Harvey Weinstein accuser Jessica Mann describes alleged rape in Midtown hotel
One-time actress Jessica Mann told jurors Monday she 'felt like I was being discovered' when film mogul Harvey Weinstein met her at a party and told her she was prettier than Natalie Portman — but that feeling gave way to horror and, ultimately, rape.
Mann, 39, testified in grim detail about how the fallen Hollywood mogul forced himself on her in the DoubleTree Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, commanding her to 'undress now' despite her pleas of 'Please, no, I don't want to do this.'
'And this is about the moment where I just gave up and I just wanted to be out,' Mann said, hyperventilating and crying as she recounted the alleged March 18, 2023 attack. 'I undressed and he stood over me and he waited until I was fully naked, and he told me to lay on the bed, so I obeyed and I did it.'
Mann took the stand Monday in Weinstein's sex assault retrial in Manhattan Supreme Court, more than five years after she testified at his first trial in 2020 that he raped her in 2013 in New York and Beverly Hills. Weinstein's guilty verdict was overturned by the state's highest court last year.
Mann, an evangelical raised in Washington state, wept as she described her history as a sexual abuse victim dating back to when she was 16 and an older man from her church assaulted her. 'My stepfather told me that it was my fault because I turned him on and also that it would be my word against his and that would open us up to a lot.'
She wound up moving to Los Angeles to pursue an acting dream, and she and her roommate, Talita Maia, met Weinstein at a party sometime at the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013.
'He told me that I had a really good look. He said I was prettier than Natalie Portman. He was interested in me. He knew how to spot talent, things like that,' she said. 'I don't know, I felt like I was being discovered.'
She described how he once pressured her into giving his blackhead-covered back a massage — 'I would describe it as the texture of bark' — and told the jurors about his disfigured genitals, which looked burned, and 'like he had a vagina.'
After she and Maia attended an Oscar-viewing party in February 2013, the two women accompanied Weinstein to room in the Montage Hotel, she said. With Maia in another room, the movie producer cornered Mann, held her arms and performed oral sex on her.
'There was a certain point where I just wanted to get out of here, so I faked an orgasm, thinking it will make him stop, which he did,' she said.
She entered into a 'relationship' with him after that, partly because she had her career and a possible part in the movie 'Vampire Academy' to think about. She didn't get that part.
'I think there was a lot of reasons that go into this. At that time initially I was very confused about what had happened. I was giving him a sense of benefit of the doubt,' Mann said. 'The other part of that is with the film on the line, I've given up so much to pursue acting…. You don't want to p–s off a very important person.'
She referred to Weinstein as 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,' explaining that at times he'd validate her and encourage her, though 'the monster inside' would come out when he heard the word 'No.'
The attack at the DoubleTree Hotel came while she was on vacation with an agent friend. Weinstein wanted to meet her, and he showed up one morning at the hotel desk, asking for a room she said.
Panicking, she tried to signal to the hotel staff that she didn't want to go to a hotel room with Weinstein, but staff booked a room for him anyway. She followed him upstairs, she testified, and raped her. After the attack, she saw a needle in the bathroom trash, that she later learned was to restore function to his penis.
She didn't tell anyone about the attack, she said, or call police, because she didn't think it would make a difference.
'I didn't think anyone would believe me. For me, the minute I told somebody, that's the minute I would really lose control,' she said, adding that she feared he had powerful friends, like former President Bill Clinton. 'I also felt like there wasn't a system that was big enough to hold him accountable…. He could just call his friends and I'd have Secret Service come to my door. I don't know. I had all these ideas.'
Mann kept in touch with Weinstein throughout 2013, often showering him with compliments and lines like, 'Miss you, big guy,' in e-mails. She testified she was trying to keep him at arm's length, but didn't want to anger or reject him.
She refused to take money from him when he offered, though, and declined to accept an envelope of cash he was trying to send her in 2013.
'I never took money from him. I never wanted his dirty money. I wasn't for sale,' she said. 'And I f—ing needed it. I was starving. I was really broke.'
Her testimony resumes Tuesday.
The Manhattan Supreme Court retrial has featured days of testimony from two other accusers, former TV production assistant Miriam Haley, and Polish model and aspiring actress Kaja Sokola.
Haley also testified at Weinstein's 2020 trial, which ended with a jury finding him guilty of raping Mann and of criminal sex act based off Haley's allegations.
He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but the state state Court of Appeals overturned that conviction, ruling 4-3 that the trial court judge shouldn't have allowed testimony of 'uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.'
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