Friend backs Weinstein accuser’s rape claim United States
Movie and TV actress Rosie Perez took the witness stand at Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial yesterday, giving key testimony that supports a decades-old rape claim by her longtime friend and fellow actress Annabella Sciorra.
Sciorra this week testified in harrowing detail about how Weinstein allegedly raped her after barging into her New York apartment after giving her a ride home from a dinner they attended in late 1993 or early 1994.
She said she confided in Perez, her close friend, not long afterwards but didn’t initially disclose that the assailant was Weinstein.
Perez told the court she got an alarming phone call from Sciorra around 1993, in which her friend told her, ‘‘I think something bad happened . . . I think I was raped’’, before breaking down in tears.
Perez said she asked Sciorra whether she wanted to call the police, but her friend resisted reporting Weinstein, a powerful Hollywood producer, who she later said could have ruined her career.
‘‘I kept trying to call her back all night long, and I was so upset, and she wouldn’t pick up the phone.’’
Perez said she ‘‘put two and two together’’ months later that the Miramax founder and filmmaking powerhouse was the rapist, when she learned that he was harassing Sciorra in London.
Perez held back tears at one point when she admitted having betrayed a promise to ‘‘never to tell anybody’’ Sciorra’s secret.
Weinstein, 67, faces up to life in prison on charges of predatory sexual assault.