Accuser gestures at Harvey Weinstein in courtroom confrontation

Irish Examiner

20-05-2025

A key witness stared down Harvey Weinstein and pointed sharply at him as she left court in tears, marking one of the most heated moments of the former studio boss' sex crimes retrial.
The confrontational moment came after Jessica Mann described Weinstein grabbing, dragging, forcefully undressing and raping her in a Beverly Hills, California, hotel room around the beginning of 2014, after she told him she was dating someone else.
'You owe me one more time,' Weinstein bellowed, according to Ms Mann, who wiped her eyes and took heaving breaths as she testified.
Weinstein — who denies ever raping or sexually assaulting anyone — briefly shook his head as he watched from the defence table.
After Ms Mann finished her narrative, she continued crying and did not answer when a prosecutor asked whether she needed a break. Judge Curtis Farber called for one.
Jessica Mann arrives to testify in Harvey Weinstein's trial (Stefan Jeremiah/AP)
When Ms Mann passed the defence table on her way out, she turned toward the seated Weinstein, aimed a finger at her eyes and then at him.
It was not clear how many jurors saw the gesture, and Ms Mann did not respond to a question outside court about what she meant to convey.
After they left, Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala made the latest of more than a half-dozen requests for a mistrial. He cited Ms Mann's gesticulation, questioned her displays of emotion and complained that she should not have been asked about the alleged Los Angeles rape, as Weinstein is not actually charged with it.
The Oscar-winning producer is charged with raping Ms Mann on another occasion, in 2013 in New York, and forcing oral sex on two other women separately in 2006. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Mr Farber denied the mistrial request. He ruled before the trial that Ms Mann and the other two women could put the charges in the context of their other interactions with Weinstein, including other times when he allegedly made unwanted advances.
As for Ms Mann's gesture, 'I can't control what people do in the courtroom' — nor what jurors may make of it, Mr Farber said, suggesting that Ms Mann be told not to make any more such moves.
The judge noted that he had also seen Weinstein react visibly and mutter at times during the trial.
Harvey Weinstein (Curtis Means/Pool Photo via AP)
Ms Mann returned to the witness stand without looking at Weinstein, who watched her stone-faced.
She resumed testifying through an edgy morning. 'This is my response,' she interjected at one point when Mr Aidala raised a legal objection to her answer to a prosecutor's question.
Mr Aidala has not yet has his turn to question Ms Mann, 39, about her fraught and complex history with Weinstein, 73.
During an opening statement last month, the attorney portrayed her as an aspiring actor who had only willing sexual encounters with a Hollywood bigwig she thought could help her.
A cosmetologist and hairstylist, she met Weinstein socially in Los Angeles more than a decade ago, when she was trying to get acting work.
Ms Mann said she had a consensual, on-and-off relationship with the then-married Weinstein, but that he was volatile and violated her if she refused him.
Weinstein went from movie mogul to #MeToo pariah in 2017, after allegations emerged that he had sexually harassed and sexually abused women for years.
He was later convicted of various sex crimes in both New York and California, but his New York conviction was later overturned, leading to the retrial.
The proceedings have been graphic, exhaustively detailed and tense at times as his accusers underwent days of questioning. One of them, Miriam Haley, cursed at Weinstein from the witness stand.
Another, Kaja Sokola, was dismayed by questions about her private journal, which Weinstein's lawyers had gotten without her knowledge.