NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein ‘s lawyers questioned his accuser at his rape retrial Thursday, making clear they planned to explore her conflicted feelings and complex history with the onetime Hollywood powerbroker.
It’s the third time Jessica Mann has had to answer his lawyers’ questions in a New York court. But different attorneys are now defending the ex-studio boss whose downfall powered the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct. It remains to be seen whether their inquiries will hit the emotional boiling points of Mann’s prior cross-examinations.
Weinstein lawyer Teny Geragos began questioning Mann on Wednesday by seizing on her complicated feelings about Weinstein during a knotty relationship that involved some consensual sexual encounters.
Under prosecutors’ questioning earlier, Mann said that despite the alleged rape, she loved “a part of him” because he could be kind and encouraging about her personal struggles and professional dreams, and that the two had “some pretty human moments” together.
“What did he do for you that made parts of you really love him?” Geragos asked.
“It was the validation,” Mann said.
When Geragos went on to ask about the “human moments,” Mann said she once slapped Weinstein, thinking he was inviting it as sex play, but that he later told her, “Jess, that’s not you.”
“So when you were talking about the validation that you received … and the human moments that you shared with Harvey, it was that you slapped him?” Geragos asked.
Mann said she instead was referring to his remark that “that’s not you.”
Court ended for the day soon afterward. As it resumed Thursday, Geragos quizzed Mann about her early interactions with Weinstein.
Weinstein, 73, is on trial for the third time on a charge accusing him of raping Mann in a New York hotel in March 2013. He was initially convicted in 2020, but an appeals court overturned that verdict. During his first retrial, the jury couldn’t reach a decision on the rape charge.
Mann also alleges that Weinstein raped her again in Beverly Hills, California, in late 2013 or early 2014. He has never been charged with any crime related to that allegation.
“He just treated me like he owned me,” she told jurors this week.
Mann, 40, acknowledges that she accepted his sexual advances at times but said the two rapes happened as she protested and pleaded with him to stop.
Weinstein’s lawyers maintain that everything that happened between the two was consensual and part of a supportive, caring relationship. They say Mann benefited from associating with an Oscar-winning producer, only later accusing him amid the #MeToo outcry of 2017 and 2018.
Mann and Weinstein met at a Los Angeles-area party around early 2013. At the time, she was a financially struggling hairstylist and actor aspiring to make it big in show business.
The then-married Weinstein invited her to a bookstore, where he bought her volumes about movies. Not long afterward, he took her to dinner at a hotel in Beverly Hills.
“From your perspective in 2013, going to dinner with another man who’s older than you can imply certain ideas, like a date, correct?” Geragos asked.
Mann said she hadn’t thought of it as a date. His assistant scheduled the dinner, so it seemed “somewhat professional,” she explained.
After the meal, Weinstein asked her up to his hotel suite, where Mann testified that he pressed her to take off her shirt and let him massage her. She said she instead rubbed his back to “de-escalate” the situation.
Geragos suggested Mann simply could have left the room.
“In theory. Because I could have done a lot of things,” Mann replied.
The alleged rape happened weeks after the dinner.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they agree to be named, as Mann has done.
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