Actress takes stand in Weinstein trial.
NEW YORK » They met at a party in Los Angeles. She was an up-and- coming actress at the time. He was a young producer. As they got to know each other over the next four years, there were, she said, some “inappropriate” gestures: a care package of popcorn and Valium, a box of chocolate penises.
Then, Annabella Sciorra said on the witness stand Thursday, Harvey Weinstein raped her.
Fighting back tears, Sciorra testified in excruciating detail to a hushed courtroom about the night she said she was attacked. After shoving his way into her Manhattan apartment, she said, Weinstein took her to a bedroom, forced her onto the bed and, as she sought to fight him off, sexually assaulted her.
“I was trying to get him off me,” Sciorra told the jury, her voice cracking with emotion. “I was punching him, kicking him.” But Weinstein held her down, she said, adding: “He got on top of me, and he raped me.”
The searing testimony in state Supreme Court in Manhattan marked the first time that one of Weinstein’s numerous accusers took the stand against him at a long-awaited criminal trial that has come to symbolize the #MeToo movement.
Five more accusers are expected to testify during the trial, although he faces charges of rape and criminal sexual act based on the allegations of only two of them. The judge is allowing the three others to testify to establish a pattern of behavior.
Sciorra’s encounter with Weinstein, 67, happened too long ago to be charged as rape under New York law, but prosecutors are using her testimony to bolster a charge of predatory sexual assault. That count carries a possible life sentence and requires the state to prove Weinstein committed a serious sexual offense against at least two people.
We in - stein’s lawyers maintain that his accusers willingly had sex with him in an effort to advance their careers and that some of them continued to have intimate relationships with him after the alleged assaults.
Sciorra, who is best known for her role in “The Sopranos,” started testifying around 10 a.m. After rising to identify Weinstein, she gave an account of her assault, which she said took place in her apartment in Gramercy Park in either late 1993 or early 1994.
She told the jury that on the night of the attack, she had joined Weinstein at an uneventful dinner with several other people at a restaurant in downtown Manhattan. Weinstein offered to drive her home, she said, and after he dropped her off at 10 p.m., she went upstairs, got into a nightgown and brushed her teeth, preparing herself for bed.
Moments later, she recalled, there was a knock at her door, and she thought it was a neighbor or her doorman. But when she opened the door, she said, she saw it was Weinstein. Sciorra said he pushed his way inside.
When Weinstein unbuttoned his shirt, she said, she realized “he thought we were about to have sex.” She told the jury that she considered running into her bathroom, but before she could, Weinstein grabbed her in the chest area, led her into a bedroom and raped her on the bed, pinning her arms above her head. He then pulled out, ejaculating on her leg and nightgown, and told her he had “perfect timing,” she said.
He then performed oral sex on her and said, “This is for you,” Sciorra recounted.
“I was just shaking like a seizure — I don’t know how else to describe it,” she said.
“I woke up, but I’m not sure if I fainted, blacked out or fell asleep.” She said that she woke up on the floor with her nightgown “kind of up.”
She said that when she saw Weinstein at a restaurant several weeks later, she confronted him about the incident. “This remains between you and I,” she recalled Weinstein telling her.
“It was very menacing,” she said. “His eyes went black — I thought he was going to hit me right there.”
Under questioning by a prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi, Sciorra acknowledged that she never called police, saying she was “confused.”
“He was someone I knew,” Sciorra said. “I felt at the time that rape was something that happened in a back alleyway in a dark place.”
She said she remained mostly silent about the incidents until October 2017, when she spoke to “a journalist” — likely a reference to Ronan Farrow, who published an account of the alleged rape in Manhattan in The New Yorker.
“I was afraid for my life,” Sciorra said.
Donna Rotunno, one of Weinstein’s lawyers, attempted to poke holes in Sciorra’s testimony on cross- examination, pointing out that the actress could not remember the exact date of the alleged assault and several other details about the night.
Rotunno also asked Sciorra why she would open her apartment door without first finding out who might be on the other side.
“So, you hear this knock, you’re in a nightgown and you don’t say, ‘ Who is it?’ ” Rotunno asked.
“No,” Sciorra answered. “I opened the door, and he was right there.”
Sciorra acknowledged to Rotunno that after the alleged assault, she did not see a doctor or call the police. She told a handful of friends, she said, among them actress Rosie Perez.
“At the time,” Sciorra said, “I didn’t understand that was rape.”