Queen Elizabeth Strips Harvey Weinstein Of CBE, Requests Honor Is ‘Cancelled & Annulled’
Queen Elizabeth has stripped disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein of his honorary CBE, which she presented to him in 2004 to mark his contribution to the British film industry, The Daily Mail reported. Weinstein was found guilty of rape and sentenced to 23 years in jail in February and is now serving time in New York.
The movie producer had been honored with a CBE — which made him an Honorary Commander of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire — on January 19, 2004.
However, after his conviction, Queen Elizabeth asked for the honor to be “cancelled and annulled and that his name shall be erased from the Register of the said Order.” The notice was posted in The Gazette, the United Kingdom’s official public record, on Friday.
As the publication noted, honors given out by the queen — which include CBEs, as well as OBEs, MBEs, knighthoods, and damehoods — can be revoked on the advice of the forfeiture committee if the queen approves. To remove the title, the committee must consider whether the holder of an honor has brought the system into disrepute.
When he was awarded the honor in 2004, Weinstein praised the British movie industry, according to the publication.
“My life and my career have been greatly influenced and enriched by great British film-makers and authors and so I am especially honored and humbled to be receiving the CBE,” he said at the time.
The removal of Weinstein’s CBE came after the British Film Institute, in 2017, rescinded the Fellowship they had awarded him in 2002.
Chi Onwurah, a senior British politician from the Labour Party, had begun campaigning for Weinstein be stripped of the CBE in 2017 — the year a number of women publicly accused the Hollywood mogul of serious sexual misconduct allegations, the news source noted. The accusations levied against Weinstein kicked off the #MeToo movement, which would go on to hold more powerful and high-profile men to account for their past actions.
As BBC News noted, while the removal of honors is relatively rare, this is not the first time the queen has chosen to revoke an award. Indeed, entertainer Rolf Harris lost his CBE in 2015 after he was convicted of 12 indecent assaults the previous year. Furthermore, in 2013, Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was stripped of his knighthood due to the part he played in the collapse of the bank.
Although he is already serving time behind bars, further allegations against Weinstein have continued to emerge. Indeed, the disgraced producer is expected to face criminal charges for rape and sexual assault in Los Angeles, although extradition proceedings have been postponed until December due to the coronavirus pandemic.
