Harvey Weinstein has officially been expelled from The Directors Guild of America due to the numerous sexual assault and harassment allegations mounted against him.
The DGA released a statement following their decision saying, “The DGA condemns sexual harassment. There must be no tolerance for such deplorable abuses of power. This isn’t about one person. We must recognize sexual harassment is endemic in our society, and painfully, in our industry.“
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“We believe that every individual has the right to a safe workplace. The unfortunate truth is that there are those who abuse the power that they hold,“ the statement continued. “For far too long, many have not spoken out – directors, agents, crew, executives, performers, producers, writers. This shameful code of complicity must be broken.“
Finally, as revealed by Variety, the statement said, “As directors and team members who solve problems for a living, we are committed to eradicating the scourge of sexual harassment on our industry.”
In a recent interview, Weinstein’s brother, Bob Weinstein, revealed that he gave Weinsten $600,000 in payout money to help conceal sexual harassment allegations from Weinstein’s wife, Georgina Chapman.
The payouts reportedly took place in England in the 1990s, with Bob using his own money to hide the incidents from Chapman, as well as Miramax executives and the studio’s parent company, Disney, according to PEOPLE.
However, Bob claims that he was not specifically aware of what the large sum of money was for, just that Weinstein needed it to keep his indiscretions secret.
“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,” Bob told Ronan Farrow. “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.”
A former senior executive at Miramax spoke out about Bob’s statement and said that it was “implausible” Bob would not have known about the allegations, as they were even reported to the studio directly.
