The woman at the center of Harvey Weinstein ‘s repeatedly retried rape case testified — for the third time — Tuesday that the former Hollywood honcho trapped her in a New York hotel room and assaulted her, ignoring her pleas not to do anything sexual.
“I said ‘no’ over and over, and I tried to leave,” Jessica Mann told jurors, sobbing. “He just treated me like he owned me.”
Mann, 40, is a hairstylist and actor. She’s testifying six years after she first gave jurors her account of a consensual, if complicated, relationship that veered into rape.
Weinstein — the Oscar-winning movie producer who became a symbol of the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct — looked on steadily, sometimes sipping water, as Mann detailed what she says he did to her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013.
Weinstein, now a 73-year-old prison inmate, denies sexually assaulting anyone and is appealing sex crime convictions stemming from other women’s accusations on two U.S. coasts. His attorneys haven’t yet had their chance to question Mann at this retrial but have argued that everything that happened between the two was consensual.
He was convicted in 2020 of raping Mann, got the conviction overturned, then saw a jury deadlock on it at a retrial last year.
Jurors watched intently, several with pens poised to take notes, as Mann delivered a second day of testimony that sometimes brought her to tears, as it did at the twoprior trials. At points Tuesday, she was asked whether she wanted a break, but she declined.
Mann met Weinstein at a Los Angeles-area party around early 2013, when she had done some acting work but was hoping for a big break.
He expressed interest in her career and followed up with get-togethers that bounced between professional advice, invites to glitzy industry events and advances that made Mann uncomfortable but that she didn’t refuse, according to her testimony. At one point, according to her testimony, she had an emotional “meltdown” that cut off an episode involving Weinstein and another woman.
Despite that distress, Mann decided to have a consensual sexual liaison with the then-married producer. She explained Tuesday that she had been taught “this is just normal for men to kind of be that way, and I just thought that maybe by being in a relationship with him, it would make me feel better.”
Sometimes, she said, Weinstein was charming and made her feel validated; other times she felt demeaned by his discussions of sexual practices. And “if he was told no or something, it was just like this monster side came out” of a demanding man who flaunted his Hollywood influence.
Soon after their relationship began, Weinstein surprised Mann by showing up ahead of a planned breakfast with her and others in New York, where she’d piggybacked on a pal’s work trip, she said. Weinstein took a room at Mann’s hotel, though she protested at the front desk that they didn’t need one, according to her and to a former hotel employee who testified earlier in the trial.
Mann said that after Weinstein snapped at her not to embarrass him, she accompanied Weinstein up to the room, hoping to sort things out privately. But “he wasn’t listening to me; he was just telling me to undress,” she recalled. She said she begged, “Please don’t. I don’t want to,” and tried twice to open the door, but the taller, heavier Weinstein slammed it shut, grabbed her wrists and held them crossed in front of her face.
“That was really scary, so I remember just like kind of like — just shutting down and giving up, because I had been fighting and arguing. So I obeyed,” by undressing and lying on the bed, she testified.
After a trip to the bathroom, Weinstein returned and raped her, she said.
Afterward, she said, she went downstairs with him to breakfast with her friends, feeling shocked but not outwardly showing it.
Mann told no one, at the time, about the alleged rape. She accepted Weinstein’s invitation to extend her trip, attend a movie screening and have tea with him and his daughter.
“I just wanted everyone to act like everything was normal,” she said.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they agree to be named, as Mann has done.
