Mariska Hargitay Honored Manhattan DA Vance Who Dropped Weinstein Sexual Assault Investigation

After years of starring as detective Olivia Benson on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Mariska Hargitay turned into a real-life sex-victims advocate. Hargitay founded the Joyful Heart Foundation to educate, heal and advocate for victims of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse. In May, she honored Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. for his work helping to investigate rape cases — but Vance may not have been the victims' rights champion that he seemed.

At a Joyful Heart Foundation gala, Hargitay awarded the 2017 Heart of Gold Award to Vance for his “dedication to testing backlogged rape kits across the United States.” The award came after Vance allocated $35 million to eliminate the backlog of rape kits. Hundreds of thousands of the kits go untested across the country, hindering effective prosecution of sexual abusers and rapists.

“To have hundreds of thousands of rape kits untested is unacceptable,” said Vance. “Rape victims nationwide deserve to know that the invasive examination they underwent has a purpose and the resulting kit was not left to gather dust on a forgotten shelf.”

Hargitay called Vance’s promise “the biggest investment anyone has made in the U.S.” to adequately deal with the backlog.

“The commitment you have made here today is nothing more than heroic,” Hargitay said of Vance. “At long last survivors hear the message, ‘You do matter, what happened to you matters, your cases matter.’ And testing communicates to criminals that they are no longer able to offend with impunity.”

But new reports show that Vance dropped an investigation into sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein. The DA's office declined to prosecute Weinstein in 2015 over sexual assault allegations leveled against him by Italian model Ambra Battilana. Vance’s office said that “after analyzing available evidence, including multiple interviews with both parties, a criminal charge is not supported.”

In the months after he declined to prosecute the case, Vance received a $10,000 contribution from David Boies, an attorney who had worked for Weinstein and his company, according to a review of campaign finance documents by International Business Times. Boies has represented Weinstein since at least 2005, but he "did not represent Harvey Weinstein in 2015 during the criminal investigation,” Joan Vollero, communications director for Vance, previously told IBT in an email.

Hargitay’s publicist did not respond to an IBT request for comment.

Correction, 10:00 p.m.: This story has been changed to clarify that Boies did not repesent Weinstein in the 2015 investigation. In addition, a quote from a DA office spokesperson referring to other cases, erroneously included in the original story, has been deleted.