Ronan Farrow, 'New York Times' Awarded Pulitzer Prize for Breaking Harvey Weinstein Scandal

Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service in recognition of their reporting on Harvey Weinstein

Ronan Farrow and New York Times writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service in recognition of their bombshell reports on Harvey Weinstein, which brought to light decades of alleged sexual misconduct and sexual assault.

The scandal surrounding the producer, which went on to launch the larger #MeToo movement and Time’s Up movements, began in October of last year, after Kantor and Twohey published a feature in The New York Times, in which eight women, including actress Ashley Judd, accused the actor of sexual harassment and assault.

Following the allegations, the movie mogul announced plans to take a “leave of absence” in a statement to the NYT. He was subsequently fired from his company and banned for life from the Producers Guild of America. In March, the Weinstein Company, which he co-founded with his brother Bob, filed for bankruptcy and revoked all of the non disclosure agreements former and current employees of the production company had signed.

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Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

Days after Kantor and Twohey’s report, the New Yorker published an additional exposé written by Farrow, which included 13 women’s accounts of alleged sexual harassment and assault or rape at the Hollywood producer’s hands. The report also included an audio file in which Weinstein can be heard telling a model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez that he allegedly touched her breast without consent because it’s what he’s “used to.”

A spokesperson for Weinstein previously told PEOPLE in a statement that “any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”

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Harvey Weinstein

After the Pulitzer Prize news was announced, Ronan’s mother Mia Farrow wrote on social media that she was “so so so proud” of her son, who had previously opened up about how having Woody Allen as a father made him “someone who understood the abuse of power from an early age.”

“You see early in life with that kind of a family background the way in which the most powerful men in America wield power for good and for ill,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in January.

Years before taking on Weinstein, Ronan’s sister Dylan publicly claimed in 2014 that Allen molested her as a child.

Allen has long denied the allegations made by daughter Dylan, and earlier this year told CBS This Morning, “I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago.”

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Following Farrow, Kantor and Twohey’s initial reports, countless woman and men across a wide variety of industries have felt emboldened to speak out against sexual harassment and misconduct they had endured, but previously did not feel comfortable speaking about publicly.

Leading females in Hollywood have since teamed up to create Time’s Up to combat mistreatment in the workplace, and create funds to help people who’ve experienced misconduct access legal help. Many have also joined the #MeToo movement, sharing their own stories of sexual harassment with the world.

The phrase “Me Too,” first began trending on Twitter in October after actress Alyssa Milano, who starred in Charmed alongside Weinstein accuser Rose McGowan, wrote: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”