4:19 pm PDT 4/6/2021
by
Etan Vlessing
“It’s not about reliving the past. It’s about creating social progress for the future,” Dawn Dunning said at a news conference in support of New York’s criminal law reforms.
Aspiring actress Dawn Dunning and New York actress and model Tarale Wulff, who were key prosecution witnesses who helped convict Harvey Weinstein of rape and criminal sexual assault in March 2020, once supported the reforms of the New York state criminal law to define the meaning of consent in sex crime cases on Tuesday.
“By applying consent in general law, we will make clear that the same consent that protects your property protects your body,” Dunning said at a news conference in New York City after Assembly member Rebecca Seawright New York, introduced Bill # A6540, which would define consent in the general laws of that state.
Under Seawright’s proposal, consent will be defined as “a freely given, informed, and informed agreement … obtained without the use of malice, such as duress, duress, deception, fraud, concealment, or artifice.” Dunning, who provided supporting evidence for Weinstein’s alleged pattern of behavior as a sex offender, recalled that the trial jury asked Judge James Burke for a definition of consent and were told to use their common sense.
Similarly, Judge Steven O’Neill in the Bill Cosby trials in Pennsylvania left it up to the trial jury to define consent without providing guidance from state statutes. Dunning argued that defining consent not only for sexual assault, but for all crimes would ensure that all sexual crimes are “prosecuted consistently, providing equal protection to all, and making it easy to prosecute and report assault crimes. sexual”.
Dunning, who testified at trial for allegedly being sexually assaulted by Weinstein in 2004, added that the #MeToo movement had flagged sexual assault and that other crimes will no longer be tolerated. “This bill offers solutions that guide behavior and hold people accountable,” he concluded.
Tarale Wulff told the press that she was unaware that consent was not defined in the law for jurors before taking the witness stand to testify that the former Hollywood mogul allegedly raped her in 2005. “In her closing statement, Weinstein claimed to be confused and that he thought most men are confused, “he recalled.
“By clearly defining consent, there will be no more confusion,” he added, as Wulff echoed Dunning in insisting that a new generation of people now insisted on being heard. “The revolutionary energy has always been there. It has grown and is contagious and is giving volume to the voices that were not heard or silenced in the past,” he argued.