The accuser at Harvey Weinstein ‘s rape retrial resumed testifying Friday, a day after she said she was having difficulty focusing on the witness stand.
Jessica Mann returned to court for further questioning from the former movie magnate’s lawyers, who spent the morning scrutinizing her communications and get-togethers with him after the alleged rape in March 2013.
“I’m not doing too good right now, so I’m really trying to remember,” Mann said. She soon added: “I feel like I said a lot, and I’m trying to get through this.”
But she went on to respond to hours of questions, at times seeming exhausted or asking for queries to be repeated.
Mann, 40, and Weinstein, 73, are in the midst of the third trial about her accusation that he forced himself on her in a New York hotel room. Weinstein’s lawyers say everything that happened between the two was consensual and part of a four-year, caring relationship.
He was initially convicted in 2020, but an appeals court overturned that verdict, and jurors at a retrial last year stopped deliberating on the rape charge when the foreperson refused to participate further. That left the case unresolved and led to the ongoing re-retrial.
Weinstein was a high-flying film producer until allegations about him fueled the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct in 2017. He has said he “acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone.”
He and Mann met in early 2013, when he was a studio boss and she was a 27-year-old hairstylist and actor trying to build a movie career. She has testified that he soon started making advances, and although she was taken aback, she decided to embark on a relationship with the then-married Weinstein.
She alleges that a few weeks later, he trapped her in a midtown Manhattan hotel room, angrily ordered her to undress as he loomed over her, ignored her protests and raped her.
Their relationship continued, on and off, for years afterward. Mann has testified that she loved “a part of him” and “always tried to see the good in him,” and that she was wary of crossing a well-connected man who flexed his power. He boasted that his “enemies don’t step a foot in this town,” she said.
On Friday, Weinstein lawyer Teny Geragos took Mann back through various friendly and complimentary emails that she sent to or about Weinstein over the years. In one May 2013 text, she told a friend that “I like the Harvey we know. I feel some sense of protection.”
Mann told jurors he helped her navigate the movie industry and “there was a time when I felt he did protect me.”
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they agree to be named, as Mann has done.
