In a packed courtroom in the New York supreme court in Manhattan on Thursday, the former Sopranos actor Annabella Sciorra held her arms above her head, wrists locked, in a physical re-enactment of the moment she alleged that the disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein forcibly pinned her to her bed.
“He took my hands and put them over my head to hold them back,” the actor said, staring straight at the jury. Some 15ft away on the defense table, the defendant looked impassively at her.
“Then he got on top of me and he raped me.”
The dramatic moment marked the first time that the Weinstein sex crimes trial directly heard from one of his accusers. In searing testimony, Sciorra described the events leading up to the alleged attack and its impact on her life in which she said she fell into depression, took to cutting herself and sought solace in drinking.
Several times during her account, Sciorra’s voice broke and she dabbed her eyes with tissue.
Sciorra is the first of six women who will testify about being allegedly sexually attacked by the movie producer. Weinstein, 67, who at one time was a titan of Hollywood with 81 Oscars for his films, faces five counts including two of rape, one of forcibly performing oral sex on a woman and two of predatory sexual assault that carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Sciorra’s forceful testimony began when she was asked by a prosecutor whether she saw Weinstein in the courtroom. She stood and pointed at him: “Yes I do. He’s wearing a black suit and a white shirt and black tie.”
She then went on to recall how she had met the defendant in the early 1990s at a private party in Los Angeles. He gave her his card and invited her to contact him if she came across any interesting film scripts.
She did contact him a few months later on behalf of a friend who had a script that became the film The Night We Never Met, and though she was not particularly interested in the film she agreed to star in it under pressure from Weinstein.
When she complained to him she was tired and needed a break before filming, he sent her a care package containing some movies, liquorice, popcorn and a bottle of Valium. The witness said she began taking valium day and night, and only weaned herself from the drug a few years later.
The alleged attack occurred in the winter of 1993 to 1994, when Sciorra was living in an apartment in the Manhattan neighbourhood of Gramercy Park. She had been at a dinner with Weinstein and others, including the actor Uma Thurman.
She decided to go home at about 10pm and Weinstein offered her a ride. He dropped her off at the apartment and she went upstairs and got ready for bed, putting on a white cotton nightgown that was a family heirloom from Italy.
There was a knock on the door. Sciorra at this point in her testimony paused for several seconds, and was handed a box of tissues. She continued: “The defendant was there and pushed the door open. I didn’t understand why he was there.”
She told the jury that he then began walking around the apartment – she presumed to check it was empty – but began unbuttoning his shirt. “I realized that if he was taking off his shirt that in his head he wanted to have sex, and I did not want to. I started to back up as I thought I could make it to the bathroom.”
She said: “I felt very overpowered as he was very big.” The court has heard that Weinstein was about 300lb (135kg) around 1993, while she said she was 5ft 4in and weighed 110 to 115lb (50-52kg).
“Then he grabbed me. He led me into the bedroom and he shoved me on the bed. I was punching him, I was kicking him, I was trying to take him away from me. He took my hands and put my hands over my head.”
That is when she did the re-enactment with her arms upheld. “He raped me. I was trying to fight but I couldn’t because he had my hands locked.”
Sciorra was openly crying as she told the jury what Weinstein allegedly said to her after he had ejaculated on the nightgown: “I have perfect timing.”
Then she took a deep breath in the courtroom, wiped her eyes again and described how he had then forcibly performed oral sex on her. “This is for you,” she alleged he said to her.
“It was so disgusting that my body started to shake in a way that was very unusual. It was like a seizure.”
Sciorra told the court that she was very confused after the alleged rape, not knowing how to think of the incident or Weinstein. “I thought he was a nice person. I felt confused. I wished I’d never opened the door.”
After the alleged rape she began cutting herself, using drops of blood from her fingers and hands to stain the walls of her apartment. “Wherever I would put the blood I would take pieces of gold leaf and mark it,” she said.
Sciorra said she did not articulate the event to herself initially as rape, nor go to the police, “because he was someone I knew. I felt at the time that rape was something that happens in a back alleyway in a dark place by someone you didn’t know.”
Sciorra is seen as a star witness for the prosecution. She is the only one of the six women testifying in the case who is a celebrity, having appeared in the hit TV series Sopranos and several movies including The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Jungle Fever.
She is not formally attached to the rape and sexual assault charges against Weinstein because the alleged rape occurred well before New York’s statute of limitations. But she is the key witness addressing the predatory sexual assault charges that allege that Weinstein engaged in a pattern of violent and abusive behavior over many years.
In cross-examination, Weinstein’s lead defense attorney, Donna Rotunno, began by emphasizing Sciorra’s skills as an actor. “You are a trained actor, you convince an audience that you are whoever that character is,” the lawyer said.
She grilled the actor intensely over her failure to take action when Weinstein had allegedly turned up unannounced at her door. “Do you walk out the door? Did you phone the doorman? Do you call 911?”
To each question, Sciorra replied: “No.”
Rotunno ended her cross-examination by trying to cast seeds of doubt in the jurors’ minds by suggesting Sciorra was a consummate and experienced liar. The lawyer played a video clip from 1997 on the David Letterman Show in which the host asked the actor on television whether she made up stories during film publicity interviews with journalists.
In the clip she is heard laughing and saying: “I have a bad reputation and I was caught recently in the last few years lying about a few things. I would make up quite elaborate stories. There was one I made up about Dennis Hopper and my father raising iguanas for the circus … But the iguanas never happened, the circus never happened.”
Later the lead prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi-Orban, said pointedly: “Well, this is not a circus is it, Miss Sciorra?”
The case continues.
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In the US, Rainn offers support at 800-656-4673 or by chat at Rainn.org. In the UK, the rape crisis national freephone helpline is at 0808-802-9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800-737-7328) or 1800respect.org.au. Other international helplines can be found at Ibiblio.org.
