LOS ANGELES (AP) — A woman who claims she was raped by Harvey Weinstein in 2013 testified Tuesday she felt guilt and disgust that began shortly after she took him to her hotel room and lasted for years. Did.
The model and actor, who lives and works in Rome, was in Los Angeles at the time for a film festival and said she started drinking heavily the next day.
“I was destroying myself,” she said. “I felt so guilty, most of all because I opened that door.”
The woman is the first of eight Weinstein accusers set to testify in a Los Angeles courtroom where the 70-year-old movie mogul is on trial for multiple counts of rape and sexual assault. Weinstein, who has already been convicted in New York and is serving a 23-year sentence, has pleaded not guilty.
Most of the women said the attacks began with a business meeting with Weinstein at a hotel. But the woman who testified on Tuesday said she saw him knocking on the door of his home late one February 2013 night after briefly meeting him at the Italian Film Festival in Los Angeles. was stunned, she said.
She, who was staying at the hotel under a pseudonym, said she had no idea how Weinstein knew her room number and initially let him through the door without thinking it was harmless. . That changed quickly when Weinstein became sexually aggressive, she said.
The woman, whose mother tongue is Russian, said her English was pretty bad at the time but has improved a lot since then, and she wondered if there had been a miscommunication.
“I felt guilty that I did something or said something that made him think that something might happen between us,” she said.
She said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on her hotel bed.
“I was a little hysterical with tears,” she said.
She said she was physically afraid of Weinstein, who weighs over 100 pounds more than her.
She said she planned to run him, hit him, and bite him.
Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson asked why he didn’t.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
She said that by the time Weinstein took her to the bathroom to rape her, she had stopped physically resisting, despite verbally objecting.
“I would just freeze, as if my body wouldn’t listen,” she said.
She said she had a hard time dealing with her children after the incident and felt the need to confess it to a Russian Orthodox priest. refused on the grounds of the privilege of The woman’s daughter, who is now 21, plans to testify later.
In an opening statement, Weinstein’s attorney, Mark Werksman, said many of the counts against which his clients were indicted were agreements his accuser reframed after becoming a lightning rod for the #MeToo movement in 2017. It was sex based on
But in the case of the woman who testified Tuesday, Weinstein’s lawyers deny the incident in her hotel room happened at all. It doesn’t indicate that Weinstein was at the women’s hotel, Mr. C Beverly Hills, on the night she says.
Weinstein’s attorney, Alan Jackson, pressed her for this during cross-examination, asking how Weinstein knew her room number and was able to get into her door, and why she had “this horrible protocol.” I asked him if he had complained to the hotel staff about the violation.
she replied. because she doesn’t want anyone to know ”
Jackson then asked why he hadn’t changed rooms after staying in the same hotel for weeks.
“Did you stay in the very room that claimed to have been attacked and victimized by a sexual predator?” Jackson asked.
The woman admitted that she had.
She cried at times during her testimony, but was mostly calm, and looked down and calmed down when she got emotional.
The day before, she had been sobbing at her description of the assault, so the court was adjourned a few minutes early.
“I want to apologize for yesterday’s breakdown,” she said when she returned to the stands on Tuesday.
She is scheduled to return to the stand on Wednesday.
The woman’s name was not revealed in court. She is called “Jane Doe 1”.
AP generally does not name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly.
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter. twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
For more information on the Harvey Weinstein trial, please visit https://apnews.com/hub/harvey-weinstein.
