Harvey Weinstein trial: Former actress who claims Weinstein raped her said he was so ‘deformed’ she pitied him
One of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers in his rape trial told the jury his genitals were so ‘deformed’ she thought he was ‘intersex’. GRAPHIC CONTENT
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A former actress who claims Harvey Weinstein raped her told court that his genitalia were so “deformed” that she actually took pity on him.
“The first time I saw him fully naked, I felt, I thought he was deformed and intersex,” Jessica Mann, 34, told Manhattan Supreme Court during Weinstein’s rape and sex assault trial.
“He has extreme scarring that I didn’t know if maybe he was a burn victim. He does not have testicles and it appears like he has a vagina.” Weinstein bowed his head in court while she testified.
Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.
Mann said when she first saw him naked she performed consensual oral sex on him.
“When I first saw him naked, I was filled with compassion, absolute compassion,” she said through tears. “It seemed his anger came from a place of shame.”
Then Mann described how Weinstein allegedly raped her on March 18, 2013, at the Doubletree Hotel in Midtown, where Mann had been staying with an agent.
Weinstein took her to the hotel room, where she said she “attempted twice to open the door and leave and he locked the door both times”.
Then she “kind of shut down a little bit and he told me to undress”, the New York Post reports.
She initially refused, “and then he comes at me and grabs my hand to try to force me to start undressing myself”.
“I undressed and he stood over me until I was completely naked and he told me to lay on the bed,” Mann said, explaining that Weinstein then briefly walked into the bathroom.
“Then he came out naked and he got on top of me and that’s when he put himself inside of me, his penis inside of me,” she said.
Following the alleged attack, she said, she “ran into the bathroom,” where she saw a syringe in the trash.
“He stabbed himself with a needle and there has to be blood and he was inside of me,” Mann said. “I was kind of in shock over that.”
“He was very engaging. There were a few moments where he made a grunting sound and would look at me … I didn’t know if it was an autistic-like trait because it was a little confusing,” Mann said.
Mann, who gripped a blue stress ball during her testimony, had dinner with Weinstein on a later occasion at the Peninsula Hotel, and when she followed him up to a suite, he “started to undress himself.”
Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.
During another meet-up, Mann and her friend Talita Maia went to another hotel with Weinstein following a night out after Weinstein told them they’d be “perfect” for a vampire film he was producing, she said.
“He said, ‘Listen, girls, why don’t you take your time, finish your drinks. Let’s go upstairs. I have the scripts. I’ll give you the scripts,’” said Mann, who added that Weinstein had told her she reminded him of his then-wife, Georgina Chapman, and that she was “prettier than Natalie Portman.”
“I said, ‘No, no, no, I know what that means,’ and then he laughed at me and said, ‘I’m a harmless old man,’ and then I got embarrassed because he made fun of me,” she said.
“The more I fought, the angrier he got and his anger scared me, so I tried to calm him down [with a] joke and he calmed down a bit,” she said. “He said, ‘I’m not letting you leave until I do something for you’ … then he told me to sit on the bed and that’s when he went down on me.”
“He put his mouth on my vagina,” Mann said, fighting back tears.
Mann said she “started to fake an orgasm to get out of it,” and when Weinstein asked her if she “liked it,” she said, “I was nervous, so I told him it was the best I ever had.”
Weinstein is only charged in the alleged March 18, 2013, rape incident.
The trial continues.
‘NO, NO, NO’, ACCUSER SCREAMED
At times sobbing, former Project Runway production assistant Mimi Haleyi told jurors at Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial how she tried to fight off the disgraced movie mogul and told him “no, no, no” while he sexually assaulted her.
As one of two women whose assault claims led to charges against Weinstein, Haleyi took the stand and detailed her allegation that he forcibly performed oral sex on her at his New York City apartment in 2006.
“I did reject him, but he insisted. Every time I tried to get off the bed, he would push me back and hold me down,” she said, claiming she told him she was menstruating in an attempt to deter him.
Haleyi, now 42, testified she thought, “I’m being raped,” and considered different options.
“If I scream rape, will someone hear me?” she wondered. “I checked out and decided to endure it,” she said. “That was the safest thing I could do.” Weinstein, 67, is charged with sexual assaulting Haleyi and raping an aspiring actress in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013. He insists any sexual encounters were consensual.
Haleyi also described a second encounter a few weeks after the alleged assault in a Tribeca hotel room where she said she “went numb” as he took her hand, pulled her toward the bed and had intercourse with her.
She said she didn’t call the police because she was working in the US on a tourist visa and was scared of Weinstein’s power, telling jurors: “Obviously, Mr. Weinstein has a lot more power and resources and connections and so forth. I didn’t think I’d stand a chance.”
Haleyi, who has started using the last name Haley to avoid being associated with Weinstein on internet searches, is the first of the two women at the heart of the case to take the stand. The closely watched (hash)MeToo-era trial is in its fourth day of testimony.
Last week, “Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra testified that Weinstein overpowered and raped her after barging into her apartment in the mid-1990s.
While outside the statute of limitations for criminal charges, Sciorra’s allegations could be a factor as prosecutors look to prove Weinstein has engaged in a pattern of predatory behavior.
Haleyi went public with her allegations at an October 2017 news conference, appearing in front of cameras alongside lawyer Gloria Allred, who also represents Sciorra and other Weinstein accusers.
Haleyi, born in Helsinki, Finland, and raised in Sweden, said she met Weinstein while in her 20s at the 2004 London premiere of the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Aviator. They crossed paths again at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006 and, when she expressed interest in working on one of his productions, he invited her to his hotel room and asked for a massage.
She declined, saying she was “extremely humiliated.” “I felt stupid because I was so excited to go see him and he treated me that way,” she testified.
More meetings followed, and Weinstein secured Haleyi a job helping on the set of “Project Runway,” the reality competition show he produced. She testified that before the alleged assault, Weinstein showed up at her apartment and begged her to join him a trip to Paris for a fashion show.
“At one point, because I just didn’t know how to shut it down so to speak. ... So I said, ‘You know you have a terrible reputation with women, I’ve heard,”’ Haleyi said.
The then-revered Hollywood honcho “got offended,” she said. “He stepped back and said, ‘What have you heard?”’ Asked by prosecutor Meghan Hast if she had any romantic or sexual interest in Weinstein, Haleyi firmly answered: “Not at all, no.”
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Damon Cheronis seized on Haleyi’s continued interactions with Weinstein, displaying on a large screen a friendly email she sent him after they ran into each other in Cannes in 2008.
Haleyi conceded she’d been in contact with Weinstein “not often, but yes occasionally” and that she sent the 2008 email after a newspaper article reminded her of a conversation they had weeks before the alleged assault.
DOZENS OF ‘LOVING EMAILS’
Lawyers for disgraced Hollywood bigwig Harvey Weinstein will use their opening statement at his criminal rape trial to refer to “dozens and dozens of loving” emails that women reportedly sent to him after he allegedly assaulted them.
In New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday (local time), Judge James Burke heard previews of the opening statements to be given on Wednesday (local time) by both the prosecution and the defence.
Judge Burke ruled in favour of defence plans to refer to “dozens and dozens and dozens” of “loving” emails between Weinstein and the two women involved in the trial who have accused him of sexual assault.
Weinstein denies the allegations.
The judge said the reason he was going to allow the messages to be referenced was because they went to the case of the defence team “that the sex was consensual”.
A lawyer for Weinstein’s defence team, Damon Cheronis, said his power point presentation would include excerpts of emails between Weinstein and his accusers.
“What we’ll counter with are their own words where they describe loving relationships, sexual encounters with Mr Weinstein, and (describe him as) someone that they care about, both before and after the alleged assaults,” Mr Cheronis said.
“We will be able to show through cross-examination that women who accused him of sexual assault also bragged about having relationships with him, and bragged about things he allegedly forced them to do.
“My opening statement and power point won’t be argumentative, but it will be about facts.”
Mr Cheronis said one complaining witness sent her phone number after the alleged assault, and another wanted to introduce him to her mother.
The prosecution will call sex crimes expert Dr Barbara Ziv, who gave evidence in the Bill Cosby retrial in 2018, to refute assumptions about how rape and sexual assault victims behave after an attack.
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Weinstein is being tried before a jury of seven men and five women.
He is charged with five sex crimes, including rape and sexual assault, stemming from encounters with two women, one who says he raped her in 2013 and the other who says he sexually assaulted her in 2006. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denies all charges of non-consensual sex.