Harvey Weinstein trial: Six women's sexual assault stories

Harvey Weinstein is escorted into court on May 25, 2018, in New York.

Feb. 6, 2020 11:31 AM PT

Manhattan prosecutors rested their case against Harvey Weinstein in New York City on Thursday, where the mogul faces life in prison if convicted of multiple counts of predatory sexual assault and rape that span decades.

Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to all charges, while his attorneys have repeatedly argued the alleged attacks were consensual. The defense began its case Thursday.

Over the last two weeks, Weinstein’s accusers have made a number of graphic allegations of sexual assault in hotel rooms and apartments in New York City, with many of them sharing the same elements — a promise of career advancement, an invitation somewhere private, and a night that accusers said would leave many of them horrified even decades later:

Annabella Sciorra

Sciorra, the Brooklyn actress best known for her role in “The Sopranos,” alleged Weinstein forced his way into her Manhattan apartment in late 1993 or early 1994 and violently assaulted her after they attended an industry event together.

After offering her a ride home from an Irish restaurant, Sciorra alleges, Weinstein came up to her apartment in Gramercy Park and knocked on the door, shoving his way inside when she opened it.

Once inside, Weinstein began unbuttoning his shirt, she said. Fearing he wanted sex, she asked him to leave. Before she could run, she said, he grabbed the front of her nightgown, held her wrists above her head and pinned her down.

“I was trying to get him off of me. I was punching him. I was kicking him. I was just trying to get him away from me and he took my hands and he put them over my head,” Sciorra, 59, said, nearly crying on the stand in January. “He got on top of me and he raped me.”

He then performed oral sex on her, telling her, “This is for you,” Sciorra recounted.

“It was just so disgusting that my body started to shake in a way that was very unusual,” she said. “I didn’t really even know what was happening. It was like a seizure or something.”

Sciorra said she never called police and was confused at the time. She said she thought “rape was something that happened in a back alleyway or a dark place,” committed by “someone you didn’t know with a gun to your head.”

Mimi Haley

Haley, a former production assistant on the Weinstein Co.-produced reality show “Project Runway,” said she first met the mogul at the premiere of “The Aviator” in 2004. Haley said the two had an awkward interaction at the Cannes Film Festival, when he requested a massage.

Not wanting anything more than a professional relationship with Weinstein, Haley said, she left.

Weinstein, however, would not relent, she alleged. He helped her land a job on “Project Runway” in New York, but also repeatedly asked her to travel to Paris with him for a fashion show, at one point showing up at her apartment uninvited, trying to convince her to take the trip, she said. He refused to leave until Haley made a joke about how Weinstein had “a terrible reputation with women,” which seemed to offend him, she testified.

Concerned she had fractured her most important relationship in the film and television industry, Haley said, she agreed to meet with Weinstein again at his SoHo apartment in July 2006.

She remembered the conversation being casual and friendly until Weinstein lunged forward and attempted to kiss her.

Panicked, Haley said, she kept retreating from Weinstein, even mentioning she was menstruating, until she stumbled backward into a bedroom. As Haley recalled the alleged assault, tears began streaming down her face.

“He pushed me down. He held me down by my arms … no, stay, like that … and I said, ‘No, no’ and at that time I started realizing what was actually happening and I thought … this is being raped,” she said Monday.

She said Weinstein had forcible oral sex with her.

Haley recalled a second incident two weeks later at a Tribeca hotel, where, she said, Weinstein threw her onto a bed and forced himself on her. In shock, Haley said, she lay still the entire time while the mogul called her a “whore” and a “bitch.”

“I didn’t resist. I just laid there,” she said, dabbing at her eyes.

Haley has since changed her last name from Haleyi, in part due to the high-profile nature of the Weinstein case. She first went public with her allegation in 2017.

Jessica Mann

A once-aspiring actress from a tiny Washington state dairy town, Mann’s testimony marked the most gut-wrenching portion of Weinstein’s trial so far. She spent three days on the stand recounting a harrowing relationship with the mogul that she said was consensual at times, but was also marked by verbal abuse, degradation and at least two instances of violent sexual assault. On Monday, Mann broke down on the stand during cross-examination, causing Supreme Court Judge James Burke to end proceedings for the day.

Mann said she met Weinstein at a Hollywood Hills party in 2013, and he initially expressed interest in her acting. Their early meetings were cordial — in one instance Weinstein escorted her through the shelves of Book Soup in West Hollywood to help her find reading material that might help her career — but the relationship quickly devolved into one entirely dependent on the mogul’s sexual desires, she alleged.

“It was like Jekyll and Hyde. He could be the most charming, informative person; he could lift you up to anyone he introduced you to and then behind closed doors it was ... dependent on if I gave him what he wanted,” Mann told jurors last week.

Mann said their relationship turned after a meeting for drinks at the Montage in Beverly Hills to discuss a possible role in a “vampire movie.” Weinstein invited Mann and a friend — who is expected to testify for the defense — up to his hotel room.

Once upstairs, Mann said through tears, Weinstein bullied her into a bedroom and forced oral sex on her.

Despite the alleged incident at the Montage, Mann said, she proceeded to participate in a number of consensual sex acts with him.

Mann said Weinstein reminded her of her father, adding that she was desperate for the mogul’s approval in the acting field, while describing a consensual but harrowing relationship in which the Miramax co-founder treated her well in public but allegedly used her as a sexual plaything in private.

While Mann described a number of the encounters as consensual — she said she felt “compassion” for Weinstein — she also said she was not attracted to him. During their encounters, she said, Weinstein was domineering and verbally abusive. In one instance, she said, he urinated on her in a shower.

The two had only engaged in oral sex until 2013, she said, when Mann traveled to New York to help arrange a meeting between Weinstein and a friend of hers working as an agent. The morning of the meeting, Mann alleged, Weinstein checked himself into her hotel. Fearing he was trying to set the stage for a sexual encounter, she said, she confronted him in the hotel lobby.

The mogul grabbed her by the arm and pulled her aside before leading her to the room, she alleged. Once inside, he physically barred Mann from leaving and ordered her to undress.

Unable to escape, Mann said, she “gave up” and had sex with Weinstein against her will.

Later in the same year, Mann said, Weinstein helped her find work as a hairdresser at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. By that time she had begun dating an actor, which Weinstein had expressly forbidden. But she said she was in love and wanted to tell Weinstein, hoping he would end their situation.

Sobbing from the witness stand, Mann told jurors Friday that Weinstein grabbed her once she had admitted she was dating an actor.

“His eyes changed and he wasn’t there. He picked me up from the chair … he was screaming, ‘You owe me! You owe me one more time!’” she alleged, saying he dragged her to a hotel room and raped her.

Dawn Dunning

Dunning was the first of three “Molineux witnesses” to testify in the New York trial, meaning that while her alleged assault could not be prosecuted, the district attorney’s office was allowed to call her to testify about “prior bad acts” that Weinstein allegedly took part in.

She said she met Weinstein while working at a Manhattan nightclub in 2004. He appeared to take an interest in her acting career, so, Dunning said, they arranged several meetings.

During one encounter in a hotel, Weinstein allegedly thrust his hand up Dunning’s skirt and attempted to touch her genitals. Dunning objected and Weinstein asked her not to make a “big deal” of the situation.

Some time later, she said, Weinstein asked her to meet him in a hotel room along with his assistant. Once there, she said, she found Weinstein clad in nothing but a bathrobe, and the mogul had placed three movie contracts on a coffee table. Dunning said Weinstein promised her a role in each contract, as long as she had a threesome with Weinstein and his assistant.

“When he said that, I laughed. I thought he was kidding,” Dunning said. “He got really angry; he started screaming, ‘You’ll never make it in this business. This is how the industry works.’”

She refused and said she fled the hotel. Dunning’s allegation is too old for prosecutors to charge Weinstein with a crime.

Tarale Wulff

Wulff said she met Weinstein while working as a waitress at Cipriani’s in Manhattan in 2005. She said Weinstein, a friend of the venue’s owner, led her away from a VIP area and into an unused terrace section of the restaurant, where, she said, he masturbated under his clothes in front of her.

At trial, prosecutors said Wulff ran past Weinstein and later shrugged off the incident as the mogul being a “dirty old man.”

A few weeks later, after agreeing to what she believed to be an audition at Miramax’s New York offices, Wulff got into a private car sent by Weinstein only to be escorted instead to the producer’s apartment.

After she was led up to his apartment, Wulff said, Weinstein quickly became aggressive with her and used his size and strength to force her onto a bed and ultimately rape her. Wulff’s allegation is also too old to be prosecuted.

Lauren Young

A Pennsylvania native who was 22 at the time of the alleged attack, Young said she had been living in Los Angeles for two years when she first met the mogul in February 2013 in the restaurant of the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills.

Young said a recent acquaintance, who was also present at the Montage that night, arranged the meeting to talk about Young’s unfinished script. After talking briefly at the restaurant over drinks, Weinstein told both women that he needed to go up to his room because he had to prepare to accept an award with Quentin Tarantino that night, Young said.

Once they entered Weinstein’s hotel room, Young said, she unwittingly followed the producer into the bathroom, with the other woman trailing behind. The bathroom was at the end of a hallway attached to the bedroom, Young said, so she didn’t realize where she was being led.

As Young stepped into the bathroom, she said, she looked into a mirror and saw the other woman closing the door, leaving Young alone with the producer. Weinstein entered the shower, turned it on and started undressing, she said.

As Young attempted to leave, she realized that the other woman was blocking the door from the outside, she said.

“That’s when I realized this was set up, she put me in here,” Young testified.

As Young approached the door, Weinstein moved closer to her and prevented her from leaving, she said. Young said Weinstein then backed her toward the sink, and she turned away because she didn’t want to look at his naked body.

Her voice cracked in court as she recalled how she told the producer that she wasn’t interested and that she had a boyfriend. Weinstein then forcefully grabbed and pinched her breast with one hand while masturbating with the other, Young said.

Young’s allegations are among those that led to sexual assault charges against Weinstein in Southern California, where he faces multiple counts of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint.