Actress Annabella Sciorra confronted Harvey Weinstein in court Thursday after keeping her rape accusation against the former Hollywood honcho largely hidden for decades.
For more than a quarter-century, she told only few friends that the once-revered producer had pinned her to a bed and violated her, until she came forward publicly in 2017.
Now, Sciorra has become the first of Weinstein’s accusers to testify at his New York City rape trial.
Sciorra, best known for her work in “The Sopranos," stands to be a key witness in a watershed trial for the #MeToo movement.
Sciorra, 59, started acting in the late 1980s and soon drew acclaim for her leading part in Spike Lee’s 1991 film “Jungle Fever” and her role as a pregnant woman molested by her doctor in 1992's “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” the next year.
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The New York trial involves just a pair of the dozens of allegations that surfaced against Weinstein in recent years. He is charged with forcibly performing oral sex on former “Project Runway” production assistant Mimi Haleyi in his apartment in 2006 and raping an aspiring actress in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013.
Weinstein has insisted any sexual encounters were consensual. As he left court on Wednesday, he told reporters he felt “very confident” about the case.
A guilty verdict could put the 67-year-old disgraced movie mogul in prison for the rest of his life.
Annabella Sciorra attends HBO’s “The Sopranos” 20th anniversary at the SVA Theatre on Jan. 9, 2019, in New York. She is set to testify on Jan. 23, 2020, against Harvey Weinstein, who she says pinned her to a bed and raped her in the early 1990s.
Annabella Sciorra attends HBO’s “The Sopranos” 20th anniversary at the SVA Theatre on Jan. 9, 2019, in New York. She is set to testify on Jan. 23, 2020, against Harvey Weinstein, who she says pinned her to a bed and raped her in the early 1990s. (Charles Sykes / Associated Press)
Sciorra's allegations date back too long to be prosecuted on their own, but her testimony could be a factor as prosecutors look to show that Weinstein has engaged in a pattern of predatory behavior.
Her testimony about events in the mid-to-late 1990s could give the jury of seven men and five women a sense of the breadth of Weinstein’s alleged wrongdoing and insight into the power dynamics at play in his interactions with young actresses.
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Prosecutors previewed Sciorra’s testimony in a lengthy, at-times graphic opening statement Wednesday that painted Weinstein as a sexual predator who used his film industry clout to abuse women for decades.
She's one of four other accusers that prosecutors plan to call as witnesses during the monthlong trial.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault, unless they come forward publicly.
Sciorra alleges Weinstein showed up at her Manhattan apartment after dropping her off from a dinner, forced himself inside and raped her sometime in late 1993 or early 1994.
“The evidence will show that despite her protests, despite her fight, despite her body revolting, Harvey Weinstein felt he was entitled to take what he wanted from Annabella , forcing her to live in terror of him for decades,” prosecutor Meghan Hast told jurors in her opening statement.
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That touched off several years of Weinstein tormenting Sciorra, Hast said, culminating in an incident at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 in which he arrived at her hotel door in his underwear, with a bottle of baby oil in hand.
A petrified Sciorra ran to the back of the room and started hitting call buttons, at which point Weinstein left, Hast said.
Sciorra did not go to authorities because she feared reprisal from Weinstein, prosecutors said. She went public in The New Yorker in October 2017, telling the magazine that for years she had been “so ashamed of what happened.”
“I fought. I fought. But still I was like, ‘Why did I open that door? Who opens the door at that time of night?’” Sciorra said. "I was definitely embarrassed by it. I felt disgusting.”
Weinstein lawyer Damon Cheronis, in his opening statement, made clear the defense intends to go on the offensive.
He questioned the validity of Sciorra's account, saying she once told a friend that she “did a crazy thing and had sex with Harvey Weinstein" and that she had a consensual encounter with him.
“She didn’t describe it as rape because it wasn’t,” Cheronis said.
Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assaulting two women, Mimi Haleyi and Jessica Mann. Sciorra’s allegation is too old to be charged as a separate crime, but prosecutors hope it will show that Weinstein was a repeat sexual predator, a charge that could put him in prison for life.
Sciorra’s friend, actress Ellen Barkin, was seen entering the court.
“All my power All my heart All my strength I give to you dear friend and warrior ... #AnnabellaSciorra,” Barkin wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. “I love you.”
The trial is a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement, in which women have gone public with allegations against powerful men in business and politics.
Since 2017, more than 80 women, including many famous actresses, have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct.
“Annabella, Mimi, Dawn gratitude brave warriors we are with you in solidarity,” actress Rosanna Arquette wrote on Twitter on Thursday. Dawn Dunning is among the women who are expected to testify about Weinstein’s pattern of behavior, although he is not charged with assaulting her.
Weinstein walked slowly into court, helped by two members of his team, followed by an associate who was carrying a walker, which Weinstein has been using as he recovers from back surgery.
During opening statements on Wednesday, New York prosecutors accused Weinstein of committing violent attacks on aspiring actresses, who they said suffered shame and humiliation as they internalized trauma from the encounters.
Defense attorneys countered that emails from the accusers to Weinstein would show they maintained warm relations, which could undermine a case that appears to rely primarily on the testimony of the accusers.
Weinstein, who reshaped the independent film industry with critically acclaimed pictures such as “The English Patient” and “Shakespeare in Love,” has denied the allegations and said any sexual encounters were consensual.
Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hast told jurors on Wednesday that Weinstein raped Sciorra, best known for her role in HBO’s “The Sopranos,” on a winter night in 1993 or 1994. After giving her a ride home and dropping her off, Hast said, Weinstein knocked on her door unannounced, forced his way inside and assaulted her.
Damon Cheronis, one of Weinstein’s lawyers, said in his opening statement that Weinstein could not have gotten to Sciorra’s 17th-floor apartment uninvited because her building had a doorman, and that Sciorra had in the past described the encounter as consensual.
Cheronis offered a similar defense for the other accusations against his client. In each case, he said, women had reframed consensual relationships as predatory after the fact.
Cheronis said emails and text messages would show that Haleyi, who has said Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in 2006, repeatedly reached out to him in the following years. Mann, whom Weinstein is accused of raping in 2013, even told Weinstein she loved him and that she wanted him to meet her mother after the alleged attack, Cheronis said.
Hast said that the women kept in touch with Weinstein because they “felt trapped.” She told jurors they should not discount the allegations simply because Weinstein did not fit the profile of a rapist grabbing victims “in a back alley.”
“Here the rapist was at the pinnacle of the very profession his victims strived to make a career in,” she said.
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