Weinstein treated me ‘like he owned me’: rape accuser
The woman at the center of Harvey Weinstein’s retrial rape trial testified for the third time; The former Hollywood mogul locked himself in a hotel room in New York and attacked her, ignoring her pleas not to do anything sexual.
“I said ‘no’ over and over and tried to leave,” Jessica Mann tearfully told jurors. “He treated me like he owned me.”
Mann, 40, is a hairdresser and actor. He will testify to jurors six years after he first told jurors about a consensual, albeit messy, relationship that turned into rape.
Weinstein, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who has become a symbol of the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, watched Mann describe what he did to her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013, sometimes sipping water.
Weinstein, now a 73-year-old prison inmate, denies sexually assaulting anyone and is appealing sex crime convictions stemming from accusations by other women on both coasts of the United States. His lawyers have not yet had a chance to question Mann at this retrial, but they have argued that everything that happened between the two was consensual.
He was found guilty of raping Mann in 2020, his conviction was overturned, then the jury deadlocked on the issue in a retrial last year.
Jurors watched intently, many with pens ready to take notes, as Mann underwent a second day of testimony that sometimes brought her to tears, as in two previous trials.
Mann met Weinstein at a party in the Los Angeles area in early 2013. He had done some acting work but was hoping for big success.
Their subsequent meetings alternated between professional advice, invitations to glitzy industry events, and advances that Mann said made him uncomfortable but did not reject.
Nevertheless, Mann decided to have a consensual sexual relationship with the then-married producer.
Shortly after their relationship began, Weinstein surprised Mann by showing up ahead of a breakfast he had planned with her and others in New York, where he was piggybacking on a friend’s business trip. To Mann’s dismay, Weinstein took a room at his hotel, according to Mann and a former front desk employee who previously testified.
Mann said she accompanied Weinstein to the room to handle things privately. But she remembered barking at him to undress.
Mann said she begged, “Please don’t. I don’t want it,” and tried twice to open the door, but Weinstein, who was taller and heavier, slammed the door shut, grabbed her wrists and held them crossed in front of her face.
“It was really scary, so I remember just kind of shutting down and giving up because I was fighting and arguing. So I complied,” she said, undressing and lying on the bed.
When Mann went to the restroom, she later found a syringe used for erectile dysfunction medication, Weinstein returned and raped her.
Mann didn’t tell anyone about it at the time.
“I wanted everyone to act like everything was normal,” he said.
She continued to have consensual sexual relations and friendly email exchanges with Weinstein. He helped Mann, who was struggling financially, get a job at a hair salon, but Mann rejected an envelope he believed contained US$1,000 in cash.
However, after Mann started dating someone she loved, she tried to stop a sexual relationship with Weinstein and sent him an email saying he needed to “respect the relationship.”
The reply message was sincere. But according to Mann, Weinstein was personally enraged when he learned his then-boyfriend was an actor.
“You owe me once again!” As before, Weinstein told jurors that he yelled at her before raping her again at a hotel in Beverly Hills, California.
He was never charged with any crime related to this allegation.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Resolution Support Service 1800 211 028
