The daughter of an Italian model allegedly assaulted by Harvey Weinstein took the stand on Tuesday, describing to jurors how she felt empowered to come forward to police about her own sexual assault after her mother revealed to her what the toppled Hollywood producer allegedly did in 2013 inside a Beverly Hills hotel room.
Maria C., who is Jane Doe 1’s 21-year-old daughter, told Los Angles Superior Court jurors that after she was sexually harassed by a former high school classmate, she was initially reluctant to go to the authorities. But during a 2017 conversation with her mother after dinner, Jane Doe 1 insisted she step up and report the abuse—before eventually saying that she too had experienced a similarly harrowing experience and chose to stay silent.
“I said that I just wanted to leave it in the past. That I just wanted to get it over with. That I just wanted the student to stop stalking me. I told her she didn’t understand,” Maria C. said on the stand. “She said that she understands like never before because she had been raped.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Weeks after Maria C. filed her September 2017 police report, she said she pressed her mother to finally tell her story—including the name of her alleged attacker.
“I had told my mom that I had made my part of the deal,” she said. “I kept my part of the deal, and it was her turn, and I wanted to know who it was.”
Maria C. told jurors that unlike their first conversation about the assault—where her mother was “holding back but very comforting”—Jane Doe 1 “couldn’t stop moving around and fidgeting” when she finally told her daughter that Weinstein had allegedly sexually assaulted her in February 2013.
Her daughter said after the conversation, she googled Weinstein—and realized she had seen him at a film festival earlier that year. During the 2017 Los Angeles Italia Film Festival, she said Jane Doe 1 “became very nervous” and rushed them out of the room when she saw Weinstein “sitting and staring right at my mom and I without taking his gaze off.”
Eventually, Maria C. said she also learned “the man who raped her was at the beginning of the first few articles of the MeToo movement.”
Jane Doe 1 previously told the jury that Weinstein showed up at her hotel room unannounced in 2013. After allegedly forcing his way inside Room 808 at Mr. C’s, she said Weinstein eventually took off his pants and forced her to give him oral sex. When he had “trouble with an erection,” she said Weinstein “walked” her to the bathroom, where he masturbated and held her against the sink.
“C’mon, little girl, tell me you like it. You like it,’” she said Weinstein told her at one point in the bathroom. “I wanted to die. It was disgusting. It was humiliating, miserable. I didn’t fight.”
After the assault, she said Weinstein warned her not to tell anyone before stressing, “You don’t know me.”
The model was the first to testify against Weinstein in his sex-crimes trial in Los Angeles. Weinstein, 70, has pleaded not guilty to a slew of charges, including rape, after prosecutors allege he sexually assaulted five women between 2003 and 2014. Jane Doe 1 is among the eight women who are set to testify against Weinstein, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison after being convicted of similar crimes in a 2020 New York trial.
