A massage therapist broke down on the stand on Tuesday as she described how Harvey Weinstein groped her and masturbated in front of her after a 2010 appointment—before offering her a book deal and insisting they were “close friends” after the assault.
“He tried to normalize what he did to me. He made me feel like it was strange for making it awkward like masturbation is something everybody does. Basically humiliating me, like my reaction wasn’t normal,” the woman told Los Angeles Superior Court jurors on Wednesday afternoon.
The woman, identified in court as Jane Doe 3, said the assault began after Weinstein’s massage session inside his Montage Hotel room when she went into the bathroom to wash her hands. Suddenly, she said, the movie titan barged in naked and began masturbating—even after she told him to put his clothes back on and stressed that “this is not appropriate.”
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“I was terrified. I thought I was about to get raped,” she said while she began to tear up, insisting that she asked him to stop several times. “He went toward me in a very aggressive manner. He pushed me against the wall. That’s when he started to put his hand under my bra and feel my chest.”
After Weinstein ejaculated on the floor, Jane Doe 3 said she asked the disgraced Hollywood producer why, “why did you do this to me?”
“We’re close friends now, you have full access to me, I want to get you a book deal to write about massage,” Weinstein allegedly responded.
Despite the harrowing incident, Jane Doe 3 said that she began to work on a book about the health benefits of massages with Weinstein’s help. When the book fell apart, she said she was scared to go to the police about the assault, stating that she has several “high-end clients” that she was afraid she would lose if she reported one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.
Eventually, however, she said she ended up finally opening up to one of her clients about the assault while she was giving a massage: controversial actor Mel Gibson.
Jane Doe 3 is one of several women who has taken to take the stand against Weinstein in his sex-crime trial in Los Angeles. Prosecutors allege that between 2003 and 2014, Weinstein sexually assaulted five women—including Jane Doe 5—and used his power to influence their silence.
Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence after being convicted of similar crimes in New York, has pleaded not guilty to almost a dozen charges.
On Friday, after Jane Doe 3 finished her three days of testimony on the stand, her lawyers said in a statement to The Daily Beast they are “incredibly proud of our client...who courageously came forward to report that Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her.”
“She valiantly described the attack and the trauma he caused her and withstood aggressive cross-examination by Weinstein’s counsel who appeared to take pleasure in attacking her testimony because it became more complete over time as is typical of many sexual assault survivors,” the lawyers added.
During cross-examination, Jane Doe 3 was grilled on her decisions to see Weinstein four times despite the initial alleged assault. Defense attorney Mark Werksman spent hours on Friday grilling Jane Doe 3 about each of her alleged encounters and noting that her “recollection changed over time” from when she initially spoke with detectives to her time on the sand.
“Your story is like the U.S. economy—there was inflation,” Werksman at one point argued about her allegations.
Weinstein's defense team has maintained to the jury that the women testifying against Weinstein are lying and that they all had “transactional sex” with the former producer for their own professional gain. “She made a deal. Sex in exchange for something of value. Jane Doe 3 and Mr. Weinstein were friends with benefits,” Werksman argued during opening statements.
But according to Jane Doe 3, she was very vocally against Weinstein trying to sexualize her massage appointments—and felt angry and paralyzed after the initial assault.
After the initial assault, she admitted on the stand that she was “young and naive” and decided not to tell the police—or her fiancé—about the incident. She said about a year after her book fell through, she saw Weinstein again for an appointment after he had indicated that he had injured his food.
“I didn’t think it would be an issue for him to sexually assault me again with an injured leg. I didn’t have my table with me,” she said.
But after the massage was over, she said that Weinstein asked her if she wanted to continue “being close friends”—to which she understood as his request to masturbate in front of her again. She told the jury that she “went into shock” and tried to take control of the situation by insisting he could not touch her.
Jane Doe 3 said that he ended up masturbating “about six feet away from me…[and] he kept telling me to watch him.”
“That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to come forward. Because this is embarrassing,” she added, noting that she felt “disgusted” afterward. Jane Doe 3 confirmed that she had a total of four massage sessions with Weinstein.
Eventually, she said that she ended up telling Mel Gibson after the actor brought up a movie he was possibly going to work on with Weinstein.
“I freaked out, I started basically saying how could you ever want to work with this man, why would you ever want to work with this person? He asked what happened,” Jane Doe 3 said. “I went into shock and I started crying. He was the first person that I finally opened up to about what happened. I told him that he sexually assaulted me, but I didn’t want to get into all the details, I was embarrassed and humiliated.”
Gibson asked her if she wanted to report the assault to the police or to speak to a lawyer, but Jane Doe 3 said she was overwhelmed at first because “it was the first time I had ever opened my mouth and told someone about it verbally.”
The actor is set to take the stand in support of Jane Doe 3’s allegations. Weinstein’s lawyers have previously revealed they plan to question Gibson about his infamous antisemitic remarks during a 2006 arrest and his 2010 racist comments to a girlfriend.
It took years, Jane Doe 3 said, to finally open up about her whole harrowing experience with Weinstein—and that she felt remorse for not coming out sooner.
“I blame myself because I didn’t do more. I blame myself because I just wish I did more,” she added.
