A woman who claims Harvey Weinstein raped her in 2013 has testified that she felt guilty and disgusted for years after she let him into a hotel room.
The woman, a model and actress living and working in Rome when she was attending a film festival in Los Angeles, said she started drinking the day after the alleged rape.
“I’m destroying myself,” she said. “I feel so guilty. Most importantly because I opened that door.”
This woman is the first of eight Weinstein The plaintiffs are set to testify in Los Angeles, where the 70-year-old movie mogul is on trial on multiple counts of rape and sexual assault.
Weinstein, who has served 23 years in New York, has pleaded not guilty.
While most of the women said their attacks began in what was supposed to be a business meeting with Weinstein at a hotel, the woman who testified Tuesday said she found him knocking on the door late at night in February 2013.
She said she only met him briefly earlier in the evening at the Italian Film Festival in Los Angeles and stayed at the hotel under a pseudonym.
She said she didn’t know how Weinstein knew her room number, and she let him in at first, not expecting any harm, but Weinstein became sexually aggressive.
The woman, whose first language is Russian, said her English was poor at the time, and although there has been a lot of progress since then, she thinks she may be miscommunicating.
“I felt guilty because I did something or said something that made him think that something might have happened between us,” she said.
Weinstein appeared in court earlier this month.Image: Associated Press
She said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on a hotel bed.
“I cried a little hysterically,” she said. “I kept saying ‘no, no, no’.”
She said she was afraid of Weinstein because Weinstein was 100 pounds or more heavier than her and considered running, hitting or biting him.
When Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson asked her why she didn’t, she replied, “I don’t know. I’m very sorry about that.”
She said she had stopped physically resisting when Weinstein took her to the bathroom and raped her, although she still objected verbally.
“I would freeze like my body wouldn’t listen,” she said.
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She said she had a hard time facing her children after being accused of rape and felt compelled to confess to her Russian Orthodox priest. Prosecutors asked the priest to testify, but he declined, citing religious privilege. The woman’s daughter, 21, will testify in court at a later date.
In his opening remarks, Weinstein’s attorney, Mark Waxman, said many of the crimes his client was charged with were actually consensual sex redefined by his accusers after he became the focus of the #MeToo movement in 2017.
But in the case of the woman who testified on Tuesday, Mr Waxman denied that what happened in her room never happened.