Jan. 24 (UPI) — Actress Annabelle Sciorra testified that Harvey Weinstein raped her about 27 years ago in the producer’s predatory sexual assault trial in New York on Thursday.
Sciorra said that in late 1993 or early 1994 Weinstein dropped her off at her apartment after they had dinner with friends and then returned shortly afterward without a call from her doorman and forced his way inside the apartment.
“I was punching him. I was kicking him. I was just trying to get him away from me and he took my hands and put them over my head,” she said while stretching her hands into the air to demonstrate the situation.
Sciorra testified that Weinstein grabbed her chest and took her to a bedroom where she “couldn’t fight anymore because he had my hands locked.”
“He got on top of me and he raped me,” she said.
Sciorra said she was too petrified to report the assault to the police but did tell her friend Rosie Perez about it around the time it happened.
She added that she confronted Weinstein about what happened at her apartment when she ran into him at a restaurant weeks later.
“I told him how I woke up, and he said, ‘That’s what all the good Catholic girls say,’ and he leaned in and said ‘This remains between you and I,'” she said.
The harassment continued in 1997 when Weinstein appeared at her hotel room in his underwear holding a bottle of baby oil and a videotape while she was promoting her film Cop Land at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Sciorra said.
“I got scared and backed into the room and pushed all the service buttons,” she said, adding Weinstein then left.
Sciorra also testified that she came to know Weinstein after he cast her in projects he was producing but that she never considered having a romantic relationship with him.
Defense lawyer Donna Rotunno questioned why Sciorra didn’t complain to management at her apartment building about how Weinstein was able to get up to her apartment unannounced and said that she exchanged “loving” emails with him for four years after the alleged assault.
Sciorra is one of six women allowed to testify in the case accusing Weinstein of raping a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and performing a forcible sex act on another woman in 2006. He also faces similar charges in California.
