British actress Julia Ormond is suing Harvey Weinstein for sexual battery, the New York Post can confirm.
The 58-year-old will also be taking talent agency CAA, the Walt Disney Company and Miramax to court as alleged enablers of the abuse, Variety first reported.
A lawsuit was filed on Wednesday morning in the New York Supreme Court.
The disgraced movie producer — who is currently serving a 23-year sentence in jail for rape — allegedly sexually assaulted Ormond in 1995 after a business dinner.
The “Sabrina” star was reportedly “lured” into a private room with Weinstein, who asked her to give him “a massage, climbed on top of her, masturbated and forced her to give him oral sex.”
Ormond then told her agents at CAA, Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane, about the incident that transpired.
The court docs state that the men advised against speaking out and did not give her their protection.
The “Curious Case of Benjamin Button” star is suing the talent company for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.
The Walt Disney Company was the parent corporation that purchased Miramax — the film production office that Weinstein and his brother Bob founded in 1979 — in the 1990s.
Ormond is coming at the two brands for negligent supervision and retention.
“Our client has suffered tremendously both personally and professionally due to the assault by Harvey Weinstein, and the failure from Disney, Miramax and CAA to prevent it and to appropriately respond when she reported what happened,” Ormond’s attorneys said in a statement. “She feels completely betrayed by CAA for its knowing disregard for her safety and well-being, and looks forward to holding accountable the people and institutions that enabled Harvey Weinstein’s horrific and predatory behavior.”
Ormond, for her part, said in her own statement that she is “humbled and grateful” to the women who have spoken out before her.
“After living for decades with the painful memories of my experiences at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, I am humbled and grateful to all those who have risked speaking out. Their courage and the Adult Survivors Act has provided me a window of opportunity and way to shed light on how powerful people and institutions like my talent agents at CAA, Miramax and Disney enabled and provided cover for Weinstein to assault me and countless others,” she said in the statement obtained by The Post. “I seek a level of personal closure by holding them accountable to acknowledge their part and the depth of its harms and hope that all of our increased understanding will lead to further protections for all of us at work.”
Ormond also spoke with Variety regarding her suits and why she decided to come out publicly about her ordeal decades later.
“I feel as if we still need systemic change, and I feel that we need accountability from enablers, in order to get there,” she explained during a phone interview. “I feel that this is what happened with me.
“Obviously, Harvey Weinstein is in jail and is going to be in jail for a very long time. I personally don’t believe that Harvey could have done this without enablers. And for me, that is the layer that you have to get down to, in terms of the root cause,” she continued. “Part of my closure has to be talking about it publicly, and I think part of that is intertwined with the people who followed. Not only did I wrestle with what happened to me, but I really wrestled with the fact that other people were hurt. And they knew.”
