LOS ANGELES—An Italian model on Tuesday testified that Harvey Weinstein attacked her inside a Beverly Hills hotel room in 2013, describing how the since-toppled titan called her a “little girl” during a brazen sexual assault and threatened her afterward.
The woman, identified as Jane Doe 1, told jurors in Los Angeles Superior Court that in February 2013, Weinstein showed up to her hotel room unannounced and forced his way inside. Immediately, she said, Weinstein asked to give her a massage—before eventually taking off his pants and forcing her to give him oral sex.
Holding her hair in one hand, and his penis in the other, Jane Doe 1 said, Weinstein “continued to have trouble with an erection” and eventually “walked” her into the bathroom so he could masturbate.
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“C’mon, little girl, tell me you like it. You like it,’” she said Weinstein told her while he held her up against the sink, before adding, “Look at how beautiful you are.”
“I wanted to die. It was disgusting. It was humiliating, miserable. I didn’t fight,” she said. “I remember how he was looking in the mirror and he was telling me to look at him. I wish this never happened to me.”
Afterward, the woman said, she put back on her robe and started to cry. Weinstein, she continued, “acted like nothing happened” before warning her not to tell anyone about the assault.
“You don’t know me” is what she testified the movie mogul told her.
As Jane Doe 1 remained calm—after breaking down on the stand on Monday—Weinstein sat at the defense table, mostly gazing stoically straight ahead with his hands interlocked.
The model was the first to testify against Weinstein in his second sex-crimes trial. The 70-year-old is charged with almost a dozen crimes, including rape, after allegedly sexually assaulting five women in Los Angeles between 2003 and 2014. At least eight women are expected to testify against Weinstein, who is also serving a 23-year prison sentence after being convicted of similar crimes in New York. He has pleaded not guilty in the L.A. case.
During cross-examination, defense lawyer Alan Jackson spent some time sparring with Jane Doe 1 about Weinstein’s erection. Jackson spent several minutes pressing her about how long Weinstein was able to keep his penis erect and how many times he had an erection during the alleged attack.
“He was from time to time having problems with the erection,” she said. “When he was not having an erection he was upset.”
Jane Doe 1 also said that while Weinstein was assaulting her in the bathroom, “he was erect.”
On Monday, prosecutors alleged that Weinstein used his celebrity in the entertainment industry to lure and sexually abuse women under the guise of career development. He used that same power, prosecutors said, to ensure these women stayed silent about the alleged assaults.
“You’re going to hear from eight different women who were assaulted by Harvey Weinstein in Los Angeles,” Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson said on Monday. “Each of these women came forward independent of each other, and none of them knew one another.”
Weinstein’s defense team claims the women are essentially liars who are merely embarrassed by “transactional sex” with the former producer. Defense attorney Mark Werksman went so far as to say that Jennifer Siebel Newsom, one of the Jane Does in the case, would “be just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood” if she wasn’t married to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
But on Tuesday, jurors were focused on Jane Doe 1’s testimony, as she recalled how she initially felt like Weinstein “misunderstood” her limited English when he tried to give her a massage in her hotel room in 2013.
“I was feeling guilty that I did something or said something that made him think that something can happen between us,” she added, noting that she was also “afraid of him physically” because “he was big.”
While she noted that Weinstein wasn’t “loud” during the incident, she said she was “kind of hysterical through tears” as he forced her mouth toward his penis.
“I was panicking with fear,” Jane Doe 1 added, indicating that Weinstein was forcing her to give him oral sex despite the state of his penis. When they eventually moved into the bathroom, she said, Weinstein tried to penetrate her with his penis and fingers.
“I was moving, crying, saying, ‘No. Stop,’” she recalled, adding that she kept moving around so Weinstein could not “get inside” of her. After the assault and threat to stay silent, Jane Doe 1 said, she ultimately did confide in a priest and a friend in Italy.
“I was so afraid that I would have to see him again or interact with him, I didn’t know what to do,” she added, explaining that she eventually went to the police in 2017.
“I was afraid for my life, I was afraid for my kids. I was afraid for my reputation.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Jackson also grilled Jane Doe 1 about the details of her alleged attack—and why she stayed in the same hotel room for two weeks afterward. She admitted on the stand during cross-examination that she never complained about the room and that she remained in Room 808 at Mr. C’s until March 5, despite the hotel’s “massive breach of protocol” by hotel staff in providing the producer with the room she booked under a pseudonym.
