Harvey Weinstein’s new trial begins in LA with multiple women to testify
As Harvey Weinstein faces a new trial on multiple rape and sexual assault charges in Los Angeles, a prosecutor alleged a series of graphic rapes in hotel rooms across the city, and a group of women who were left terrified by Weinstein’s power within Hollywood.
Opening statements began on Monday, with prosecutors in Los Angeles saying that eight women would testify about Weinstein’s alleged crimes, including Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary film-maker and actor who is now married to the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. Siebel Newsom alleges that Weinstein raped her during what she thought would be a business meeting in 2005, when she was a young actor trying to build her career.
In his opening statement, Weinstein’s defense attorney, Mark Werksman, said that accusers in the case had either “made up” the assaults or had engaged in transactional sex with the once-powerful film producer. The current first lady of California was presenting herself as a #MeToo victim to avoid being “just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood”, Werksman said.
“You’re not gonna see a single eyewitness to any claim of sexual assault,” Werksman told the jury. “At its heart, each and everyone of these allegations is going to boil down to the accusers saying ‘believe me’.”
Today, Weinstein, 70, is serving a 23-year sentence after being convicted of sex crimes in New York in February 2020. Since 2017, nearly 100 women have publicly accused Weinstein of sexual violence and inappropriate sexual behavior during encounters going back to the 1970s, revelations that fueled an international reckoning with the lack of criminal or social consequences for powerful men who sexually abuse women.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to the new charges and has said all of his sexual encounters with women were consensual.
Opening statements from both the prosecution and the defense made clear that the trial would grapple with the continued interactions the alleged victims had with Weinstein in the years after they were assaulted.
Prosecutor Paul Thompson said the jury would hear testimony from a doctor who works with sexual assault victims about misconceptions about how people behave after being raped, including how many people are raped by someone they know and continue to communicate with their attacker after the assault.
Werksman, the defense attorney, said the jury would hear about the emails the alleged victims sent Weinstein for years after their encounters, including an email Siebel Newsom allegedly sent in 2007 asking Weinstein for advice about a “bad press situation”.
The identities of Weinstein’s current accusers are being kept secret in court documents, which have referred to them as Jane Does one through five. Siebel Newsom’s lawyer has spoken publicly about her planned testimony as “Jane Doe 4,” and Thompson mentioned her husband’s name in court.
While the district attorney’s office has previously said that nine women would testify in the case, there was no mention of Jane Doe 5 throughout the prosecutor’s opening arguments, which mentioned testimony from only eight women. The reasons for this change were not immediately clear.
Weinstein was indicted on 11 counts overall, but four of those counts – including two counts of rape and two of sexual assault – involved the woman who was not included in the prosecution’s opening statement.Gloria Allred, an attorney for Jane Doe 5, declined to comment on the omission, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Thompson described multiple women weeping as Weinstein assaulted them, and one woman showing him pictures of her children mid-assault to try to get him to stop.
That woman, the trial’s first witness, an European actor and model referred to in court documents as “Jane Doe 1,” alleged that Weinstein unexpectedly showed up at her hotel room during an Italian film festival in Los Angeles, and first asked her for a massage, and then grabbed her and forced her to perform oral sex.
She testified that she repeatedly asked Weinstein to leave, saying that she could not have sex with him because she had three children, and that she started crying and choking during the encounter. Asked by Thompson how Weinstein reacted to her crying, she said, “He didn’t care.”
The judge overseeing the trial, LA superior court Judge Lisa Lench, adjourned the court on Monday afternoon as the first witness sobbed while describing the assault.
Prosecutors said the other witnesses will testify to a similar pattern of unexpected assaults in hotel rooms, and particularly in hotel room bathrooms.
In 2005, Siebel Newsom was a “powerless actor trying to make her way in Hollywood” when Weinstein invited her to a business meeting and then raped her, Thompson said. Siebel Newsom was invited to “discuss her career” at a hotel, and was surprised when the meeting was moved to a private suite and Weinstein’s business associates quickly left, Thompson said. Weinstein then allegedly summoned her to a bathroom, asked her to touch him, and then forced her on to a bed.
During the assault, Siebel Newsom was crying and shaking, and “couldn’t get any words out because of her fear,” Thompson said.
A third woman, a celebrity masseuse, went into a bathroom to wash her hands after giving Weinstein a massage, only to have Weinstein follow her into the bathroom, grope her and masturbate on to the floor, the prosecutor alleged.
Weinstein told the masseuse it “was completely normal, he’d done it with so many people”, Thompson said.
The masseuse is also expected to testify that on a later occasion, when her new boss wanted an introduction to Weinstein, he told her “it’s going to cost you”, and demanded that she watch him masturbate, Thompson said.
Werksman, the defense attorney, said in his opening statement the trial simply highlighted that “in Hollywood, sex was a commodity”, and said that “transactional sex” described in the trial “may have been unpleasant, and embarrassing … but it was consensual.”
Weinstein was brought into court in a wheelchair on Monday by deputies,. He did not show much reaction to the graphic descriptions of his alleged rapes and assaults.
Among other potential witnesses who may testify in the trial is the actor Mel Gibson, who prosecutors say was a friend of one of the accusers.
Weinstein could face up to 140 years in prison if convicted on all charges in Los Angeles.
In New York, Weinstein is appealing his 2020 conviction for rape and sexual assault, and is more than two years into his 23-year prison sentence. The state’s highest court has agreed to hear his appeal in that case.