Updated at 7:57 a.m. ET

Harvey Weinstein surrendered Friday to authorities at a police department in New York City, where the Hollywood mega-producer faces allegations of rape and sexual assault stemming from a 2004 incident.

Weinstein arrived early in the morning at the first lower precinct in Lower Manhattan, ushered into the station by police officers as members of the media crowded behind metal barriers erected outside the entrance.

Once one of the most powerful men in the film industry, Weinstein had long been rumored to have engaged in sexual misconduct — but it was not until reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker surfaced decades' worth of sexual assault and harassment allegations that the producer experienced his precipitate fall from grace last autumn.

Yet it was a 2004 meeting with actress Lucia Evans that stands at the center of the allegations Weinstein now faces in New York. As journalist Ronan Farrow reported in The New Yorker last year, Evans alleges that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him after luring her into a hotel room alone under false pretenses.

"I said, over and over, 'I don't want to do this, stop, don't,' " she told the publication, adding that in the end, "He's a big guy. He overpowered me."

Evans' allegation, along with dozens of others against Weinstein, helped catalyze a movement that came to be known by its hashtag, #MeToo. Since Evans and others came forward with their stories, scores of women have told of their own experience suffering sexual assault — stories that have implicated powerful men both in Hollywood and well beyond, from the worlds of media and literature to politics and music.

This post will be updated.

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