Jane Doe Tells Court ‘Harvey Weinstein Rape Filled Her With Guilt’
An unnamed woman, who is being referred to in court as 'Jane Doe 1', and who claims Harvey Weinstein raped her in 2013, testified against him on Tuesday, saying she felt guilty and disgusted for years after letting him into her hotel room.
The woman, a model and actor from Rome, who was in Los Angeles for a film festival at the time, said she began binge drinking the day after the incident.
“I was destroying myself,” she said. “I was feeling very guilty. Most of all because I opened that door.”
The 70-year-old former movie magnate is on trial in Los Angeles on numerous charges of rape and sexual assault, and the lady was the first of eight accusers slated to testify. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty while serving a 23-year term for a previous conviction in New York.
The majority of the victims reported that their assaults began during hotel encounters with Weinstein for professional purposes.
However, the witness from Tuesday testified that she was taken aback when he showed up at her door late one night in February 2013 following a brief encounter with him at the Los Angeles Italia film festival.
She was staying at the hotel under an assumed name and claimed she had no idea how Weinstein had gotten her room number or why she had initially let him in. In her words, that abruptly changed when Weinstein became sexually aggressive.
The woman, whose native tongue is Russian but whose command of the English language has improved, admitted that she may have miscommunicated because of her inadequate language skills at the time.
“I was feeling guilty that I did something or said something that made him think something could happen between us,” she said.
She said that Weinstein coerced her into having oral sex on the hotel bed.
“I was kind of hysterical through tears,” she said. “I kept saying ‘no, no, no’.”
She claimed she felt physically threatened by Weinstein since he was significantly larger than her.
She revealed that she pondered running away, as well as hitting and biting him.
Paul Thompson, who works as an assistant district attorney in New York City, inquired why she didn't.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I regret this a lot.”
The woman claimed she ceased physically struggling when Weinstein dragged her into the bathroom to rape her, though she continued to object verbally.
“I would just freeze, like my body wouldn’t listen,” she said.
She had difficulty confronting her children after the incident and felt compelled to confess it to her Russian Orthodox priest. Authorities wanted the priest to testify, but he refused, citing his religious beliefs as a justification. Later on, the woman's daughter, who is now 21, will give testimony.
She constantly looked whenever her emotions got the better of her, but otherwise kept her composure and testified without too many tears.
Hearing her testimony of the assault the day before, the court had to adjourn a few minutes early due to her emotional breakdown.
“I want to apologise for my breakdown yesterday,” she said when she returned to the stand on Tuesday. “Unfortunately I cannot control that.”
Mark Werksman, Weinstein's lawyer, claimed in his opening statement that many of the counts his client is charged with were actually consensual sex that his accusers reframed after he became a lightning rod for the #MeToo movement in 2017.
However, Mr. Werksman has denied the events described by the woman who testified on Tuesday, took place at all.