Harvey Weinstein L.A. Rape Trial: Accuser Cross-Examined Over Details Of Her Claims — Update
UPDATE: Jane Doe #1 faced cross examination from one of Harvey Weinstein’s attorneys, as she was pressed on details of the alleged assault.
Attorney Alan Jackson attempted to raised doubts about her testimony, including how Weinstein was able to find her hotel room if she had checked in under an alias, Leonore. At one point, he claimed that she told the grand jury that, when she was at her hotel and got a call from the front desk that Weinstein was looking for her, she only heard him in the background. But he noted that in an interview with Los Angeles Police Detective Javier Vargas, she said that the concierge called saying that Weinstein wanted to see her and then put him on the phone.
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He also questioned her on whether she ever confronted the hotel about “this terrible breach of protocol” in that, presumably, they let Weinstein know what room she was staying in. She said she did not.
She said that she did not confront the hotel staff because of the rape, as she remained in Los Angeles for a time after the alleged assault.
“You stayed in the very room that you claim you were attacked and victimized by a sexual predator?” Jackson asked. She said that she did.
The cross-examination at times became tense, with some bickering as to whether she had answered a question.
The account of the court proceedings was via a pool report.
PREVIOUSLY: A model-actress, identified as Jane Doe #1, resumed her account of a 2013 encounter with Harvey Weinstein on Tuesday, telling jurors that she “wanted to die” as he sexually assaulted her in her hotel room bathroom.
“It was disgusting. It was humiliating, miserable. I didn’t fight,” Jane Doe # 1 said. “I remember how he was looking in the mirror and he was telling me to look at him. I wish this never happened to me.”
She testified for the second day in the Los Angeles trial of Weinstein, 70, who has pleaded not guilty on eleven sexual assault charges that involve claims of five women between 2004 and 2013.
In her testimony, Jane Doe #1 said that she was “panicking with fear” as Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him, but that she did not fight or hit him. Prosecutor Paul Thompson asked her at one point asked her why she didn’t do so. “I don’t know. I regret this a lot,” she said.
“I didn’t have even one thought to run or scream,” she said. “I didn’t know how loud I was. I think enough loud that people could hear me from another room…but I didn’t scream help. I can do more.”
Jane Doe #1 had traveled from Rome to take part in the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival, where, at one event, she saw Weinstein and spoke to him briefly in the event’s VIP room.
She testified on Monday that, after that event, Weinstein tracked down her hotel and then demanded to be let into her room. She let him in, but he eventually forced her to give him oral sex, she said. Her testimony on the trial’s first day ended when she broke down in tears as she recounted the assualt.
On Tuesday, she apologized “for my breakdown,” adding that she “can’t control it.”
With English as her second language, she testified that she initially feared that Weinstein “misunderstood” her when, shortly after she let him into his hotel room and they conversed about their families, he began talking about a massage.
She said that after their conversation, “his face changed. His eyes changed. His behavior changed.”
She said that she was afraid of him physically, noting that she had been in “bad situations where men beat me.”
She said that there was a considerable size difference between her and Weinstein, and that he was up to 150 pounds heavier than her.
“He was expecting that I’m doing what he’s saying and he was … moving me through the bedroom like I’m an object.” She said that Weinstein didn’t scream or turn violent, but forced her mouth toward his penis. He struggled to get an erection, she said, holding her by her hair, as he forced her to orally copulate him.
He then walked her to the bathroom, she said, and pulled her in front of the sink while be was masturbating. “He put his fingers inside me…my private part,” she said.
“He hold me and he try to get inside of me with his penis but I was moving,” she said. “I was crying. I say stop. I say no.”
She described how she was struggling against him so he couldn’t get inside of her.
“I remember how he was looking in the mirror and he was telling me to look at him. I wish this never happened to me,” she said. Weinstein, she said, told her, “C’mon little girl. Tell me you like it. You like it.”
She said that the assault ended when Weinstein masturbated and ejaculated.
She said that she doesn’t know how much time she was in the bathroom with Weinstein but described it as “long.” She then put her bathrobe back on, she said, and Weinstein “was acting like nothing happened. He was giving me compliments and then said that it was better” that she not talk to anyone about it.
“My understanding was that he’s somebody powerful so it’s better I not talk” because it could be bad for her, she said.
Weinstein left his jacket behind in the room, she said, and she gave it to the hotel staff. “I was trying to cancel this from my life,” she said.
She told jurors that after the assault, she told her children’s nanny that she was afraid to come home to her kids following the assault, but did not tell the woman the full account of what happened. She also said that she told another woman about what happened, but didn’t offer specifics, and “confessed” about the incident to her priest. She said that she was too ashamed to tell the festival’s founder, Piscal Vicedomini, about the assault but did tell him that Weinstein had left his jacket behind.
Jane Doe #1 filed a complaint with Los Angeles police in October, 2017, after Weinstein had been the subject of explosive stories in The New York Times and The New Yorker. She said that she had promised her daughter in September of that year that she would do so, after her daughter raised her own problems with her boyfriend.
Asked why she didn’t make a complaint immediately after the alleged assault, Jane Doe #1 said that she “didn’t know who he is, his social position, his power or whatever” at the time, but she “realized he must be somebody bad to do this thing to me.” She said that she was “afraid for my life. I was afraid for my kids. I was afraid for my reputation.”
A jury of nine men and three women is hearing the Los Angeles case, following about two weeks of jury selection. The trial is expected to last until late November.
Weinstein was convicted in 2020 on charges of rape and criminal sexual acts, and he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. He was granted an appeal by New York’s highest court in August, raising the chance that his conviction in that state will be overturned.
His attorney has argued on Monday that the sexual encounters in the Los Angeles trial were consensual and even “transactional,” and that claims were fabricated.
Weinstein, who had been transferred to Los Angeles County jail to await the second trial, faces a maximum sentence of more than 100 years in prison if convicted of the additional charges. The grand jury charges are for four counts of rape, four counts of forcible oral copulation, one count of sexual penetration by use of force, plus one count of sexual battery by restraint and sexual battery.
The judge in the case, Lisa Lench, ruled later on Tuesday that prosecutors could introduce another witness, identified as “Rowena C.,” who settled a claim in 1998 that is not part of the Los Angeles case. The witness has previously publicly identified herself as Rowena Chiu, a former assistant. She came forward in a New York Times op ed in 2019, describing how he attempted to rape her.
Prosecutors also have indicated that four accusers would testify, rather than five in the original complaint.
Weinstein’s attorney Mark Werksman argued that Rowena C.’s testimony was a way of “getting in another sexual assault” in the case even though her claims are not part of the charges. Instead, she is being brought in as prosecutors try to establish Weinstein’s “prior bad acts,” he said.
But Lench said that Rowena C.’s testimony would have “probative value” to the case.
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