NEW YORK--A onetime aspiring actress told a Manhattan jury on Friday that Harvey Weinstein raped her in a hotel room while she was in an "extremely degrading" relationship with the movie producer.
The woman, Jessica Mann, said she told no one about what had happened. "I was so embarrassed," she said, crying on the witness stand.
Mann likened Weinstein to "Jekyll and Hyde," saying he could be charming in public but often showed frightening anger when they were alone. "If he heard the word 'no,' it was like a trigger for him," she said.
Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty to raping Mann and to sexually assaulting another woman, Mimi Haleyi. Since 2017, more than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct. Weinstein has denied any nonconsensual sex. The trial is widely seen as a milestone in the #MeToo movement, in which women have accused powerful men in business, entertainment, media and politics of sexual misconduct.
Mann, now 34, testified that she met Weinstein in late 2012 or early 2013 at a party in Los Angeles and that he told her he was interested in her as an actress. Weinstein later invited her and her friend to a hotel suite in Los Angeles, Mann testified. When they arrived, Mann said, Weinstein pulled her into a bedroom, leaving her friend outside.
There, she said, Weinstein told her to sit on the bed and performed oral sex on her. Mann said she pretended to have an orgasm so he would stop. Weinstein is not charged with a crime in connection with that encounter.
Mann said she then entered into a relationship with Weinstein. "I entered into what I thought was going to be a real relationship with him and it was extremely degrading from that point on."
When Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi asked her why she stayed in a relationship, Mann, often crying, said there was "no short answer."
"One of the aspects initially was that I had had a sexual encounter" with him, she said. "That wasn’t something I could undo. That really confused me and hurt me."
She said she engaged in oral sex with Weinstein during the relationship but never had intercourse with him until he raped her at a hotel in Manhattan in 2013. She said she wrote "flattering" emails during her relationship with Weinstein but that those were driven by fear.
Damon Cheronis, one of Weinstein's lawyers, said in his opening statement that communications between Mann and Weinstein would show that their relationship was entirely consensual. Jurors have already heard from Haleyi, who said Weinstein forced oral sex on her in his home in 2006, as well as from actress Annabella Sciorra, who said Weinstein violently raped her in her apartment in 1993 or 1994. While Sciorra's allegation is too old to support a separate rape charge against Weinstein, prosecutors hope it will show he is a repeat sexual predator - a charge that could put him in prison for life.
Two women who are not part of the criminal charges, Dawn Dunning and Tarale Wulff, have also testified that Weinstein sexually assaulted them. Prosecutors are offering their testimony as evidence of Weinstein's methods and motives.
A third such witness, Lauren Young, is expected to testify later in the trial.
Weinstein, who produced films including “The English Patient” and “Shakespeare in Love,” has denied the allegations.
