Sopranos actress was ‘destroyed’ by Weinstein rape, trial jury is told
Jurors in the New York trial of Harvey Weinstein have heard in graphic detail accusations of how the hulking film producer pinned down women and raped them.
One female juror visibly winced as Meghan Hast, the associate district attorney, described how Annabella Sciorra, The Sopranos actress, was raped.
‘‘Annabella remembers giving up the fight, just hoping it would end,’’ said Hast, before providing a harrowing description of the alleged rape. She said that Sciorra then ‘‘began violently shaking. Emotionally and physically destroyed, passing out on the floor’’.
She described the accusations made by Mimi Haleyi, a production assistant, that in 2006 Weinstein ‘‘lunged at her’’, pinning her down on a bed, forcibly performing oral sex on her.
Jessica Mann, an actress whose credits include the comedy Cavemen, alleges Weinstein raped her in 2013.
Eight months later, Mann told Weinstein that she had a boyfriend, Hast said, and that Weinstein ‘‘dragged her to the bedroom ... while screaming at her that she owed him one more time’’.
The prosecutor alleged that Weinstein demanded Mann take off her clothes, but she resisted, crawling up to the top of the bed into the fetal position.
Weinstein allegedly then raped her again, before dragging her into the bathroom and forcing her to perform oral sex on him.
Hast said that Weinstein later called Mann from the other room, telling her: ‘‘I just want to apologise. I find you so attractive, I couldn’t resist you.’’
Prosecutors have based their case on the accusations made by Mann and Haleyi.
Sciorra’s accusations, dating from around 1993, fall out of the statute of limitations but will be used as supporting evidence. The prosecutors also mentioned accusations made by two aspiring actresses: Dawn Dunning, who bolted from a room from near naked Weinstein in 2004, and Tarale Wulff, who claims that in 2005 Weinstein raped her as she lay on the bed ‘‘like a dead fish’’.
Hast continued: ‘‘Different women from different places, decades apart with the same crime.
‘‘That man was a sexual predator and a rapist.’’
The defence team of Weinstein, who denies all charges, are claiming any sexual activity was consensual. They then began laying out their arguments. ‘‘Everything Hast just told you is not evidence,’’ Damon Cheronis told the jury. ‘‘She wasn’t there. She’s relying on what they told her happened.’’
He then sketched out ‘‘shocking’’ evidence of apparently cordial communication between Mann and Weinstein.
‘‘Thank you for your unfailing support and kindness,’’ Mann emailed Weinstein, around the time she informed him about her boyfriend, he said. In 2017 a text from Mann to Weinstein said: ‘‘I love you, I always do. But I hate feeling like a booty call.’’ The text was signed with a smiley face emoji.
‘‘That is not how you talk to your predator,’’ he said. The trial continues.