#MeToo’s real legacy may not be ending predators’ impunity so much as highlighting the tenacity of that impunity

Usually, rape isn’t reported. When it is reported, it is often not charged. And when it is charged, it rarely leads to a conviction. These facts shape both our cultural understanding of sexual violence and women’s sense of their own embodied lives, clarifying something many of us already know – that while sexual violence is technically illegal and officially abhorred, it is also tolerated in practice, with actual arrests and convictions being so rare that most sexual violence is de facto decriminalized.

Only occasionally does a notable rape conviction come to pass; when it does, its very rarity highlights this dissonance, making plain the gulf between how rape is officially talked about and how it is usually treated. Now, that gulf has come to the fore again, because on Thursday one of the most high-profile rape convictions in American history was overturned.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

We helped bring Dominik Feri to justice. His trail should have rattled a complacent political establishment

He was spoken of as an extraordinary talent. A rising star with a million followers on Instagram, who made politics relevant for younger generations. As recently as 2018, Politico ranked him among 28 people who would shape Europe in the years ahead.

But earlier this week, Dominik Feri was sentenced to three years in prison for rape. A man once feted as the great hope of the Czech Republic, and the youngest member of parliament in the country’s history is now its first politician to be jailed for sexual violence.

Tarana Burke called Harvey Weinstein’s accusers ‘heroes’ and said movement would continue to bring progress to society

The founder of the #MeToo movement, Tarana Burke, has called the women who spoke out against Harvey Weinstein “heroes” and said such campaigns for justice and equality will continue to bring about progress in society.

Burke, who nearly two decades ago coined the phrase “Me too” from her work with sexual assault survivors, found herself again declaring – after New York’s highest court in a shock decision on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction in the city – the #MeToo reckoning is greater than any court case.

Both were pilloried, but that was then. Today, one has beaten a rape conviction, the other may return as president

According to his representatives, former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is still digesting the overturning of his rape conviction by a New York court, but they did come out to say he was “cautiously excited” . Cautiously excited? I’m not sure these are the words I’d alight on to paint a word-picture of a rapist. You might as well say “tentatively aroused”. Then again, as we’re about to discuss, quite a lot of guys don’t particularly have to worry about what they say or do, or how they say or do it. It’s only natural that Harvey should very much want to be one of them again.

Speaking of word-pictures, though, how’s this for a vignette of our times? When they heard the news that Weinstein’s conviction had been overturned on Thursday, a whole host of reporters happened to be looking at the exact spot in the exact New York courtroom that he’d sat in when that original judgment had been handed down. This was because they were waiting for Donald Trump to sit in it for Thursday’s proceedings in his hush money trial . Mr Trump, you might recall, is in such a lot of trouble that he is the presumptive Republican nominee and current bookies’ favourite to win the US presidency again, though admittedly he lags behind Weinstein on the sexual assault and misconduct front, given that only 26 women have accused him of it . Ultimately, though, I guess the question is: if #MeToo “went too far”, what would “going just far enough” have looked like?

Mogul’s lawyers say decision in New York will strengthen appeal in Los Angeles but victims confident guilty verdict will be upheld

Harvey Weinstein was already expected to spend the remainder of his life in prison for crimes in New York when a Los Angeles jury found him of guilty of rape and sexual assault in 2022 and he was sentenced to an additional 16 years.

But on Thursday New York’s top court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for two sex crimes and found he should receive a new trial, and the California case has taken on even greater significance.

Court finds judge prejudiced ex-mogul with ‘egregious’ improper rulings at landmark trial

New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, finding the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with “egregious” improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that were not part of the case.

The state court of appeals ruling reopens a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures – an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein. The court ordered a new trial. His accusers could again be forced to relive their traumas on the witness stand.

As a gen X feminist who survived and ignored a violent assault in the 80s, I didn’t identify as a victim – but #MeToo gave me a crucial new perspective

In the scorching summer of 1987, young, invincible and hungry for adventure, I left my cloistered life at the University of Sydney to hitchhike to Darwin. I wanted to discover the “real” Australia, that classless utopia of rugged, self-made blokes in the Foster’s ads; the quixotic outback of explorers and mavericks celebrated by Xavier Herbert and Patrick White. Hitchhiking for art was a masculine pursuit, mythologised by Jack Kerouac and the beatniks. I wanted to update their 60s machismo with some brazenly female 80s cool. I would document my 8,000km trip, return to Sydney unscathed, and write a novel. Or so I thought.

My companion, Andrew Peisley, and I hit the highway at Lithgow, armed with a tarp, seven books and a guitar. We’d survive on Peisley’s dole cheque and busk for counter-meals in pubs along the way. We agreed to remain platonic, accept every lift that got us closer to Darwin, and never split up. Four days in, at a Cunnamulla roadhouse, our rules imploded. I was kidnapped by truckies. Four of them, driving two road trains in convoy. They couldn’t fit us both in one truck so they offered to take me in the first and Peisley in the second. I climbed, just as Kerouac would, into the first rig and we drove off. But when Peisley approached the second truck, the driver slammed the door in his face.

Years of work by alleged victims and advocates have led to an investigation of the mogul and a suit against Russell Simmons

Last week, the world watched as agents of the US Department of Homeland Security dramatically raided two properties – one in Miami and one in Los Angeles – belonging to the music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, as part of an ongoing investigation into sex-trafficking allegations.

What fewer people probably knew was that just a couple of weeks earlier, the former hip-hop executive Drew Dixon had tracked down another industry legend, Russell Simmons, to serve him with a defamation lawsuit relating to her own alleged history of abuse at Simmons’s hands.

A Michael Jackson jukebox musical has just opened – with no mention of sexual allegations – and a biopic is coming. What makes some celebrities immune to cancel culture? We examine who gets ostracised and who doesn’t

Was a Michael Jackson jukebox musical really such a good idea? When MJ the Musical opened in London last week, it was praised for its gravity-defying dancing and raft of floor-filling megahits. But one glaring oversight was unfailingly remarked upon. “In MJ,” ran the New York Times headline, “no one’s looking at The Man in the Mirror.” The show, it added, told the story of Jackson, “except for the big story”. As Anya Ryan put it in the Guardian’s two-star review : “It is hard to ignore the repeated allegations of child sexual abuse. Yet Lynn Nottage’s script does just that.”

Almost five years after Leaving Neverland, in which two men accused Jackson of sexually abusing them when they were children, it seems not everyone has got the message that the star is “cancelled”. In fact, to all intents and purposes, Jackson is not cancelled at all. That’s certainly what the money suggests, with Sony recently buying half of his back catalogue for a figure believed to be around £500m. Then there’s a forthcoming biopic starring Jackson’s nephew Jaafar in the lead role. According to Billboard, the Jackson estate earns around £60m a year from his music, royalties, theatrical shows and merchandise.