'He Was Frightening': Actress Tells Jury of Her Rape by Harvey Weinstein in Early 1990s
The defendant has not been charged with rape in Sciorra's case, but prosecutors have said her testimony will help establish a pattern in Weinstein's behavior and support the charge of predatory sexual assault.
January 23, 2020 at 01:03 PM
7 minute read
The original version of this story was published on New York Law Journal
The first of Harvey Weinstein's alleged victims took the witness stand in his Manhattan criminal trial Thursday, struggling to keep her composure as prosecutors asked her to demonstrate how Harvey Weinstein held her arms over her head to keep her from fighting back during an alleged attack in the early 1990s.
Annabella Sciorra was a young actress having her first successes in those years, when she says the former Hollywood producer barged into her Gramercy Park apartment while she was getting ready for bed and raped her.
Sciorra, who had already appeared in a Spike Lee movie and later won a role in the TV series "The Sopranos," said she punched and kicked Weinstein, but told jurors he outweighed her by nearly 200 pounds and overpowered her.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to charges of rape, predatory sexual assault and criminal sex act.
The defendant has not been charged with rape in Sciorra's case, but prosecutors have said her testimony will help establish a pattern in Weinstein's behavior and support the charge of predatory sexual assault.
In the weeks or months after the alleged attack, Sciorra saw Weinstein and confronted him about what happened. She told him she had woken up on the floor after fainting or blacking out that night.
"He said, 'That's what all the nice Catholic girls say,'" Sciorra testified.
Then, she testified, Weinstein leaned in and became very menacing, telling her that "this remains between you and I."
She was afraid, she said. She hadn't gone to the police or told anyone specifically what had happened to her. She was confused, she testified, because she had known Weinstein beforehand and had thought he was "an OK guy," though she had never had any romantic interest in him.
"I would say I felt, at the time, that rape was something that happened, you know, in a back alleyway in a dark place with someone you didn't know, with a gun to your head," she said.
Tearful and isolated, Sciorra said she began drinking and cutting herself. She also said she created a strange art piece on the wall of her apartment with red oil paint, blood and gold leaf.
"I don't know what I was thinking or doing," she said.
In 1994, Sciorra testified, she encountered Weinstein in London, where she was filming a movie with no connection to him or Miramax, his production company at the time. She wasn't sure how Weinstein found out where she was staying, she said, but he left message after message at the desk at her hotel, she said.
When he finally reached her by phone and she turned down a breakfast invitation, Sciorra testified, he spent days sending cars to her hotel to pick her up. After he came to her hotel room door and wouldn't stop knocking, she switched hotels in the middle of the night, asking the producer of her movie to keep her new address private.
After that, she said, she was mostly able to avoid Weinstein and didn't see him on set when she acted in a Miramax movie, "Cop Land," in 1997.
But when she went to the Cannes Film Festival to promote "Cop Land" that year, she learned that Weinstein was staying in the hotel room next door.
When someone knocked on her door very early in the morning, she opened it, expecting that it was an early call for a press appearance for her movie. Instead, she saw Weinstein.
"When I opened the door, the defendant was in his underwear with a bottle of baby oil in one hand and a videotape in the other," she said.
She reached for the hotel phone and pressed every button she could, she said, summoning room service and other hotel staff. Weinstein left.
During cross-examination, Sciorra told Weinstein defense attorney Donna Rotunno she did not remember some details from the time period surrounding the alleged attack but remained confident in the story she'd already told prosecutors.
Rotunno asked her repeatedly why she didn't run out the door of her apartment as Weinstein came in. Sciorra said it all happened fast but acknowledged that Weinstein started to unbutton his own shirt before grabbing her by the front of her nightgown. Still, she was hoping to barricade herself in the bathroom rather than leave the apartment, she said.
"He was too big," Sciorra said. "He was frightening."
Over repeated objections from prosecutors, who claimed Rotunno was adding too much commentary to her questions, the defense lawyer asked Sciorra why she didn't go to the police or completely avoid Weinstein and everyone associated with him.
The producer of her London movie was familiar with Weinstein's behavior toward women, Sciorra said, and together they considered going to the police. But she moved hotels instead and tried to block out her memory of the alleged attack, she said.
Weinstein did not appear to look up while Sciorra recounted the alleged attack to prosecutors, but he spent much of the cross-examination period turned in his chair, looking toward Rotunno. Sciorra stood up, craning her neck, as she identified Weinstein in court, and she did not seem to look at him otherwise.
Judge James Burke said he'll deliberate on whether the actress Rosie Perez can be called as a witness after Weinstein's lawyers objected to the idea late Thursday.
Perez is friends with Sciorra, prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said, and would testify to her conversations with Sciorra in 1994 about the alleged attack.
To end her cross-examination of Sciorra, Rotunno played a clip of Sciorra's appearance on David Letterman's late-night talk show in the late 1990s.
Letterman asked Sciorra if she had to answer the same questions over and over while promoting her movies, and she told him she sometimes made up ridiculous stories rather than sharing her personal life.
The videotape showed Sciorra laughing as she told Letterman that she had expected people would know she was joking when she said her dad raised iguanas for the circus. Sciorra chuckled on the witness stand at the old video.
Illuzzi-Orbon immediately asked Sciorra if she would make things up in a serious matter like the Weinstein case, and she said no.
Throughout her testimony, Sciorra noted that actors routinely attend networking events and parties and go on press tours, including to film festivals, as part of their jobs. The emphasis on acting as her livelihood appeared to strike back at the idea, pushed by defense attorneys, that the alleged victims' continued attendance at events linked to Weinstein demonstrates his innocence.
Forensic psychiatrist Barbara Ziv is expected to testify Friday as an expert witness for the prosecution.
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