My ‘rape horror’at the hands of Weinstein, by US governor’s wife
THE wife of California’s governor broke down in tears last night as she told a court how disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein allegedly raped her.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom sobbed while describing the ‘horror’ she claims she experienced as Weinstein forced himself upon her in a Beverly Hills hotel room in 2005.
Mrs Siebel Newsom, who is married to governor Gavin Newsom, said the alleged experience was ‘hell’ and her ‘worst nightmare’.
Preparing to testify in Los Angeles led her to have nightmares for the past month, she said.
The dramatic testimony came during the trial in which Weinstein faces 11 charges of sexual assault from 2004 to 2013.
He faces up to 140 years in prison if convicted. Weinstein, 70, is already serving a 23-year sentence for similar crimes after a trial in New York in 2020.
Mrs Siebel Newsom, 48, sat nervously in the witness chair and recounted how she first met Weinstein in September 2005 at the Toronto International Film Festival, when she was an aspiring actress. Today she is a documentary filmmaker.
Breaking down in court, she said she saw him ‘staring at me’. Mrs Siebel Newsom said Weinstein was ‘the kingmaker, he was the top of the industry’ at the time.
She gave him her phone number under the impression he was interested in her work and he later asked her to come to the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills.
Weinstein asked Mrs Siebel Newsom to come to his suite instead of the bar where she had expected to meet him.
Asked why she went, Mrs Siebel Newsom said: ‘Because you don’t say no to Harvey Weinstein.’
They talked for a few minutes before Weinstein left and said he was ‘going to get more comfortable’, she told the jury.
Through tears, she told the court that Weinstein asked her from down the hall to ‘help me’ so she went, only to find him in a bathrobe. Mrs Siebel Newsom said: ‘I thought maybe he was hurt, and I didn’t understand. Then I saw that he was touching himself, and he grabbed me.
‘And he tried to get me to touch him... honestly I panicked. And I just was like frozen. This was not why I came here.
‘It was like a complete manipulation of why I was there. And I just remembered physically trying to back away.’ But Weinstein would not let her through the door. They then ended up in the bedroom. ‘He lifted me and I don’t remember if he carried me or he dragged me,’ she said.
She went on: ‘He starts groping my breasts and touches himself. I’m standing, I’m resisting, against the bed. And he’s touching my breasts and touching himself.
‘Horror. Horror. I’m trembling, I’m like a rock, I’m frigid. This is my worst nightmare. I’m just this blow-up doll that [he is] just trying to masturbate off of.’
She added: ‘I was just worried I was going to get some disease, it was so gross. He was just so big and so determined, he was so aggressive.’
She said that she later felt ‘tremendous shame’ and didn’t contact the police. Weinstein’s lawyers say the two had consensual sex and that she sought to use him to advance her career.
Mrs Siebel Newsom was asked under cross-examination why Mr Newsom accepted Weinstein’s campaign donations if he knew what he had done to his wife.
Mrs Siebel Newsom claimed it was a ‘complex’ situation and that Weinstein was a major Democrat donor.
The trial continues.
‘I panicked, I was frozen’