Harvey Weinstein waved as Rosie Perez identified him in court on Friday before telling his sex crimes trial about the emotional phone calls she had with Annabella Sciorra in the 1990s where Sciorra said he had raped her.
Sciorra told Weinstein’s trial on Thursday that he raped her in 1993 in her New York apartment and that he ruined a family heirloom nightgown of hers in the act. The alleged rape is not one of the incidents Weinstein is charged over but prosecutors were allowed to bring Sciorra into the courtroom to talk about it to support their case, specifically the charge of predatory sexual assault.
On Friday, Oscar-nominated Perez, 55, best known for films like ‘Do the Right Thing’ and ‘White Men Can’t Jump’, said she was a ‘very, very good friend’ of Sciorra and had known her since the 1990s.
She said Sciorra confided in her that she’d been raped in 1993 but that she did not name her alleged attacker until the following year after Perez had ‘put two and two together’ and ‘figured out’ it was Weinstein.
Speaking of the first phone call, Perez said: ‘I called her up and I was in a pretty jovial mood. I said, “hey Annabella, what’s happening?”
‘I wanted to hang out. She spoke in a strange voice, a whisper of a voice. I said, “what’s wrong with you?”
‘She said, “I think something bad happened.” [I said] What do you mean something bad happened?”
Sciorra replied: ‘I think I was raped.’
Actress Rosie Perez testified in court on Friday that Annabella Sciorra confided in her that she’d been raped in 1993 and that in 1994 she told her it was by Weinstein. Weinstein arriving at court with his walker on Friday (right)
Annabella Sciorra cried as she took the stand in Harvey Weinstein’s New York trial on Thursday to tell how he raped her in 1993, a year before confiding fully in Perez about it. She was not in court on Friday
Perez said she then heard her crying.
‘She asked what happened and told her that she had woken up ‘on the floor’ with the night-gun ‘up’ and ‘it was a family heirloom.’
‘I said go to the police. She said, “I can’t.”
‘She hung up and I called… trying to call her back all night long. I was so upset.
‘She wouldn’t pick up the phone,’ she said.
In the first phone call, she did not know that it was Weinstein who allegedly attacked her friend, she said.
But in 1994, after being told separately that Weinstein was ‘stalking’ Sciorra and hearing Sciorra say she was afraid she was going to be attacked again by her rapist, Perez said she ‘figured it out’.
‘She was scared he was going to get her again. That’s when I put two and two together.
‘I said, “Harvey raped you.” She said, “how did you know?”
‘I said, “You just confirmed my speculation.”
‘Then she started screaming, “oh my god, oh my god” and started crying hysterically.
‘I just remembered that phone call where she seemed really weird and I asked about the heirloom nightgown and she started crying.
I told her: “Annabella, Annabella, for the love of God go to the police but she was too scared to
Rosie Perez testifying in court on Friday
‘That’s when she started telling detailed things about the rape and she was very very distraught and we both were crying on the phone.
‘I told her: “Annabella, Annabella, for the love of God go to the police but she was too scared to.”‘
By this point, Weinstein had already turned up at Annabella’s hotel room in London, she claimed, banging on the door. He had also told her the ‘rape’ the previous year had to stay ‘between’ them.
Under cross examination from Weinstein’s lawyer Damon Charonis, Perez asked why they had had different conversations that were not about the alleged rape.
Weinstein, who is using a walker because he says he still has back pain after getting surgery in December, denies the charges
The movie mogul is facing life behind bars if convicted on all five counts of sexual assault
A court sketch shows Harvey Weinstein listening to testimony from Rosie Perez as his sex crimes trial on Friday
Perez is known for her role in Do The Right Thing. She said she put ‘two and two together’ and worked out that it was Weinstein who raped her friend in the 1990s
Annabella Sciorra e appeared in The Sopranos as Tony Soprano’s mistress
She said she tried to be ‘respectful’ to Sciorra because it was ‘traumatic’ for her. Perez said: ‘It was traumatic for me’.
She also cried as she revealed telling Nicole Wallace about Weinstein raping a woman. Wallace then told reporter Ronan Farrow, the court heard, but it is unclear who told Farrow that it was Sciorra who Weinstein allegedly raped.
When Farrow phoned Sciorra to ask her about it, she did not want to discuss it and did not even tell him she had been raped by Weinstein.
It was only once other women had come forward in two articles- one by Farrow in the New Yorker and one in The New York Times – that she felt she wanted to share her story.
Perez sobbed as she insisted to the court that she did not tell Wallace it was Annabella Sciorra who had been allegedly attacked by him.
‘I did not tell Nicole Wallace that it was Annabella and she was raped,’ she said.
WEINSTEIN SENT A LIST OF ‘RED FLAG’ NAMES WHO COULD ACCUSE HIM OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT TO A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
Actress Rose McGowan claims Weinstein raped her in 1997. She was not in court on Friday but was on January 6 (above)
The court earlier heard that Weinstein sent a ‘red flag list’ of women to a private investigator who could talk about his alleged sexual misconduct and also claimed Rose McGowan was trying to extort him, his trial heard on Friday.
The email was sent in August 2017 as investigations by the New York Times and the New Yorker ramped up against him.
The evidence emerged during the testimony of Sam Anson who ran his own private investigation company in 2017 but now works for Guidepost Solutions, an LA-based investigative company.
Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzi talked Anson through an email that Weinstein sent him on August 17 2017 with dozens of names on it.
Anson said that the ones in red were the people that Weinstein wanted him to speak to ‘first’ – including Annabella Sciorra.
Anson said that he did not actually carry out Weinstein’s wishes but he had a very good idea about what he wanted to know.
Illuzi asked: ‘Was that regarding Mr Weinstein’s sexual assault of women?
Anson said: ‘I don’t think he would have used that phrase’.
Sam Anson, a private investigator hired by Weinstein, said that the movie mogul sent him a list of ‘red flag’ names of women who might accuse him of sexual misconduct
Illuzi asked if Weinstein was seeking to find out who was speaking to journalists.
Anson said: ‘He was concerned that the articles could be written about him and discuss his sexual conduct in a negative way.
‘His interest was in general who was providing information to the journalists.
‘He also did the raise the possibility he was being extorted’.
Miss Illuzi asked if Sciorra was one of people who Weinstein thought was trying to extort him and he said no.
Anson said: ‘He mentioned a woman named Rose McGowan’.
PSYCHOLOGIST WHO HELPED CONVICT CROSBY TELLS COURT IT’S NORMAL FOR VICTIMS TO MAINTAIN CONTACT WITH RAPISTS AND THAT IT DOESN’T PROVE ANYTHING IF ANY OF HARVEY’S DID WITH HIM
Dr. Barbara Ziv, a professor at Temple University Medical School, said was the first witness called to the stand on Friday, a day after actress Annabella Sciorra told how Weinstein allegedly raped her in her apartment in the early 1990s.
Dr. Barbara Ziv testified that it was a known fact some rape or sexual abuse victims contact their abusers for long periods of time after the fact – especially if they have something to offer them
Weinstein’s attorneys, during cross-examination, grilled her and asked why, if he had attacked her as she claimed he did, did she see him again without incident afterwards in Cannes and London.
They also asked her why then she had told a friend via text that she hoped he had a job for her years after the apparent rape.
The actress had messaged her friend in August 2017 saying she was ‘more broke than I ever imagined, no (health) insurance, I haven’t worked in years and I have been reaching out to friends’.
‘She added: ‘I am hoping Harvey has a job for me’.
Weinstein tormented Sciorra after raping her, prosecutor Meghan Hast told jurors, culminating in an incident at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 where he arrived at her hotel room in his underwear and with baby oil in his hand.
Weinstein’s attorneys’ line of questioning is consistent with what is widely believed to be their defense throughout; if Weinstein had attacked the women as violently as they say he did, why then did they continue to have contact with him and even ask him for work for years afterwards?
Many of the women who have spoken out to publicly accuse Weinstein of assault also say they they felt they had to comply with his alleged sexual demands or risk their careers.
He was the most powerful producer in Hollywood and had strong connections in all aspects of the entertainment industry, they claimed.
They also asked why she did not tell any of her co-stars about it; she said she did not have the chance.
In a court sketch from Friday’s proceedings, Dr Barbara Ziv is shown testifying about ‘rape myths’ such as rape only occurs between strangers. Weinstein is depicted to the left, taking notes
Another common rape myth that the psychologist sought to dispel was that a victim should have a clear and accurate memory of an attack when, she said, in fact it was a more complicated issue
Dr. Ziv’s testimony began with her dispelling what prosecutors call a ‘common rape myth’ that if a victim contacts her accuser after the attack, it undermines the severity of it or even the existence of it.
She explained that abusers used a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to controlling their victims who fear their attacker would ‘ruin me’.
The ‘stick’ is that the women think to themselves ‘god forbid they could ruin the rest of my life and make it impossible to go on’.
The use of Dr Ziv was to preemptively blunt the attacks that Weinstein’s lawyers would use on the accusers.
She was the first witness in the retrial of Cosby that resulted in a conviction – during the first one prosecutors began with a victim and it was a mistrial.
Dr Ziv told the jury that there were a number of ‘rape myths’ which she defined as ‘commonly held beliefs about sexual assault that are not true’.
Her account hewed remarkably close to the account put forward by the prosecution during their opening.
Dr Ziv said it was ‘not true’ that sexual assault occurred between strangers and in fact 85 per cent was carried out by somebody the victims knew.
She said the ‘majority’ of women did not fight back and that punching, biting, kicking and hitting were not normal.
Dr Ziv said it was ‘absolutely untrue’ that most victims reported their crime to the authorities – and the police were last on the list of people to speak.
According to Dr Ziv, it was the ‘norm’ for victims of sexual assault to maintian contact with their victims.
Gloria Allred, who is representing some of Weinstein’s victims, was among those in attendance at court on Friday
She said: ‘The reasons are complex and it’s like a carrot and stick.
‘The stick is the fact that the person is devastated by sexual assault, they think, “OK it’s behind me..I don’t want it to get worse, I don’t want this individual to ruin my reputation and put my job in jeopardy. I can handle this physical trauma but God forbid they could ruin the rest of my life and make it impossible for me to go on. He will ruin my reputation and nobody is going to believe me,”‘ she said.
Attackers could make ‘implied or explicit threats’ to keep their victim under control and that they also felt like ‘damaged goods’, so might agree to a second sexual encounter, even though they felt like an ‘idiot’ after.
Addressing how victims remember things imperfectly, Dr Ziv said it was an attempt to ‘tolerate and survive’ the experience.
Dr Ziv said that victims try to rationalize what happened by saying that what happened was ‘just an aberration’ from the way the perpetrator normally behaves.
They hoped they could get back to a ‘baseline, pretend this never happened’.
Another myth was that victims could be judged by their behavior.
Dr Ziv said that during a sexual assault a victim may be ‘grossed out’ but their facial expressions might not show it.
After a rape, victims could ‘retreat, engage in promiscuity, drink, do drugs and burn themselves’.
Another myth was that victims reported their crime to the police and according to the Bureau of Justice sexual assault and rape are the ‘most under-reported crime’.
Victims were most likely to tell a friend then a spiritual adviser – and long after that were the police.
WEINSTEIN COMPLAINED THAT RONAN FARROW ‘WON’T STOP’ IN AN EMAIL TO STAFF IN 2017
Farrow was working on an expose for months. He interviewed scores of actresses
Earlier in the trial, it emerged that Weinstein complained to colleagues about Ronan Farrow’s investigation into him in the New Yorker, writing in a 2017 email: ‘This guy won’t stop’.
The film producer wrote to his colleagues at The Weinstein Co that his encounter with Annabella Sciorra, who testified on Thursday that Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s, was ‘consensual’.
Sciorra had already been interviewed by Farrow and initially denied to him that she had been attacked.
She admitted after other women publicly accused Weinstein of abuse that she had lied and that he did ‘rape’ her.
He said that ‘she did Cop Land with us’, meaning Miramax, his production company.
Weinstein ordered his colleagues to ‘get emails’ about Sciorra and said: ‘This guy won’t stop’.
Farrow spoke to Sciorra in March 2017 and she initially denied anything happened with Weinstein but changed her mind and talked about the alleged rape in October that year.
As the trial got underway on Thursday, Farrow released an audio tape of Weinstein asking an actress for a massage and telling her that she would risk losing ‘big opportunities’ if she did not trust him.
His lawyers have claimed throughout that he is the victim of an overzealous #MeToo movement and that all of the sex he has ever had with anyone has been consensual.