NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to detectives and appeared in court Friday on charges of rape and felony sexual assault, a watershed in a monthslong sex crimes investigation and in the MeToo movement.
Weinstein walked into a police station house in lower Manhattan, flanked by several detectives. Toting three large books under his right arm, he looked up without saying a word as a crush of reporters and onlookers yelled, “Harvey!’’
With cameras clicking and reporters shouting questions, the scene was a mirror image of the red carpets where Weinstein presided for decades as a movie mogul and king of Hollywood.
But after decades of harnessing his wealth and his influence in the movie industry to buy or coerce silence from women, and after withstanding an investigation into groping allegations three years ago, Weinstein’s reign ended behind bars in a police holding cell Friday morning.
He was fingerprinted and formally booked.
About an hour later, he was led from the First Police Precinct in TriBeCa and taken to court on Centre Street to face rape charges, his arms pinned behind him in three sets of handcuffs, a routine procedure for heavyset suspects.
The books he carried into the station house — among them “Elia Kazan: A Biography,’’ by Richard Schickel, and “Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution,’’ by Todd S. Purdum — were gone and he was buckled into his seat in a waiting SUV.
Around 9:25 a.m., Weinstein was escorted into a courtroom in Manhattan Criminal Court by two police investigators, one holding each of his elbows.
They were Sergeant Keri Thompson and Detective Nicholas DiGuadio from the department’s Special Victims Division, both of whom have long been involved in tracking down Weinstein’s accusers and corroborating their accounts.
Weinstein remained silent throughout the 10-minute proceeding. He was not required to enter a plea because he was arrested on a criminal complaint, rather than an indictment. But his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said after the hearing that Weinstein plans to enter a plea of not guilty if he is indicted.
Weinstein will have to decide by Wednesday whether he plans to testify in front of the grand jury that is continuing to investigate his case.
Brafman said he would “move quickly’’ to dismiss the charges, calling them “constitutionally flawed and factually unsubstantiated.’’
More than 75 women have accused Weinstein of wrongdoing, and authorities in California and London are also investigating assault allegations.
At the beginning of a brief appearance before Judge Kevin McGrath, Weinstein was led up to the bench, his arms still handcuffed.
Joan Illuzzi, the lead prosecutor on the case, read the charges against him: first-degree rape and third-degree rape in one case, and first-degree criminal sex act in another.
The criminal sex act charge stems from an encounter with Lucia Evans, who told The New Yorker and then investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him during what she expected would be a casting meeting at the Miramax office in TriBeCa in 2004.
The victim in the rape case has not been publicly identified, but the district attorney’s office said the attack happened in 2013. Illuzzi said the charges resulted from “months of investigation.’’
As the hearing came to an end, Brafman handed over Weinstein’s passport to Illuzzi and said he was ready to present a $1 million cashier’s check to pay Weinstein’s bail. While reporters waited for Brafman to make remarks, Weinstein slipped out through an employee door at the back of the courthouse just before 10 a.m. and climbed into a waiting Toyota.
