On f ilm, Weinstein ‘puts hand up woman’s dress’
She claims he groped her saying: ‘Let me have a little part of you’
‘I felt trapped. He cornered me’
ONE of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers released a video yesterday taken at business meeting in which she claims he reached under the table and up her dress.
Melissa Thompson recorded the footage on her laptop at the Weinstein Co offices in New York in September 2011 as she was trying to pitch her tech start-up to him.
The video shows Weinstein stroking Miss Thompson’s shoulder repeatedly and rubbing her back as they hug.
Miss Thompson also claims Weinstein groped her groin just out of the view of the camera as he says: ‘Let me have a little part of you. Give it to me.’
She has made her allegations in a class action civil lawsuit which names Weinstein’s former production company Miramax, the Walt Disney Co and Weinstein himself as defendants. She claims that, a few hours after the meeting, Weinstein raped her at the Tribeca Grand Hotel – an allegation he has denied.
Miss Thompson recorded the footage because she wanted to demonstrate her firm’s video and analytics service. It was the pair’s first formal encounter.
She went to the Weinstein Co offices expecting to meet the marketing team but Weinstein came into the office, saying ‘Don’t interrupt’ to staff as he locked the door.
The video, which was released to Sky News, shows Miss Thompson, who was 28 at the time, sitting next to Weinstein, who was 59, inches from the camera.
Weinstein sits down and asks: ‘So am I allowed to flirt with you?’ Miss Thompson appears to be caught off guard and says: ‘Ummm we’ll see, a little bit.’ She told Sky News that she tried to ‘volley a bit with him’ to save face because she did not want to ruin the meeting.
But at one point Weinstein’s eyes became ‘dark’ and his face changed so that he ‘looked like a predator’, she said. During one interaction, Miss Thompson says: ‘Data’s so hot, right?’, to which Weinstein replies: ‘It is. You’re hot.’
In the footage, Miss Thompson looks uncomfortable and looks away at the moment she claims that Weinstein was groping her groin. On the video he says: ‘Let me have a little part of you. Give it to me. It’s okay, would you like to do it some more?’
She looks flustered and replies: ‘A little bit…a little high, that’s a little high, that’s a little high.’
During some parts of the video, Miss Thompson softly punches Weinstein on his shoulder or leans towards him.
Asked by Sky journalist Hannah Furness if she thought she was flirting with him, Miss Thompson said she felt Weinstein was playing ‘cat-and-mouse’ to ‘see how far he could push me so that he could gauge my vulnerabilities’.
She said: ‘I don’t think I purposely encouraged him. I think there was a combination of confidence and naivety that led me to this dynamic that we see now, watching back.’
At the end of the meeting Miss Thompson and Weinstein arranged to meet at the Tribeca Grand Hotel at 5.30pm that day. According to Miss Thompson’s lawsuit, Weinstein asked her to come to his room where he asked her to perform a sex act on him but she refused. He allegedly pushed her on to the bed and raped her.
Miss Thompson told Sky News she felt cornered: ‘If I would try to fight myself away from him, he would then move around to a place where he could block me in. I constantly felt trapped, no matter where I turned.’
As well as the civil lawsuit, Weinstein, 66, faces criminal charges that could see him jailed for life, including predatory sexual assault and rape. He denies all non-consensual sexual contact. As a result of the scandal, his wife Georgina Chapman has divorced him and Weinstein Co filed for bankruptcy.
In a statement, Weinstein’s lawyer Ben Brafman said last night: ‘Several respected journalists and trustworthy individuals have seen the entire video. What they shared with us is that the video, when viewed in its entirety, in context and not in select excerpts, demonstrates that there is nothing forceful, but casual – if not awkward – flirting from both parties.
‘Anything short of that is intended to make Mr Weinstein appear inappropriate, and even exploitative. It was produced by Ms Thompson to bolster her position in a civil lawsuit seeking money. This is a further attempt to publicly disgrace Mr Weinstein for financial gain, and we will not stand for it. Facts do matter.’