One of the jurors in the Harvey Weinstein case wrote a book about ‘predatory older men’ and was still allowed to serve despite repeated attempts to have her removed over the novel and over her reviews on books that have subject matters similar to the case.
DailyMail.com can now reveal the identity of Amanda Brainerd because the case is concluded.
Brainerd was the most controversial of the five women and seven men who served on Weinstein’s trial for rape and sexual assault, in which he was found guilty of third degree rape and a criminal sexual act on Monday. He now faces up to 25 years in prison.
The 52-year-old wrote Age of Consent, which will be out this summer and is about ‘three young women in the 1980s, who negotiate fraught friendships, sexuality, class, and predatory older men on the journey from innocence to independence’.
But the time Brainerd’s name came up, Weinstein’s lawyers had used all their peremptory jury challenges and the judge declined to give them more challenges.
His team tried again last Tuesday to have her removed after they discovered she wrote an online review of a book called My Dark Vanessa, which has a similar subject matter to the case. Brainerd wrote she admired ‘the claustrophobia of Vanessa’s isolation, the repulsiveness of her predator, and her entrapment in the relationship’.
One of the jurors in the Harvey Weinstein case wrote a book about ‘predatory older men’. Amanda Brainerd (pictured), whose identity can now be revealed because the case has concluded, wrote Age of Consent, which is due to be released this summer
Brainerd was the most controversial of the five women and seven men who served on Weinstein’s trial for rape and sexual assault, in which he was found guilty of third degree rape and a criminal sexual act on Monday morning (pictured). He now faces up to 25 years in prison
It was an irony not lost on Weinstein’s legal team that another man was kicked out of the potential jury pool for joking about promoting his book on Twitter.
Weinstein’s lawyers tried to claim Brainerd had misrepresented herself in her jury questionnaire but the judge allowed her to serve.
Just before the jury was sent out for deliberations, his legal team made another two attempts to have her replaced by an alternate.
Weinstein’s lawyer Damon Cheronis complained about the review of My Dark Vanessa, by author Elizabeth Russell, posted on the website Goodreads, in which Brainerd said she read it last August, long before the trial started.
She wrote: ‘I understand that the story focuses on the girl and the man, but I did not find Vanessa’s complete lack of interaction with anyone else is believable.
‘Russell addresses a very difficult subject with sensitivity and insight, but I wish there had been more characters in the story to frame the horror of the central relationship’.
According to her profile on Goodreads, Brainerd is currently reading Le Consentement by French novelist Vanessa Springora, which is about sexual relationships between children under the age of 16.
The other books she has read include The Woman Destroyed by feminist author Simone de Beauvoir and a novel called The Better Liar.
Brainerd attended the exclusive $52,000-a-year Nightingale-Bamford School in Manhattan before going on to graduate from Harvard College and earning a Master of Architecture from Columbia University.
Brainerd attended the exclusive $52,000-a-year Nightingale-Bamford School in Manhattan before going on to graduate from Harvard College and get a Master of Architecture from Columbia University. She has a day job as a real estate agent in New York with agency Brown, Harris, Steven. Her book is due to be published this summer
His team tried again last week to have her removed after they discovered she wrote an online review of a book called My Dark Vanessa, which has a similar subject matter to the case. Brainerd wrote (pictured) she admired ‘the claustrophobia of Vanessa’s isolation, the repulsiveness of her predator, and her entrapment in the relationship’
According to her profile on Goodreads, Brainerd is currently reading Le Consentement by French novelist Vanessa Springora, which is about sexual relationships between children under the age of 16
Her day job is as a real estate agent in New York with agency Brown, Harris, Stevens.
According to her biography, she has sold property worth nearly $700 million for her clients since 2001.
DailyMail.com obtained an advance copy of her book Age of Consent and can reveal that one of the main relationships in the book is between Eve, a virgin who is a student at the fictional elite Connecticut college Griswold in 1983, and Bob Winkler, her English professor.
However, despite the obvious age gap and power manics, Brainerd does not dwell on the dark side of such relationships.
During her first lesson Eve gets into trouble for passing around a note with a quote from the novel The Catcher in the Rye, which says she is the ‘biggest sex maniac you ever saw’.
Winkler summons her to his office where he calls her ‘precocious’ and Brainerd writes that Eve puts a ‘sugar cube to her lips and sucked on it’.
Winkler tells her: ‘You have a lovely profile. Almost like Picasso.’
Winkler later sent her a note which read: ‘Come to my room this evening, so we can discuss your paper.’
It had the letters L.H.O.O.Q at the bottom, a reference to the French surrealist Marcel Duchamp, which roughly translates to ‘she has a hot a**’.
Brainerd writes that Eve thought to herself: ‘He was so unlike (her college age friend) David. So at ease with girls.’
Weinstein’s lawyers tried to claim Brainerd had misrepresented herself in her jury questionnaire but the judge allowed her to serve
Just before the jury was sent out for deliberations, his legal team made another two attempts to have her replaced by an alternate
On a dinner date, Eve muses: ‘Here was a real man… Winkler admired Eve frankly and openly. He could teach her what to do. So what if she hadn’t been past second base? She had sex appeal.’
During a later meeting, Winkler invites her over for a drink of bourbon.
The book says: ‘And then he was kissing her. She couldn’t believe it… she started to kiss him back, hoping she was doing it right.
‘Eve was aware of her teacher’s hand on her back, the smell of wood smoke, his corduroy knee. He was excellent, she thought, smooth and this must be the way a man kissed. How had she waited so long?’
Winkler put his hands down her pants and she tensed so he told her: ‘Hush.’
He told her: ‘I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.’
Eve thought to herself: ‘Surely this was okay. Surely she didn’t need to be afraid of a man who would kiss her like that.’
Another section of the book deals with how Eve’s friend Justine lost her virginity to a man two decades older than her.
He was Gerald Sweeney, the artistic director of the theater her father used to run.
Justine describes him as ’33 years old, a charismatic man with a sweep of reddish hair’.
On Tuesday, Weinstein’s lawyers made a last ditch attempt to have Brainerd (pictured with her husband in 2010) thrown off the jury and replaced with an alternate because they claimed she had written a review of a French book about child abuse while serving on the jury
In the book, a theater artistic director takes a 14-year-old’s virginity before dumping her weeks later, explaining he had only ‘wanted her that one last time’. The line bears a striking resemblance to the testimony of Weinstein accuser Jessica Mann (pictured) who said Weinstein raped her after screaming ‘you owe me one more time’
The book says: ‘Gerald’s pursuit of Justine started innocently enough when she was 13… he gave her a first edition (of the book) Wind in the Willows. He would take her to cafes where Justine felt wonderfully grown up as she drank tea with him.
‘She felt like a girl in a foreign film. When he kissed her for the first time his tongue in her mouth had been a surprise, like a large hunk of steak. At fourteen he deflowered her on the stage of her father’s theater.’
A few weeks later they went to see a movie but after having sex he ‘told her it was over’.
Brainerd writes: ‘He had wanted her that one last time.’
The line bears a striking resemblance to the testimony of Weinstein accuser Jessica Mann who said Weinstein raped her after screaming ‘you owe me one more time’.
After he explained he ‘couldn’t resist… because you’re so attractive’, Mann claimed.
On the official website for ‘Age of Consent’ they cite a review by Aline Brosh McKenna, screenwriter of The Devil Wears Prada and co-creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
It says: ‘A powerful, wildly entertaining story of friendship and identity set against the backdrop of the early 80’s, an era which has uncanny parallels to today. Brainerd brilliantly captures the struggles of young women trying to find their way in a time when their parents and role models are in deep crisis. Age of Consent is both a juicy page turner and a haunting, personal portrait of an era’.
On Goodreads however one woman was not so positive.
She wrote: ‘I kept waiting for things to happen and they just didn’t happen. I did not like any of the characters and I really didn’t feel any empathy for them’.