When Jane Doe #1 took the stand last week at Harvey Weinstein’s Los Angeles rape trial, she testified that she was compelled to report her assault when her teenage daughter convinced her to speak up.
Jane Doe #1 — who was the first witness to testify in the sprawling trial — alleged that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him and then raped her in 2013 when she was visiting L.A. on a business trip for the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival. Jane Doe #1, a European actor and model who was based in Italy when Weinstein allegedly assaulted her. According to her testimony, Weinstein, who was unannounced at the time of the 2013 incident inflicted sexual assault on her. “He forced me to do what he asked,”She testified. “I was crying.”
Jane Doe #1 recalled that Weinstein was present at an event when she visited the festival in 2017 after her emotional three-day testimony. She had brought her then-teenage daughter to accompany her to L.A. to attend the festival, and her daughter noticed her mother’s demeanor suddenly change when Weinstein was around. Not knowing anything about her mother’s alleged assault, she didn’t put the pieces together, but later on, Jane Doe #1 told her daughter that she had been sexually assaulted in the past.
Another layer of the story is that Jane Doe #1’s daughter had also been sexually assaulted at school. Jane Doe #1, the mother of the child, revealed that her daughter had also been raped. This allowed Jane Doe to understand her daughter’s pain. The mother and her daughter formed a bond over their shared trauma. They made a promise to each other that they would report their individual incidents to the police.
Roughly one week after Jane Doe #1’s testimony, her daughter — who the court is identifying as “Maria C.” in order to protect her identity — was called on by the prosecution to corroborate her mother’s account.
“All of a sudden, during the conversation, my mom became very nervous, and I noticed that she started looking only in one direction of the room. After a few moments she kept saying ‘let’s go upstairs’ to where the dinner is. ‘Let’s go, let’s go,’” Maria testified, recalling the night her mother ran into Weinstein at the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival in 2017. She claimed she saw it in the same direction as her mother. “there was this man sitting and staring right at my mom and I without taking his gaze off.” She confirmed that the man was Weinstein, and at the time, she had no idea who he was.
Maria shared the story of Weinstein approaching her at the festival table where she was seated with her mother. “I again noticed my mom looking very very nervous, but this time it wasn’t wanting to leave. This time it was fear,”She spoke. “She froze, she froze right in the moment … And just looked into blank space.”
When asked by the prosecutor, deputy D.A. Maria answered Paul Thompson’s question about why that moment stuck in her mind. “I recall this event particularly well because the same year at the beginning of fall I was told by my mom that she had been raped by this man.”
The conversation where Jane Doe told her daughter she’d been raped took place a few months after they had encountered Weinstein at the Italia festival in 2017. Maria claimed that her mother didn’t reveal the identity of the alleged perpetrator at first to her daughter, but she later revealed it to her daughter.
“I was informed about who the man who raped her was at the beginning of the first few articles of the #MeToo movement,”Maria explained to the jury. She told the jury that Weinstein was her mother’s name. Maria then went online to Google him, and found his photo online.
When Maria was cross-examined by Weinstein’s attorney, Alan Jackson, he prodded her timeline of events, questioning if she changed details from her initial interviews with detectives in the case in 2018, such as how long Weinstein had stared at her mother, how she knew Weinstein was staring at her mother and when her mother revealed Weinstein as her assailant. “Your story is changing,”Jackson spoke. “That’s not what you said in 2018.”
“My testimony is the truth,”Maria spoke on the stand. “I never changed my story.”
Jackson asked Maria about reporting her own sexual assault to the police in Sept. 2017 and questioned why her mother didn’t speak to authorities about her alleged rape at that same time when they were at the police station. (Maria had reported her incident before the #MeToo movement exploded with Weinstein’s exposés in Oct. 2017, but her mother did not report her incident until shortly after those articles came out.)
Maria said that Maria was getting teary. “I had the courage to speak out only because my mom promised me”She said that she would report to police her alleged assault. This she did in October 2017, four-and-a-half years after Weinstein allegedly had raped her.
“It is safe to say that you are extremely close,”Jackson asked Maria questions about her relationship with mother. “You love her very, very much?” Weinstein’s attorney asked.
“You would do anything for her?”Jackson asked Maria to answer. “yes,”Before her testimony was completed.