The three women who testified against Hollywood producer

In 2020, three female witnesses testified they had been sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein while he was on trial for raping another woman.

Their testimonies were permitted under a New York State law, known as the Molineux Rule, which allows testimony from “prior bad acts” to be considered to demonstrate patterns of behaviour.

At the time of the trial, it was said the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Weinstein rested almost entirely on the women’s testimony, according to The New York Times.

However, New York’s court of appeal has now ruled the trial judge made a mistake by letting prosecutors introduce testimony from the three women who were not part of the charges he faced.

These are the three women who took to the stand.

Lauren Young, actress

In 2013, Weinstein met aspiring actress Lauren Young to discuss a script she had written at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills.

Young told jurors at Weinstein’s trial she was paralysed with fear when he blocked her from leaving the bathroom and began to masturbate in front of her while groping her breasts.

“I was scared of Harvey Weinstein — that he would hurt me, or send someone to hurt me, or ruin my career, or make my life hell,” she told the court at the time.

Dawn Dunning, actress and producer

Dawn Dunning, a former waitress and aspiring actress, first met Weinstein in 2004 at a nightclub in New York City where she worked.

He offered to help her with her film career and called a meeting in a hotel room where he allegedly slid his hand up her leg.

Dunning told jurors that “his hand went under my underwear”. Weinstein allegedly told Dunning the incident wasn’t a “big deal” and that it would not happen again.

After testifying about the hotel encounter, Dunning detailed a second encounter with the film producer at another meeting with him at a different hotel.

Dunning said she assumed the earlier incident was a one-off, until she arrived at Weinstein’s hotel and he answered the door wearing an open dressing gown.

Inside the hotel room, Weinstein allegedly had three movie contracts on the coffee table.

She claimed he then pointed to the contracts and said: “You can have all three of these parts if you have a threesome with me and my assistant”.

Dunning said that after she assumed he was joking, he became angry and exclaimed: “You’ll never make it in this business. This is how this industry works. This is how actresses got to where they are.” Tarale Wulff, model

Model Tarale Wulff told jurors during the initial trial Weinstein masturbated in front of her at work and later raped her in his Soho apartment.

Wulff met Weinstein at a bar in 2005 where she was waitressing.

She claims after telling the former producer she was an actor, he told her “you have a great look, you should come talk to my people”.

At the bar, Weinstein allegedly took Wulff upstairs. She told the court: “I noticed that his shirt started moving. He had on a white shirt. And I realised he was masturbating under his shirt, and I just froze for a second, then I just threw the towel and ran past him,” she told the court.

One week later, Wulff went to meet the producer about a script.

Weinstein sent a car for her that took her to an apartment building in downtown Manhattan where Weinstein allegedly forced her to have sex with him.