Jessica Mann, the last of three women to testify against Harvey Weinstein in his Manhattan retrial, made a pointed gesture at the disgraced movie mogul on her way out of court Tuesday after breaking down on the stand while recounting a 2014 encounter in which she accuses him of dragging, stripping and raping her in a Beverly Hills hotel.
Mann, a cosmetologist and hairstylist who moved to Los Angeles to launch an acting career in 2012, stared down Weinstein, then pointed to her own eyes – and then him – as she walked past the defense table Tuesday, sobbing, the Associated Press reported.
The exchange happened moments after Mann finished telling the jury that Weinstein grabbed, dragged, forcefully undressed and raped her after informing him that she was dating someone else. She said Weinstein shouted “You owe me one more time!” as he forced sex on her against her repeated protests.
Weinstein shook his head as Mann told the jury of the encounter through tears and heaving breaths. She did not respond to reporters’ questions about the gesture outside the courtroom.
Weinstein attorney Arthur Aidala cited the gesture and emotional display in a subsequent request for a mistrial. It was one of many such requests that Judge Curtis Farber swiftly denied.
Weinstein is charged with raping Mann on a separate occasion, in 2013, though the 2014 encounter is not one of the charged incidents. He is also facing charges of forcing two other women to have oral sex in separate 2006 encounters.
“I can’t control what people do in the courtroom,” Farber said, adding that Weinstein himself has also reacted to testimony before the jury.
Defense attorneys have yet to cross-examine Mann, now 39, about her complicated relationship with Weinstein she says began when they met at a party. She says she began a consensual, on-and-off relationship with the then-married Weinstein after he initially pressured her for sex in New York.
Defense attorney Arthur Aidala said during opening statements that Mann’s relationship with Weinstein was mutually beneficial, and that she hoped she could fast-forward to an acting career if she agreed to sleep with him.
Weinstein’s initial conviction in New York was thrown out by an appeals court over what was ruled to be improper “prior bad acts” testimony in the 2020 trial. He is charged in New York with raping Mann and with forcing oral sex on two other women, both of whom have testified, in 2006.
Weinstein’s conviction in a California court, which allowed New York authorities to hold him while he awaited retrial, is being appealed.
