A former actress who accused Harvey Weinstein of raping her in a New York City hotel broke down in tears on the witness stand Monday as she recalled the alleged assault that took place over a decade ago and the disgusting discovery she made in the trash afterward.
Jessica Mann, 38, returned to Manhattan Supreme Court five years after she first gave detailed testimony at the disgraced Hollywood producer’s initial sex crimes trial.
Sobs interrupted the former actress’s testimony during the ongoing retrial as she recounted how Weinstein allegedly forced her to have sex at the Doubletree Hotel in Midtown on March 18, 2013.
After the alleged rape, Mann said she found an injection of erectile medication Weinstein had used, discarded in the trash with a strange label — “something dead” — which she later Googled, only to uncover a horrifying explanation.
“I panicked. I was wondering, ‘Have I been exposed to something?’” Mann recalled. “It was terrifying.”
Mann testified that she continued a consensual relationship with Weinstein afterward, whom she described as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because he could be very validating at times.”
“Everyone says Hollywood is the devil’s playground,” she testified. “He told me I was beautiful and encouraged me, and that meant a lot to me.”
But at other times, the powerful producer revealed his darker side, Mann said.
“There were times... I didn’t want to do something, and I felt like I was just being used for sex,” she testified. “The word ‘no’ was a trigger for him. This other personality — I called it ‘The Monster Face’ — would emerge.”
Weinstein, 73, dressed in a dirty charcoal suit, sat in a wheelchair as Mann haltingly told Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo that she feared no one would believe her.
She said she worried about Weinstein’s ties to powerful people, such as former President Bill Clinton.
“I remember imagining that if I said anything, he’d call his friend and the Secret Service would come and arrest me,” she said. “I didn’t know — I had all these ideas.”
Mann’s testimony largely echoed what she had said during her 2020 appearance on the stand, when she recounted that Weinstein’s genitals were so deformed that she pitied him.
Ultimately, the jury convicted Weinstein of third-degree rape for assaulting Mann but acquitted him of first-degree rape.
(according to nypost.com)