Criticized for failing to charge Mr. Weinstein in 2015, Cyrus Vance Jr. brought rape charges on Friday in a case that could define his career.
Cyrus R. Vance Jr. ran for Manhattan district attorney nine years ago on a promise to aggressively prosecute sex crimes — and now, with Friday’s arrest of Harvey Weinstein, he faces a defining moment in a career shadowed by his earlier decision not to prosecute him.
One paradox of Mr. Vance’s tenure is that his treatment of sex crimes has both enhanced and tarnished his reputation. He made a name as the scourge of men who traffic in underage prostitutes and reduced the national backlog of untested rape-evidence kits. But he also faced withering criticism for dropping the prosecution of a French politician on sexual assault charges in 2011 and steadily mounting outrage over his decision in 2015 that there was a lack of sufficient evidence to make a case against Mr. Weinstein, the movie producer.
On Friday, Mr. Vance brought charges of rape and criminal sexual acts against Mr. Weinstein in cases involving two women, the first prosecutor to do so. The arrest has appeased some critics of Mr. Vance, but it is also a moment fraught with political peril. If he wins a conviction, he will restore his reputation as a progressive champion for women’s issues. A loss, however, could seal his political fate, especially among his liberal base in Manhattan.
“The world will be watching to see if any lessons have been learned,” said Jane Manning, the director of advocacy for Women’s Justice NOW, a group that helps rape victims navigate the criminal justice system. “We want to see if there is a different approach going forward not only in Harvey Weinstein’s case but in all the cases that don’t make headlines.”
Sexual assault cases are notoriously challenging to prove in court; indeed, Mr. Vance dropped both earlier cases because of questions about whether witnesses would be believed. There is no doubt that the ground has shifted since complaints about Mr. Weinstein touched off the global #MeToo movement, but Mr. Vance’s office will face a long legal battle against a wealthy defendant and one of the city’s best defense lawyers, who will spare no effort to portray Mr. Weinstein as someone who behaved badly but did not break the law by having consensual sex with women seeking to further their careers.
Mr. Vance’s assistants must first present the case to a grand jury and obtain an indictment. The prosecution will have to prove Mr. Weinstein used physical force or threats of harm to get what he wanted, a high bar in cases with little or no physical evidence. The woman in the rape case has not been publicly identified, but prosecutors have said the attack occurred in Manhattan more than five years ago — a gap in time that creates an additional hurdle for prosecutors. Mr. Vance himself was careful not to crow on Friday, saying, “We are at the beginning, not the end.”
A year ago, Mr. Vance could make a case that he was a champion for victims of sexual violence, domestic abuse and sex trafficking. He had spent more than $38 million in forfeited funds to clear a backlog of rape-evidence kits across the country and had successfully convicted many people charged with the trafficking of underage prostitutes. His sex crimes unit had won convictions in difficult rape cases and had successfully pioneered strategies for pursuing cold cases with DNA evidence. Since 2010, when Mr. Vance took office, through 2017, his sex crime prosecutors have won 83 percent of their felony trials.
Mr. Vance also established the city’s first Family Justice Center in his office, improving how victims of domestic abuse and their cases were handled. His prosecutors had convicted men who assaulted their domestic partners even when the victims were not willing to cooperate. His long list of supporters included feminists like Gloria Steinem.
Still, there was grumbling among advocates for rape victims about his office’s grueling questioning of women raped by acquaintances before an arrest was made. Several critics, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing prosecutors, said the questioning of rape victims in Manhattan was unnecessarily harsh.
Former members of the sex crimes unit said it is standard procedure to rigorously vet a victim’s credibility to avoid surprises at trial. “You better know everything that might come out,” one said. “It’s not personal.”
Manhattan prosecutors were also known for nixing arrests they felt would not stand up in court. As a result, the police closed proportionately fewer rape cases in Manhattan than other boroughs, but prosecutors had a high conviction rate. “They spend an exorbitant amount of time doing those kinds of investigations, working with victims, going through the facts and screening out cases that don’t fall within the penal law,” said one former Manhattan prosecutor, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he still has professional dealings with the office.
The advocates’ complaints about the sex crimes unit remained muted until last October, when exposes in The New York Times and The New Yorker revealed that numerous women had made sexual harassment complaints about Mr. Weinstein. The reports led to a cascade of sexual misconduct accusations against other powerful men.
Mr. Vance came under fire for his decision not to prosecute Mr. Weinstein in 2015 after an Italian model, Ambra Battilana, accused him of groping her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt during a business interview at his office.
Ms. Battilana had recorded Mr. Weinstein admitting touching her breasts, but Martha Bashford, chief of the sex crimes unit, determined the case could not be proven, in part because Ms. Battilana had given shifting accounts of sworn testimony in another sexual assault case in Italy. Mr. Vance agreed.
Mr. Weinstein had hired Elkan Abramowitz, a friend and campaign donor to Mr. Vance, to represent him and had paid for private investigators to dig up information about her statements in the Italian case.
Michael Bock, a former sergeant in the special victims division, said Ms. Bashford had questioned Ms. Battilana for hours about her statements in Italy, reducing her to tears. “The whole thing smells,” he said.
Mr. Vance’s press office said the questioning of Ms. Battilana was “a normal, typical interview” and pointed out “it is customary for prosecutors to discuss potential areas of cross-examination when meeting with complainants.”
Mr. Vance’s decision not to bring charges angered the police and advocates for sexual assault victims. Onetime allies of Mr. Vance, like the National Organization for Women, staged protests. Advocates said it was time for prosecutors to take a different approach to victims of acquaintance rapes and sexual harassment.
Some critics in the Police Department said Mr. Vance had become gun — shy of taking on powerful men after being forced to drop a sexual-assault charge in 2011 against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, because his assistants had questions about the victim’s credibility. Mr. Vance has denied this and said his office regularly prosecutes wealthy defendants for rape.
Still, the Weinstein case fed an impression that Mr. Vance’s office gave the wealthy preferential treatment. Public defenders pointed out poor defendants are often arrested and charged with forcible touching on nothing more than a woman’s complaint. “They are prosecuting our black and brown clients on sex crimes with far less,” said Justine M. Luongo, the chief of the criminal practice of the Legal Aid Society.
