The second day of the Harvey Weinstein trial was full of emotion as one of his alleged victims told jurors the horrors she faced allegedly at the hands of the disgraced movie mogul.
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Actress Annabella Sciorra, 57, testified that Weinstein in 1993 raped her after he showed up unannounced at her New York City apartment.
She and Weinstein had dinner earlier that night, but had parted ways and Sciorra when he knocked on her door, Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hast said earlier. While on the witness stand, Sciorra went into detail about what she said happened next.
"He started to unbutton his shirt then I realized he thought we would be having sex and I did not want to. I told him it wasn’t going to happen," she said. "He grabbed me by the collar and shoved me on the bed.
"I was punching him, I was kicking him, and he took my hands and put them over my head,” she continued.
"This stays between you and I," she said Weinstein told her.
Sciorra, then 33, first came to Weinstein’s attention as a breakout star in the thriller, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”
On the stand, her voice cracked and she fought back tears as she told her story. There was a tense moment as Sciorra was asked to identify Weinstein. She stood up in the witness box and pointed across the courtroom at him. Weinstein reportedly avoided making eye contact. When the prosecutor asked what her reaction was to the alleged sexual assault, Sciorra said, "I just remember feeling disgusting.”
She said she did not go to the police at the time. "I felt at the time that rape was something that happened in a back alleyway in a dark place by somebody you didn’t know," she said.
Sciorra said she was traumatized by the alleged attack and that to cope, she turned to alcohol, drugs and began cutting herself. For several years after, Weinstein harassed Sciorra at movie industry events, she said.
The attack Sciorra suffered allegedly at the hands of Weinstein is outside the statute of limitations and he is not directly charged with assaulting her. He faces two counts of predatory sexual assault, to which Sciorra's testimony, prosecutors say, is relevant.
Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.
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