and acrimonious custody dispute has now given rise to strategically positioned felony allegations. These claims have beforehand been investigated and reviewed by each regulation enforcement and the Los Angeles household court docket and the outcomes have continued to unveil a myriad of proof, documentation and professional evaluation that wholly undermine the narrative now being promulgated. Although Mr. Weinberg himself is precluded from commenting on any facet of this litigation attributable to court docket orders, household regulation guidelines and in the perfect pursuits of his minor kids, he'll proceed by counsel to cooperate in all facets of this investigation and, if essential, will deal with these allegations in the one discussion board that ought to matter — a public courtroom.”
Courting again to at the very least 2014, a number of ladies had taken their allegations to regulation enforcement, however they are saying that in most cases, police did not comply with up or adequately examine. In at the very least two instances, police believed enough proof existed to cost Weinberg, however the Los Angeles District Lawyer’s Workplace, then beneath the management of Jackie Lacey, declined to prosecute. (Lacey didn't remark.)
Nonetheless, at the same time as their instances appeared to stall and different, extra high-profile #MeToo reckonings have been lined within the media, the ladies on the Fb group continued to comply with up with regulation enforcement, hunt down further victims and assist each other. Lastly, on July 14, 2022, greater than two years after Wilson’s preliminary Fb put up, police arrested Weinberg on 20 prices of sexual assault, together with rape. As he awaits arraignment, Weinberg stays free on $3.25 million in bail.
Talking publicly for the primary time, Weinberg’s accusers element their encounters with him, the years of frustration and authorized dead-ends, and the eventual assist of these closest to him that led to the case in opposition to considered one of Hollywood’s most prolific alleged sexual criminals.
***
Weinberg, now 61, took a circuitous path to TV writing. A graduate of the Wharton College of the College of Pennsylvania, he first labored in finance at funding financial institution Oppenheimer & Co. earlier than netting his first writing credit within the mid-’90s.
He was a gentle presence in writers rooms from the late Nineteen Nineties till 2016. He labored on the hit NBC present Scrubs from 2002 to 2006, with credit on greater than 100 episodes, and rose as much as co-executive producer. He held the identical place on Showtime’s Californication, starring David Duchovny, and FX’s Anger Administration, headlined by Charlie Sheen.
After 2016, his path of credit goes chilly. To these closest to him, he would blame the work stoppage on #MeToo and shifting cultural attitudes, saying, “No one desires to rent an outdated white man.” However in response to one producer who labored with Weinberg and spoke with THR on the situation of anonymity, he had develop into “unrecommendable.” Even with out working, in response to a partial judgment in his divorce, Weinberg’s month-to-month earnings is $45,794, doubtless a mixture of residuals and investments.
Weinberg was nonetheless very a lot a working author, nonetheless, when he approached then-18-year-old Catherine, an actress whose actual identify is being withheld and who spoke on the situation of anonymity out of issues for her profession.
It was 2014, two months after she had moved to Los Angeles to pursue performing. Catherine heard somebody calling after her within the Studio Metropolis Ralphs parking zone. She says that Weinberg approached her, instructed her he wished to photograph her and listed some credit. Catherine’s ears perked up on the point out of Scrubs, a favourite present of hers — she figured Weinberg could possibly be a beneficial connection in a brand new metropolis.
After confirming Weinberg’s identification on-line, Catherine instructed him that he first needed to discuss along with her mother earlier than she may undergo with the shoot. Weinberg and her mother had a “full dialog” by which her mother “expressed her issues,” says Catherine. In response, she says Weinberg reassured her mother, telling her: “I've a daughter myself. I completely perceive. I imply no hurt to your daughter.” Catherine’s mom confirmed this dialog.
As a ultimate precaution, Catherine introduced an in depth good friend, Celina Kimelman, then 20, along with her to Weinberg’s home for the shoot.
Weinberg’s Los Feliz home and Tesla parked in entrance impressed Catherine, she remembers. He provided each her and her good friend drinks, she says, which they declined. Weinberg instructed Kimelman to remain in his lounge whereas the 2 photographed round the home.
She says that, citing higher lighting, Weinberg introduced her upstairs, the place he “was pushing and pushing and pushing to be extra sexual than I wished to be.” She says he obtained an erection and commenced to rub his penis by his pants. She tried to chuckle it off and proceed with the shoot, she says.
“You look again on these moments, and even again after I was that age, I might all the time say, ‘I might by no means let this occur,’ ” Catherine says. “However then, while you’re in that place … I actually did simply freeze up and I didn’t wish to make him uncomfortable.”
Weinberg posed her on his mattress and pulled apart her clothes earlier than penetrating her along with his finger with out her consent, she says. She remembers that, as her eyes started to properly up with tears, Weinberg stated she appeared stunning when she cried and “began taking photos of me crying.”
They ended the shoot, however once they returned to the lounge the place Kimelman waited, Weinberg stunned them each by asking if she want to take a flip modeling.
“He wouldn’t [abuse] two folks,” Catherine remembers considering. “I used to be the goal.”
However, in response to Kimelman, the identical factor occurred to her, nearly beat for beat. After briefly and vaguely acknowledging that one thing unusual had occurred to each of them, the 2 pals wouldn't discuss concerning the expertise for years.
Within the months that adopted, Catherine says she continued to correspond with Weinberg, who at one level dangled the opportunity of an performing position on AngerAdministration.
In a single alternate quickly after the shoot, she says she reached out to him to inform him that what had occurred that day was “completely not cool” and that she wished to look at him delete the pictures in entrance of her, arranging to fulfill him within the foyer of her residence.
“I noticed him delete the pictures. I imply, he dragged them into his trash, however who fucking is aware of?” Catherine says.
Her doubts have been justified.
A couple of months later, in April 2014, Weinberg emailed a batch of his pictures to Kayra Raecke, a 22-year-old restaurant supervisor he met at Republic of Pie in North Hollywood, in an effort to steer her to shoot with him. Among the many photographs he despatched to her, later obtained by THR, was a photograph of Catherine with a tear sliding down her face.
Raecke agreed to mannequin for him so long as she may stay clothed, she says. However in the course of the shoot, she says Weinberg raped her.
“After I had stated no so many occasions, he continued doing what he wished anyway,” she says. “I didn’t know what else he was able to, together with violence. I believed there was an actual chance that I'd die there.”
Afterward, she drove on to Deliberate Parenthood.
“I feel I used to be simply raped,” she remembers telling the receptionist. Deliberate Parenthood supplied her with emergency contraception, after which she went to police, who administered a rape equipment. Whereas on the trauma heart, police had Raecke name Weinberg in an try and safe corroboration. She says Weinberg cried over the telephone, repeatedly mentioning his kids and attempting to get off the road however not responding to her claims straight.
Raecke’s report triggered an investigation and Weinberg’s arrest. In June 2014, an LAPD detective submitted the case to the district lawyer’s workplace, the place Deputy District Lawyer Teresa de Castro declined to prosecute, citing “inadequate proof.”
“She claimed she didn't consent. He claimed a consensual encounter. There is no such thing as a corroboration for the sufferer’s allegations,” de Castro wrote in a cost analysis worksheet. She didn't reply to a request for remark.
Nevertheless, Raecke was summoned again to the district lawyer’s workplace in September 2014, when one other girl got here ahead with claims of misconduct throughout a photograph shoot. Once more, the DA’s workplace declined to prosecute. Raecke was not knowledgeable of the standing of the case till almost two years later and solely after she reached out to a detective on her personal.
In a single different occasion, in 2016, regulation enforcement beneficial prices in opposition to Weinberg to the district lawyer’s workplace for an alleged nonconsensual sexual encounter with an unnamed girl that befell in 2014, once more throughout a photograph shoot at his dwelling. In line with a cost analysis worksheet, Weinberg had “intercourse along with her whereas she was laying on his mattress” and he or she “orally copulated him” whereas he “photographed the encounter.”
The deputy district lawyer within the case, present Superior Court docket Decide David Reinert, famous within the cost analysis worksheet that Weinberg had “been investigated for a similar conduct involving a separate sufferer” and characterised Weinberg’s conduct as “inappropriate.”
Nonetheless, he wrote, “as a result of there is no such thing as a proof that the defendant used pressure, threats or intimidation to beat the desire of the victims, the case is declined for submitting.”
In response to questions from THR, Reinert apologized that he couldn't recall the particular information of the case. He didn't reply to follow-up questions.
Azure Parsons, an actress who met Weinberg on the 2011 MTV present Demise Valley, for which Weinberg was showrunner, tells THR that Weinberg sexually harassed her during the present’s one-season run. Years later, as she returned dwelling from strolling her canine in 2014, she says that a automobile pulled up subsequent to her and a person started complimenting her curves and saying how he would like to photograph her. She turned and acknowledged Eric Weinberg, she says.
She screamed at him, “Are you fucking kidding me?” A “visibly indignant” Weinberg obtained out of his automobile, “grabs my arm and tries to tug me into the automobile,” she says. She escaped from him and ran, calling her supervisor after which the police. She says the police didn't comply with up along with her.
Parsons was left questioning whether or not Weinberg “appeared me up and located the place I lived” or if he “simply does this a lot” that he occurred to strategy her randomly, although she suspects “it’s the latter.”
Lending credence to her suspicion that it was a random repeat encounter, 5 different ladies who spoke with THR say that Weinberg approached them a number of occasions, typically years and typically simply weeks aside, reintroducing himself. The ladies consider Weinberg didn't acknowledge them.
Within the weeks that adopted, Parsons says she noticed Weinberg park exterior her dwelling — after which once more “in just about the identical spot” years later, main her to consider at this level he was now stalking her.
Parsons shouldn't be alone in accusing Weinberg of such habits. Stephanie Nelson, who lives in Los Feliz, says that in 2017, Weinberg pulled up subsequent to her in a grey sedan as she walked dwelling one night time. She estimates that she known as police thrice over the month as Weinberg continued to strategy her across the neighborhood, one time showing to comply with her dwelling.
In a single such occasion, on Oct. 22, 2017, Nelson started filming Weinberg after he rode as much as her on a bicycle in Echo Park.
“You need to cease harassing me and cease strolling with me and cease following me — it’s fucking creepy, dude,” she says within the video. “You’ve accomplished this thrice in a month.”
After the encounters, she says, she stopped strolling in her neighborhood for a 12 months and a half.
***
After Wilson’s 2020 Fb posts and the preliminary dizzying optimism of connecting with different alleged survivors and the hope that, collectively, the group of accusers may push regulation enforcement to take motion, the instances once more appeared to stall. They found that Weinberg had discovered of the Fb discussions about him from a member of the group who had violated its code of silence. One girl reported to Wilson seeing Weinberg on a relationship app beneath an alias, whereas one other member of the unique Fb group noticed him at a bar with a younger girl.
Although she continued to coordinate the group of accusers, Wilson left L.A. in 2020 for Tucson, Arizona. After the alleged assault, she misplaced a beloved job in artwork framing and fell right into a melancholy, she says. Her residence, mere blocks from Weinberg’s dwelling, now not felt secure.
In her Tucson lounge in September 2020, surrounded by the cacti and succulents she now made a residing from by promoting them on Etsy, a Los Angeles quantity she didn’t acknowledge known as her iPhone. A voice she didn’t acknowledge requested for Claire Wilson. The girl was Hilary Bidwell, Weinberg’s spouse on the time.
“I used to be truthfully considering that she was calling me to confront me over one thing and accuse me of stalking or seducing her husband,” Wilson says.
“I discovered your Fb posts,” Bidwell instructed her. “I would like you to inform me all the things that you already know about my husband.”
“Are you positive? It’s loads,” Wilson stated.
Bidwell stated sure. Wilson instructed her that she would possibly need to sit. She proceeded to share what she and the opposite ladies had discovered.
Bidwell had met Weinberg round 1991 in Los Angeles at an performing class, in response to interviews with Bidwell and court docket paperwork. Neither was enrolled within the class — Bidwell was visiting a good friend and Weinberg was there to “get an actor’s perspective,” she says he instructed her. Weinberg had left Oppenheimer & Co. by then and was attempting to interrupt into tv.
The 2 dated for a couple of decade earlier than marrying in 2001. Hinting at what would unfold over the course of their marriage, considered one of their marriage ceremony friends joked in his toast that Weinberg had proposed to Bidwell by throwing the engagement ring from “the court-mandated 100 yards.”
At his finest moments, Weinberg’s boyishness and penchant for banter may put Bidwell comfortable and maintain her laughing. However she additionally describes a sample of aggression and boundary-pushing.
“He actually has a means of creating you are feeling secure,” she says to THR. “Till you’re not.”
Court docket information she filed in a custody battle describe a sample of “impulsive, violent and high-risk habits,” together with an occasion the place Weinberg punched a wall in anger, breaking the wall and his finger, and repeated cases of holding Bidwell down and yelling at her. A good friend of Bidwell’s known as police in response to an incident in 2001, in response to these filings, and Bidwell spent the night time at a resort.
In a declaration, Weinberg argued that Bidwell “is the one who has not labored by her intense anger towards me” and denied yelling at Bidwell or having anger points. Nonetheless, he acknowledged enrolling in a “12-session anger administration course.”
When reached for remark, their eldest son characterised his father’s habits to his mom as “actually verbally abusive, past a doubt.”
A couple of years earlier than they have been married, Bidwell found a field of images of nude ladies in Weinberg’s storage. When she confronted him, he instructed her for the primary time about his pictures, she says, explaining that he took boudoir pictures of the wives and girlfriends of his pals as favors for birthdays and anniversaries.
Bidwell and Weinberg had their first little one a 12 months into their marriage and their second in 2005. Bidwell labored part-time as a panorama designer and stayed dwelling to lift their kids, each boys, whereas Weinberg labored on exhibits like Politically Incorrect With Invoice Maher and later Scrubs.
Then, in 2008, Bidwell found extra images and sheets of paper in Weinberg’s golf bag with the handwritten names and numbers of tons of of girls, she says. The paperwork, reviewed by THR, incessantly included obvious places beside the ladies’s names, similar to “Ralphs,” “library,” “gymnasium” and “Glendale.”
In court docket filings, Weinberg claimed the lists have been from when he moved to L.A. and did “headshot pictures for earnings,” although additionally stated that he started therapy on the Sexual Rehabilitation Institute that summer season.
In June 2008, Bidwell filed for divorce and requested Weinberg to maneuver out, however the cut up didn't final lengthy. The 2 had their third little one, a woman, in 2009. Whereas Weinberg maintained a separate residing state of affairs, the 2 remained married. He spent a portion of every week cohabitating with Bidwell and caring for their three kids.
The relative peace of this association was shattered in 2014, when Bidwell obtained a name from a bail bondsman. Weinberg had been arrested on suspicion of rape in connection to Raecke’s claims. He repeatedly denied the allegations to Bidwell, telling her that nothing sexual had occurred with Raecke.
“I’ll say that once more: On my mom’s life, I had no sexual contact with this particular person,” Weinberg wrote in an electronic mail to Bidwell.
On the similar time, although, he instructed investigators that the 2 had had a “consensual sexual encounter,” in response to the cost analysis worksheet.
After getting back from jail, he sat with Bidwell of their visitor room speculating about what would look higher to a jury, “a feminine or male lawyer,” Bidwell remembers. He went with the previous, retaining onetime Harvey Weinstein lawyer Blair Berk. He additionally paid for the companies of a forensic pc firm following the arrest, in response to bank card information.
“That’s the final time he spent the night time on the home,” Bidwell says.
In October 2015, she filed for divorce once more, however when confronted with accusing him of a intercourse dependancy within the public report, she determined to not pursue, fearful concerning the potential affect the declare may have on her kids, she says. As an alternative, she opted for a form of everlasting separation.
However more and more alarming accusations in opposition to her husband would proceed to floor.
In 2017, Bidwell obtained a telephone name from the mom of a 17-year-old woman who had met Weinberg on-line. The mom, who spoke to THR on the situation of anonymity, instructed Bidwell that Weinberg had invited her daughter over to his dwelling for breakfast after which pulled her onto his sofa and tried to unzip her sweater. She discovered of the encounter after seeing an “inordinate” variety of calls from an unknown quantity — Weinberg’s — to her daughter on her telephone information, she says. She known as the quantity, demanding he inform her “how the fuck you already know my daughter.”
Weinberg acknowledged in custody filings that “I had breakfast with a woman I met on a relationship app who lied about her age to me” however denied doing something unlawful or “inappropriate.”
The mom expresses skepticism that Weinberg wouldn't have identified that her daughter was a minor. “She appeared like slightly woman,” she says.
The ultimate straw for Bidwell — the incident that led her to Wilson’s Fb put up — got here in June 2019.
Weinberg approached a 16-year-old woman at a Starbucks a block from his son’s highschool and requested to take pictures of her, in response to divorce filings and interviews with Weinberg’s eldest son and the woman, who spoke on the situation of anonymity.
The Starbucks was a daily hang-out for the woman and her classmates, she says. As she had accomplished numerous occasions earlier than, she says she sat at a desk to work on chemistry homework, sporting her Jansport backpack with accompanying “stuffed animal, fluffy key chain,” sitting in entrance of a laptop computer lined in stickers from her favourite TV exhibits, just like the animated kids’s present Journey Time.
“It’s so arduous for me to simply emphasize how clear it was that I used to be a highschool pupil,” she says. “I used to be 16 and had these skinny, nearly prepubescent lengthy legs.”
Weinberg pulled up a chair, she says, complimenting her “athletic physique,” “size” and “wonderful bone construction,” earlier than asking if she had modeled. She stated no and that she had no real interest in doing so, she remembers. Nonetheless, she estimates Weinberg spent “a strong two minutes … occurring about my physique and face” and the way they “would photograph so superbly.”
“You strike me as somebody who can be very snug with their physique,” she remembers him saying. “He pulls out his digital camera roll and he proceeds to point out me pictures of many bare ladies.”
She was visibly nervous, she says, when Weinberg positioned his hand on the small of her again and instructed her to not fear and that he was “a household man.” As he had accomplished with many ladies earlier than, he confirmed her a photograph of his kids. The woman acknowledged Weinberg’s eldest son. He sat subsequent to her in ninth interval.
She stated nothing concerning the mutual connection to Weinberg. Feeling trapped, she gave Weinberg her quantity earlier than pretending that a name from her boyfriend was a name from her father, she says. She fled to a nook of a close-by residential neighborhood and “simply cried.”
Later, in response to a screenshot obtained by THR, Weinberg texted her, “Let’s shoot a while. It’ll truly be enjoyable and the pictures might be stunning.”
Phrase of the encounter quickly reached Weinberg’s son by a mutual good friend. He then instructed his mother. Bidwell and her son confronted Weinberg concerning the incident. Although he initially denied that the encounter ever befell — even swearing on his daughter’s life, they are saying — he would later declare in household court docket that he had solely had a “temporary, barely two-minute dialog in Starbucks” along with his son’s classmate “whose age I didn’t know.” He denied partaking in “untoward or unlawful conduct.”
Whilst Weinberg denied the allegations, he agreed to spend two weeks at an intensive residential intercourse dependancy rehabilitation program in Palm Desert, California, in response to court docket information. However when he returned and took his kids out for dinner, Weinberg appeared to hit on their server, their eldest son instructed Bidwell.
Bidwell employed a brand new lawyer and filed for divorce in February 2020, and in September, she went onto Google and typed within the search phrases “Eric Weinberg sexual assault.” This introduced up the general public Fb put up Wilson had made in August 2020 along with her claims about her date with Weinberg.
By Wilson, Bidwell discovered that Weinberg had lied about not having intercourse with Raecke, a disclosure that she says severed the final of her belief in Weinberg’s assurances about his habits.
After Bidwell made contact, Wilson, Anderson and Raecke all agreed to file sworn statements describing their claims of assault, telling THR that they fearful concerning the security of Weinberg’s daughter.
In addressing the rape allegations, Weinberg declared in court docket paperwork that he “exercised poor judgment and didn't make the perfect choices up to now with regard to 3rd events.” Elsewhere, he claimed to have taken “full duty for some lapses in judgment over time.” Weinberg detailed intensive remedy, together with the 2 stints at intercourse dependancy clinics, and famous in a July 2020 declaration that he was at that very time operating a Intercourse and Love Addicts Nameless assembly.
(At one level after his encounter with Wilson, in a name reviewed by THR, Weinberg instructed her: “I’m not fucking Donald Trump, I’m not going to say that all the things I say or do is ideal. I’m not good. I do know that. I’m attempting my easiest. I’m attempting my easiest with each form of remedy I can to ensure I make all the precise choices in life. I actually, actually am.”)
Because the divorce proceedings crept alongside, the opportunity of different accusations fearful Bidwell. Whereas Bidwell lengthy had identified of her husband’s prolific extramarital exercise because the discovery of the telephone numbers in 2008, she says she had understood Weinberg’s habits within the context of a intercourse dependancy, not alleged serial assault and rape. Now, conscious of the opposite aspect of many tales, Bidwell says she felt a way of obligation to establish different alleged survivors.
Unbeknownst to her divorce lawyer (and in opposition to her suggestions), Bidwell reached out to a non-public investigation agency and gave them a broad mandate: Discover different ladies with claims in opposition to Weinberg for a potential felony investigation.
However even with the three sworn declarations and the incident involving the 16-year-old, the non-public investigators — who had seen their justifiable share of vindictive exes — have been skeptical of Bidwell’s claims and broader suspicions about her husband. It wasn’t till Bidwell obtained a name in February 2021 from Cassidy Rouch that the non-public investigators started to take significantly the total potential scale of Weinberg’s actions.
Weinberg had reached out to Rouch in February 2019 after he noticed her profile on Mannequin Mayhem, a networking website for beginner fashions and photographers. He launched himself in an electronic mail, saying he labored in tv and had shot for companies in L.A.
“I do know you don’t do nudes, however when you’re okay with implied nude (nothing worn, nothing displaying), I do assume that pictures the place you'll be able to see the sculpture of your curves can be actually stunning,” Weinberg wrote her.
Rouch, who was 22 on the time and learning nursing, had opted to strive her hand at modeling on the recommendation of a good friend. She started texting with Weinberg about concepts for the shoot, she says. She expressed an openness to implied nudity however says she shut down the suggestion of something extra specific.
As soon as inside Weinberg’s home on the day of the shoot, he nearly instantly instructed her to “strip down,” she remembers. As she uncomfortably complied, she says that Weinberg groped her breasts “so arduous I may see the white imprint of his hand on my pores and skin.”
She pulled herself away and requested the place she may change and reapply make-up.
“That’s when he led me to his daughter’s room,” she says, describing the drawings, trophies, small pink Converse footwear and stuffed animals she noticed. “It jogged my memory of my room after I was a child.”
Within the bed room, she says Weinberg provided her an alcoholic beverage, holding the cup to her mouth and spilling the contents on her physique. After cleansing herself up, she says Weinberg instructed her to placed on an outsized males’s button-down shirt. As he started to photograph her on his daughter’s mattress, she says he started drawing consideration to his erection whereas touching her beneath the pretense of positioning her. Then, he pushed her legs aside and “began touching me,” she says, taking pictures as he repeatedly pushed two fingers into her vagina. She instructed him he was hurting her, and he stopped and apologized, she says.
The assault continued on his mattress upstairs, the place he continued to penetrate her along with his fingers regardless of her objections and repeated statements of ache, she says.
“He simply instructed me that I wanted a person to deal with me and make me really feel good,” she says. “So I instructed him once more, ‘I don’t like what you’re doing.’ “
Weinberg stopped, left the room briefly, then returned, she says, telling her that “he may forestall me from getting any form of contracts for work for modeling.”
After the conclusion of the shoot, he checked in along with her, she says, asking her, “Are you OK to drive? I’m a father and I've a daughter, and I wish to just be sure you’re secure.”
Rouch says she skilled a interval of dissociation within the following weeks and months. Weinberg would proceed to textual content her, she says, and he or she would reply politely however no additional.
Then, in December 2020, Rouch stumbled upon a TikTok video by actor Ester Jiron describing her personal encounter with Weinberg in 2016. At a shoot at his dwelling, Jiron says Weinberg started asking her invasive questions like whether or not her long-distance boyfriend allowed her to have intercourse with different folks. She says she instantly stopped the shoot and left. She instructed her supervisor concerning the expertise.
“Imagine it or not, I truly know of this man and his popularity,” her supervisor responded in an electronic mail, describing Weinberg as “a really highly effective man in Hollywood.”
Quickly after, Rouch phoned Weinberg and accused him of assaulting her. Weinberg threatened to contain legal professionals and stated their continued messages after the assault proved his innocence, she says. Rouch hung up on him midsentence after which known as Bidwell, whose quantity she discovered on-line.
Rouch’s name got here at a low level in Bidwell’s custody battle with Weinberg. For months, Bidwell sought to restrict the period of time their kids spent with Weinberg and to require supervision, however twice already, the court docket had granted Weinberg extra unsupervised time, together with in a single day visits.
As Bidwell sat in her workplace about to signal a custody settlement granting extra time for her children with Weinberg, her telephone rang. Rouch, in a shaky voice nonetheless heated from her confrontation with Weinberg, blurted out, “I used to be sexually assaulted by your husband in your daughter’s mattress and I don’t really feel that she’s secure.”
Bidwell hung up after which known as Rouch again, this time with one of many non-public investigators on the opposite line. She didn't signal the custody stipulation.
Animated by a brand new sense of urgency, the investigators started opening up traces of communication with their contacts in regulation enforcement. In addition they reached out to David DeJute, a Los Angeles lawyer at Michelman & Robinson and adjunct professor on the Pepperdine College College of Legislation who, in a previous position as an assistant U.S. lawyer within the Division of Justice, defended then-President Barack Obama in one of many “birther” lawsuits difficult his citizenship.
DeJute instantly took an curiosity within the case, and by March 2022, a bunch of Weinberg’s accusers met in a convention room in his Westwood workplace, some in particular person, others over Zoom.
Whereas DeJute nonetheless wanted to current the case to his agency for illustration in a potential civil case, he wished to assist advise the alleged survivors as issues constructed towards a potential felony case.
“You’ve been lied to,” DeJute stated. “I feel you’ve been lied to by Weinberg, I feel the system has allow you to down. The very least that I can decide to is to be sincere with every considered one of you.”
In that spirit, he cautioned the group that no matter authorized avenue they went down, be it civil or felony, every of them would face a novel indignity reserved for survivors of sexual violence looking for accountability by the justice system.
“This won't be a simple course of,” DeJute instructed the ladies. “I’m not right here to inform you what to do. I’m right here to assist, if I can, and to navigate the authorized shoals and to see if we will get some tough form of justice for you.”
“He’s taken all the things that he’s allowed to take from me. There’s no extra,” responded Raecke, whose case had appeared earlier than the DA’s workplace in 2014 however was declined for prosecution.
For Raecke, seeing so many others whose alleged assaults befell after hers had a particular form of damage. Addressing the group, she likened herself to Cassandra of Roman mythology who had the ability of prophecy however not the ability to make folks consider her. “Had they accomplished one thing eight years in the past, no person can be right here,” she stated.
By the tip of the month, the non-public investigators started placing the ladies in contact with LAPD’s Particular Assaults Part, which makes a speciality of sexual crimes. From there, issues moved far sooner than anybody had anticipated, and by mid-April the detectives assigned to the case indicated that they hoped to arrest Weinberg by Could or June.
This got here as welcome information to all, however none extra so than Bidwell. After Rouch filed a sworn declaration about her alleged assault — including to the three others — Weinberg took an more and more aggressive tack in household court docket. In an electronic mail to Bidwell, his lawyer threatened financial sanctions in opposition to her and the accusers “as a direct results of having to defend in opposition to Hilary’s baseless claims and accusations.”
Could and June got here and went with no arrest. Then, simply as Bidwell and the ladies started worrying regulation enforcement would take no motion, round midday on July 14, greater than a dozen LAPD officers stunned Weinberg at his dwelling in Los Feliz and arrested him. The officers, some in tactical gear, spent the following few hours executing a search warrant for proof associated to the alleged assaults.
Within the aftermath of the arrest, with the information ricocheting throughout the web, the detectives investigating the case skilled a deluge of ideas and extra allegations in opposition to Weinberg, prompting them to request extra sources from the LAPD.
“We've got not scratched the floor,” says a detective concerned within the case who was not approved to talk publicly. “It's overwhelming the quantity of latest ladies which have come ahead.”
The prosecutor within the case, Marlene Martinez, needed to postpone Weinberg’s Aug. 12 arraignment, writing to 1 accuser that she wanted extra time to assessment “a big quantity of paperwork, recordings, interviews, photos, and so forth.”
After making bail, Weinberg instructed his two sons “that he wished to bang his head in opposition to the wall and bleed out and that his life was over,” in response to a declaration filed in court docket by his eldest son. Weinberg additionally instructed his kids that he was being falsely accused by ladies who “have been out to get him.” In the meantime, the court docket revoked in a single day visits for Weinberg along with his kids and now requires a monitor throughout visitation.
Convalescing at dwelling from COVID, Wilson burst into tears when she discovered of Weinberg’s arrest. Whereas it will by no means heal the preliminary trauma she says she skilled, she voiced hope that it will ease the ache of the skepticism and disbelief she and others encountered afterward.
“Folks provide you with a whole lot of causes of their head about why one thing this horrible won't be true,” she says. “That victims are making it up as a result of the system can’t presumably be that dangerous and someone can’t presumably be that evil or silly to maintain doing it over and over. It’s like, ‘No, all of these issues are true. All of these issues are true.’ “
This story first appeared within the Sept. 6 difficulty of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.
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