Days after pleading guilty of rape, former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 23 years in prison. The Hollywood mogul was quoted stating before the court, "Thousands of men are losing due process. I'm worried about this country".

Judge James Burke announced the sentence for Harvey - 20 years for the criminal sex act and three years for rape. He was going to be sentenced to nine-29 years of prison for the charges. Six women who testified against Harvey in the ongoing #MeToo movement, including two women who pressed charges and four other witnesses, were seated in the front row when the sentence was announced. An Oscar-nominated actress, who testified in support of her friend, was also a witness at the court.

Weinstein, who appeared in court on a wheelchair, is being shifted from Manhattan courtroom to Downstate Correctional Facility, in Fishkill, 75 miles north of New York City. He is likely to be assigned to a Los Angeles prison, which is where he would begin his term. The charges pressed against him are - forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint. He also faces a civil suit based on allegations made by 30 women.

On February 24, 2020, Weinstein was found guilty of a criminal sex act in the first degree for forcing oral sex on his former production assistant. He was also found guilty of rape in the third degree in relation to a woman in a New York Hotel in 2013.

More than 80 women had claimed that Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them over the past three decades and Weinstein was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Police in New York, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and London were investigating allegations of sexual assault or rape by Weinstein. The allegations sparked the #MeToo social media campaign around the world and this phenomenon is referred to as the "Weinstein effect".

On May 25, 2018, Weinstein was arrested in New York and charged with rape. On January 6, 2020, his trial commenced, and he was also charged with rape in Los Angeles. Finally, on February 24, 2020, Weinstein was found guilty of two of five felonies in New York.

The New York trial today, however, acquitted Weinstein of three further charges, including the two most serious counts. This included predatory sexual assault and an alternative count of rape in the first degree.