Accuser’s words mark Weinstein trial’s first week
NEW YORK — Within the first three days of Harvey Weinstein’s New York City rape trial, the once-heralded Hollywood titan whom prosecutors described as a “predatory monster” came face to face with an accuser.
The trial that began last week, 839 days after the first of his scores of accusers went public, is expected to last about a month. Weinstein, 67, denies the allegations.
Actress Annabella Sciorra, the key prosecution witness so far, told jurors Thursday that Weinstein bulldozed his way into her Manhattan apartment, shoved her onto her bed and raped her in 1993 or 1994.
Sciorra, now 59, said she tried in vain to get the film producer off her by kicking and punching him.
“I was trying to fight, but I could not fight anymore,” she said.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault, unless they come forward publicly.
Sciorra also testified that on one occasion, Weinstein gifted her X-rated candies. On another, he showed up at her hotel door at the Cannes Film Festival in his underwear, with a bottle of oil in one hand and a videotape in the other, she testified.
Weinstein lawyer Donna Rotunno closed Sciorra’s cross-examination with an old clip of the actress on David Letterman’s talk show, when she told the host that she often made up stories to enliven movie press junkets.
But in the 1997 clip, she went on to explain that those fibs involved inane things such as claiming her father raised iguanas for circuses.
After the clip was played last week, the actress told jurors that she would never lie about something as serious as sexual assault.
The clip came not from Letterman’s production company or CBS, but from a superfan who says he has taped and digitized every episode from Letterman’s 33-year career in late-night television.
In a blog post, Don Giller said he turned over the video after a private investigator working for the defense showed up at his door with a subpoena Wednesday night.
Giller wrote that, after a bit of confusion, he realized, “It was the Harvey Weinstein case, and for some bizarre reason I was somehow involved in it.”
Giller said he felt “awful” assisting Weinstein’s defense, but he felt he had no choice but to give up the recording.
“Still, what I was legally compelled to do will haunt me for a long time,” he wrote.
Actress Rosie Perez made a brief appearance in court on Friday to corroborate her friend Sciorra’s testimony that they had talked about the alleged rape shortly after it happened.
Prosecutors called Perez to the witness stand in an attempt to show that, while Sciorra kept the matter mostly to herself for many years, she did share it with a few people close to her at the time.
Perez told jurors that, during one conversation, Sciorra started whispering that something bad had happened to her. Perez said Sciorra started crying and told her, “I think it was rape.”
Weinstein’s lawyers have suggested Sciorra waited so long to go public with the allegation because she was making it up.
Sciorra is one of six accusers expected to testify against Weinstein. That’s a fraction of the number of women who have come forward in recent years to accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.
The others who plan to take the witness stand are the two women whose allegations led to the criminal charges at the heart of the case and three other women whose testimony, like Sciorra’s, is being used by prosecutors as they attempt to show that Weinstein has repeatedly engaged in similar behavior.
The charges against Weinstein pertain to allegations that he forcibly performed oral sex on former production assistant Mimi Haleyi in his New York apartment in 2006 and that he raped an aspiring actress in a hotel room in 2013.
Weinstein has insisted that any sexual encounters were consensual.
Weinstein’s lawyers are pointing to warm emails and other evidence that they say show some of the women continued to interact with Weinstein after the alleged attacks.
Defense lawyers asked Sciorra on cross-examination why she didn’t flee or call 911 when Weinstein arrived.
On Friday, prosecutors called to the witness stand a forensic psychiatrist who testified at the 2018 retrial that led to Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction in Pennsylvania, aiming to dispel myths about how victims behave in the aftermath of assaults.
Dr. Barbara Ziv said most sexual assault victims continue to have contact with their attackers, who often threaten retaliation if the victims tell anyone what happened.