Accusers: Weinstein excused lewd acts as a showbiz norm

NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein callously preceded an alleged rape with reassurances that he'd had a vasectomy, one accuser testified Wednesday.

Another accuser on the witness stand at Weinstein's New York City trial said the one-time Hollywood titan tried trading movie roles for sex, claiming the lewd offer was the kind of thing that happened all the time in the film business.

Both were aspiring actresses in their early 20s when they met Weinstein more than 15 years ago, and both say he preyed on their vulnerabilities and dreams of stardom.

Choking back tears, Tarale Wulff told jurors there was no stopping the much larger Weinstein as he grabbed her by the arm, pushed her onto a bed and raped her at his apartment in 2005, during what was supposed to be an audition.

Wulff, now 43 and a model, said she froze, thinking that would make it "easier to get through, to get past it."

Dawn Dunning testified that the year before, Weinstein put his hand up her skirt and fondled her genitals during a meeting in his hotel suite about her fledgling acting career.

At another meeting, Dunning said, he offered to put her in three movies, but only if she had sex with him and his assistant.

"When he said that, I kind of laughed, I thought he was kidding, and he had kind of a crass sense of humor," Dunning testified. "But when I started laughing, he got really angry and started screaming at me. He said, 'you'll never make it in this business, this is how this industry works.'"

Dunning, now 40, said Weinstein went on to namedrop actresses Salma Hayek and Charlize Theron, implying they had done similar things to achieve success — something both women have strongly denied. Hayek has said she had to fight off Weinstein's constant harassment and bullying. Theron was upset when some accusers said he implied they had slept together.

Wulff and Dunning's experiences with Weinstein are not part of the underlying criminal charges against him, but their testimony could be a factor in whether he goes to prison at the end of his landmark #MeToo-era trial.

Prosecutors called them as witnesses under a state law that allows testimony about so-called "prior bad acts," enabling them to explore things like motive, opportunity, intent and a common scheme or plan.

Weinstein, 67, is charged with forcibly performing oral sex on Mimi Haleyi, at the time a "Project Runway" production assistant, in 2006 and raping another aspiring actress in 2013. That woman could testify later this week.

Weinstein has insisted any sexual encounters were consensual.

His lawyers raised doubts about Wulff's recollection after she disclosed that she had worked with a therapist for a year to fill gaps in her memory. Speaking to reporters later, Wulff's lawyer called that line of questioning a "red herring" and said her memory of being raped has never altered.

Weinstein's lawyers also questioned why Dunning waited until last summer to tell prosecutors that Weinstein had fondled her after she had gone public with the jobs-for-sex allegation, first in an article in The New York Times in October 2017.

Weinstein, who was subdued in his interactions with reporters during the trial's first week, seemed looser as he left the courthouse, proclaiming "It went great today. The lawyers killed it." He likened a portion of Dunning's testimony to bull excrement.

The jury of seven men and five women has already heard from Haleyi, who tearfully testified Monday that she tried to fight off Weinstein before he sexually assaulted her, and actress Annabella Sciorra, who testified last week that he overpowered and raped her after barging into her apartment in the mid1990s.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault, unless they agree to be named or gone public with their stories, as Haleyi, Wulff, Dunning and Sciorra have done.