Graphic Testimony From Harvey Weinstein Accuser Is Nearly Derailed by Objections
Jessica Mann was the final complaining witness to testify, though the trial is expected to last another month.
January 31, 2020 at 02:47 PM
7 minute read
Jessica Mann, who was working as an actress and hairdresser in Los Angeles when she met Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in 2012 or 2013, became visibly frustrated on the witness stand Friday as Manhattan Criminal Court Judge James Burke sustained objection after objection from Weinstein's defense attorneys.
Mann, 34, accused Weinstein of three sexual assaults, one in New York and two in California, while acknowledging that she had also had some "non-forcible" sexual encounters with him. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to rape, predatory sexual assault and criminal sex act in New York and has denied allegations elsewhere.
Jurors in the Weinstein trial have heard a week and a half of testimony, nearly all of it from women who accuse him of sexual assault. Mann, whose cross-examination is set to continue Monday, is the final complaining witness to testify, though the trial is expected to last another month.
On the witness stand, Mann said it was hard to answer questions about her relatively long and complex relationship with Weinstein without sharing the full context, but Burke urged her to keep her answers relevant to the questions prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon had asked.
Defense attorneys successfully objected to nearly every question Illuzzi-Orbon asked about Mann's former roommate, who was enthusiastic about the opportunities Weinstein might be able to provide for a pair of struggling actresses.
The former roommate is expected to be a witness for the defense team, which includes Donna Rotunno and Damon Cheronis of Chicago and Arthur Aidala of the New York firm Aidala Bertuna & Kamins.
Like other witnesses, Mann testified that her acquaintance with Weinstein started off positive and professional and then changed.
When they had dinner in a Los Angeles hotel restaurant and he was irritated when fans approached, Mann said she felt sorry for him.
Suddenly, she said, he told the waitstaff to move their food upstairs.
"I was a little stunned," she said. "I can tell you I didn't want to go up there but I also wanted to help him get away from all the public attention that was clearly distressing him, in my mind."
She was still hungry when they reached a private hotel room, she said, but Weinstein didn't seem interested in the food.
He asked to give her a massage, urging her to relax and take her shirt off, he said.
She refused, she said, but Weinstein, already shirtless and equipped with lotion, asked for a massage instead. She rubbed it into his back unenthusiastically and left as soon as she could, she told jurors.
But they met again with the much-discussed former roommate, and Weinstein told them to come to his hotel room to see a script. He said both young women would be perfect leads in an upcoming vampire movie, Mann said.
Mann tried to avoid it.
"He laughed at me and said, 'I am a harmless old man,' and then I got embarrassed because he made fun of me," she said.
In the hotel room, she said, they never saw the scripts, but he called her from another room and then grabbed her arms, preventing her from going back to her roommate in the suite's living room. She said the more she tried to pull away, the angrier Weinstein became.
"You're not gonna leave until I do something for you," he said, according to Mann.
She testified that he performed oral sex on her and she faked an orgasm to get away, telling him and, later, the roommate that she had enjoyed it.
Mann said she was never attracted to Weinstein, but after the incident in Los Angeles, she agreed to enter a relationship involving oral sex with him.
"It was extremely degrading from that point on," she said. Weinstein did not appear concerned in court as she testified that he maintained very poor hygiene and had a bad smell and unusual sexual habits. His genitals appeared to her to be deformed, she said, to the point where she felt compassion for him.
Mann was soon trying to avoid sexual interactions with Weinstein, she said, and she panicked when he showed up at the New York hotel where she was staying on a visit and even more concerned when she saw him booking a room.
He guided her upstairs by her arm, she said, and twice reached over her to slam the door shut when she tried to leave.
He ordered her to undress and disappeared to the bathroom, she said. Then, she said, he raped her. Only after that did she find a syringe in the bathroom trash can, which she found terrifying because Weinstein had not worn a condom. She later looked up the label on the medicine and learned it was related to sexual functioning, she said.
Immediately prior to the third assault, Mann testified that she told Weinstein she was in a relationship with an actor, even though he had told her not to date actors.
"His eyes changed and he wasn't there, they were very black," she said. "And he ripped me up from my chair … and he was screaming 'you owe me, you owe me one more time' as he was dragging me into the bedroom."
She said he ripped off her pants so quickly that her legs were scratched, even though she said "no, please, no." She crawled into the bathroom crying after he raped her, she said.
Mann was so new to Los Angeles that she didn't know who Weinstein was when they met, she testified, but she quickly became aware of his power in the entertainment industry and, by 2013, his broader power in American society, which Weinstein never hesitated to flaunt.
Mann testified that Weinstein repeatedly spoke to former President Bill Clinton on the phone while she was in the movie producer's presence. Listening to those conversations, she said, led her to believe that no one would want to hear her accusations against a man of Weinstein's power and influence.
Weinstein's moods were extreme, Mann said, comparing it to "Jekyll and Hyde." Mann also said she found his anger so alarming that she tried to avoid it at all costs.
Defense lawyers called for a mistrial and accused prosecutors of Brady violations several times Friday, in connection with Mann's testimony and with another potential witness, but Burke refused to rule in their favor.
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