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Harvey Weinstein Scandal
An attorney for Harvey Weinstein at his Los Angeles rape and sexual assault trial told jurors on Thursday that prosecutors' case relies entirely on asking them to trust women whose testimony showed they were untrustworthy. Take my word for it' five words that sum up the entirety of the prosecution's case, Jackson told jurors in his closing argument. The 70-year-old former movie magnate is charged with raping and sexually assaulting two women and committing sexual battery against two others. Jackson argued that two of the women were entirely lying about their encounters, while the other two took part in transactional sex for the sake of career advancement that was 100 per cent consensual. But after the #MeToo explosion around Weinstein with stories in the New York Times and the New Yorker which Jackson called a dogpile on his client the women became regretful. Regret is not rape, Jackson told jurors several times. Weinstein is already serving a 23-year sentence for a conviction
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, faced cross-examination from one of Harvey Weinstein's attorneys Tuesday about why her description of a 2005 encounter during which she says the filmmaker raped her has expanded since she first spoke with prosecutors. The testimony came three weeks into the Los Angeles rape and sexual assault trial of Weinstein, and on the same day that the judge dismissed four of the 11 counts against him at the request of prosecutors. Weinstein lawyer Mark Werksman pressed Siebel Newsom about what she said were frequent nightmares she'd been having about the encounter with Weinstein in a Beverly Hills hotel suite. Have you had a difficult time actually discerning what happened in a nightmare and what actually happened in a bedroom at the Peninsula Hotel? Werksman asked. No, no, Siebel Newsom responded. She explained that the new elements of her testimony, some of which she said under oath for the first
- "The Sopranos" actress Annabella Sciorra's voice cracked as she told a court Thursday that being raped by Harvey Weinstein left her feeling like she was having "a seizure" and caused her to self-harm. In emotional testimony at Weinstein's trial, Sciorra described how he barged into her New York apartment late at night in the early 1990s and attacked her while she was wearing a nightgown. "It was just so disgusting that my body started to shake in a way that was very unusual. I didn't really even know what was happening," the 59-year-old said. Sciorra faced the jury as she held her hands above her head and clasped her wrists to demonstrate how Weinstein, then three times her weight, held her down on her bed and sexually assaulted her. "He got on top of me and he raped me," she said, under questioning by lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon. "He put his penis inside of my vagina and he raped me," Sciorra repeated. Weinstein, 67, avoided eye contact and gestured towards one of his .