LOS ANGELES (AP) — An legal professional for Harvey Weinstein peppered a girl with questions Wednesday on the shortage of forensic proof that the film magnate raped her in 2013, or that he was even on the resort the place she says the assault occurred.
“You don’t have any bodily proof to current to this jury that any of this occurred, do you?” lawyer Alan Jackson requested pointedly throughout cross-examination.
When the choose on the 70-year-old Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial sustained an objection to the query as a result of it referred to as for hypothesis, Jackson obtained extra particular:
“No,” the girl stated quietly.
“No,” she replied, then added, “Do you assume anyone after rape makes a video?”
She started crying softly as she answered “no” to a sequence of comparable questions on whether or not she had any documentation of bruises, scrapes, cuts, or handprints on her face from Weinstein holding her down, or had been given a sexual assault examination.
“Do you may have any bodily proof that you just have been even with Mr. Weinstein?” Jackson requested.
Her crying grew louder as she answered, “I had his jacket, however I gave it away.”
The lady, a mannequin and actor who was working in Rome, is the the primary of Weinstein’s accusers to testify on the trial and spent parts of three days on the witness stand.
Prosecutors have introduced pictures and different proof that each Weinstein and the girl have been on the Los Angeles Italia Movie Pageant, which she had come to California to attend in February 2013.
However they haven’t but produced something that places Weinstein at her resort on the evening she says he pressured her to carry out oral intercourse on her mattress then raped her in her toilet.
The lady didn’t go to police till October of 2017, when ladies’s tales about Weinstein made him the central determine within the #MeToo motion.
She maintains that Weinstein left her jacket within the room and she or he gave it to resort employees, however no lost-and-found data have been found to exhibit it.
Requested whether or not the explosion of media tales round Weinstein prompted her to go to police, the girl repeated earlier testimony that she had already determined to file a report earlier within the yr when she urged her teenage daughter to go to authorities over sexual harassment she’d been subjected to at college.
The lady goes solely by “Jane Doe 1” in court docket. Her age and birthplace have additionally been stored out of court docket proceedings, although she has stated her first language was Russian and she or he was residing on the time along with her three kids in Italy, the place she had married into appreciable wealth.
The Related Press doesn’t sometimes title individuals who say they’ve been sexually abused except they arrive ahead publicly.
Weinstein’s protection tried to poke holes in her testimony and press on inconsistencies in earlier accounts she gave to police, to prosecutors, to a grand jury, and within the first two days of her trial testimony.
In graphic questioning, Jackson dwelt on the girl’s description in her preliminary interview with police of oral intercourse she stated Weinstein pressured her to carry out. Jackson recommended that Weinstein’s uncommon genital options after a surgical procedure he had years earlier made the acts she described not possible.
The identical acts went unmentioned throughout her 2020 grand jury testimony, and Jackson requested her whether or not she had discovered extra about Weinstein’s intercourse organs from prosecutors and thus modified her story.
“By no means!” she stated adamantly.
Below questioning later from the prosecution, she described “very unhealthy scarring tissue” round Weinstein’s genitals.
It was the primary time jurors heard from a witness about Weinstein’s anatomy, which arose usually in his 2020 trial in New York, the place he was convicted of rape and sexual assault and sentenced to 23 years in jail.
The lady advised prosecutor Paul Thompson that she had been having panic assaults and had hardly slept or eaten since her testimony started Monday afternoon. It lastly ended late Wednesday.
Weinstein has pleaded not responsible to 11 counts of rape and sexual assault involving 5 ladies.
When prosecutors gave their opening assertion Monday, nevertheless, they excluded one of many ladies, placing into query whether or not the 4 counts involving her will likely be addressed in the course of the trial.
The district legal professional’s workplace has declined to elucidate when requested concerning the problem.
Weinstein’s attorneys stated no fees have been dropped.