Harvey Weinstein was accused by 80 women of non-consensual sex and sexual abuse. But the characteristics that the accusing party reports in the ex-tycoon’s genitals is something that they point out as “an anomaly in the testicles”, a determining detail on which the jury will have to deliberate.
In the ongoing trial, prosecutors revealed that Weinstein underwent proceedings in 1999 for Fournier’s gangrene, which meant that the then producer had to lose part of his scrotum. “That surgery caused some pretty noticeable scarring … Due to an infection, his testicles were removed from his scrotum and placed on the inside of his thighs,” Paul Thompson, the district attorney, told the jury at the start of the litigation in court.
Given the numbers of women who accuse Weinstein of abuse and sexual assault, references have been made repeatedly to his genitals.
One of the women who spoke about the appearance of Weinstein’s genitals is Lauren Marie Young, who claimed that he tricked her into taking her to the bathroom in a hotel room and noted that “it looked like it had been cut and sewn, and it had no testicles”, he commented in one of his statements.
“He had some extreme scars that I didn’t know if he had been a burn victim. She doesn’t have testicles and she looks like she has a vagina”, Jessica Mann, an actress who also testified in the New York court.
In some testimonies from the victims, it has also been said that Weinstein suffers from erectile dysfunction, which is a common side effect of the infection.
However, one of Weinstein’s representatives sees contradictions in testimonials. “There is a lot of conflicting information: either he is deformed or not, he can have an erection or not … each woman has a different story and not all of them can be true,” says one of his lawyers.
What is Fournier’s gangrene?
Fournier’s gangrene is a rare and potentially fatal infectious disease characterized by necrotic fasciitis of the perineum and abdominal wall together with the scrotum and penis in men or the vulva in women. Skin loss can lead to disability or difficult resolution. The treatment of this bacterial infection must be aggressive. Several techniques are currently used to reconstruct lost tissue: skin grafts, transposition of the testicles and cord for a subcutaneous thigh pocket, musculocutaneous, fasciocutaneous, or various other types of myocutaneous pedicled flaps.
In some cases, skin grafts have to be performed and even an orchiectomy, which is the removal of one or both testicles.