Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra testifies of desperate attempts to fight off alleged Weinstein rape
Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra has told a jury of her desperate attempts to fight off Harvey Weinstein, punching and kicking him as he allegedly pinned her down and raped her on her own bed after a work dinner with Uma Thurman.
Sciorra, 59, wiped away tears as she recounted the night in late 1993 or early 1994 when Weinstein barged into her apartment, having dropped her off at the front door a short while earlier.
“I thought it was the doorman or a neighbour,” she said.
“He pushed the door open. He started to walk around. I think he was seeing if there was someone there. He started to unbutton his shirt so I realised he thought we’d have sex. And I did not want to.
“I started to back up, thinking I could make it to my bathroom and get in there.”
She claimed that Weinstein then “lunged” at her, grabbing at her white cotton nightgown – a vintage, sentimental garment, given to her by her cousin in Italy.
“He shoved me on the bed. I was punching him, kicking him, just trying to get him away from me.
“I put my hands over my head to hold him back. He got on top of me and he raped me.
“I was trying to fight, but I couldn’t fight any more as he had my hands locked.”
She claimed that after the alleged assault her body began trembling uncontrollably.
“It was so disgusting my body started to shake, which was unusual. I didn’t know what was happening. It was like a seizure or something.
“I don’t remember much. I woke up. I don’t know if I fainted or fell asleep or blacked out. I woke up on the floor with my nightgown pulled up.”
Weinstein, 67, listened impassively, occasionally taking notes.
He had entered court again leaning on his PR adviser, with another aide following behind carrying a shiny new zimmer frame.
Sciorra, in a navy blue dress, struggled to keep her composure as she testified, looking frequently up at the ceiling to compose her thoughts, and taking deep breaths.
Around two to six weeks after the alleged attack in her apartment, she saw Weinstein in a restaurant.
“I confronted him about what happened in my apartment,” she said. “And I told him how I woke up, that I blacked out, fainted.
“And he said that’s what all the nice Catholic girls say. He leaned in to me and said this remains between us. He was very menacing. I thought he was going to hit me. I was afraid of him.”
The Brooklyn-born actress told the seven men and five women of the jury, listening intently, how she had begun drinking heavily after the incident and become reclusive.
“I don’t remember much, except for feeling disgusting,” she said.
“I cried a lot. I had a lot of what I know now is called disassociated experiences. I spent a lot of time alone. I didn’t see many people. I didn’t want to talk to people about what happened. I began to drink a lot. I began to cut myself.
“I had this wall that was white. I began to paint it a blood red colour with tubes of oil paint. I don’t know what I was doing but I would cut myself and put blood from my fingers and hands into this masterpiece. Wherever I would put blood I would put pieces of gold leaf to mark it.
“I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t feel good.”
Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, prosecuting, asked Sciorra why she never told anyone what had happened to her.
“I wanted to pretend it never happened. I wanted to get back to my life,” she said.
Why didn't you call the police, asked Ms Illuzzi-Orbon.
“Because he was someone I knew,” she said. “I would say I felt, at the time, that rape was something that happened in a dark alleyway, with someone you didn’t know.”
She told how British film producer Matthew Vaughn, the husband of Claudia Schiffer, helped her to get away from Weinstein in the autumn of 1994, when she was filming The Innocent Sleep in London.
Weinstein was not connected to the film, she said, but arrived in London inviting her for breakfast at her hotel. She refused, but he sent a car to pick her up, the concierge told her.
Weinstein, she said, “got irritated.”
She continued: “I told Matthew Vaughn what was happening. I asked for assistance. I asked him to come with me to a lunch so he could sit on another table. I was afraid the defendant could throw me into a car and hurt me.
“Matthew Vaughn wanted me to go to the police.
“He came to my hotel, banging on the door, saying 'This is Harvey, open the door'.”
She told how she asked Vaughn, then 25 and producing his first film, to help her move hotels.
“We moved in the middle of the night,” she said. “I told him I didn’t want my address on any papers or call sheets. And the only person who could know was Matthew.”
In early 2017 she began receiving phone calls from journalists.
Initially she was reluctant to tell her story, but when she was contacted in the autumn she finally relented.
“This time I told him,” she said.
“I was afraid for my life.”
Sciorra’s testimony falls outside the statute of limitations, but is being used by the prosecution to bolster the case of their two accusers, Mimi Haleyi and Jessica Mann.
Weinstein has always insisted sex was consensual.
If convicted after the trial, expected to run until March, Weinstein could face life in prison.
