Harvey Weinstein is a sex fiend who exploited his power as a movie mogul to prey on aspiring actresses — but needed a boost from an erectile-dysfunction drug before raping one, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Weinstein, 67, was portrayed as a “sexual predator and a rapist” by Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hast during opening statements at his rape and sexual assault trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“The man seated on that side of the courtroom, despite what your eyes are looking at, is not a harmless old man,” Hast told the seven-man, five-woman jury.
Hast displayed a photo of Weinstein with ex-President Bill Clinton at 2006 fund-raising event at Chelsea Piers as she described him as a “power broker in Hollywood” who was no match for the “naive and inexperienced” women he chose to target.
Hast graphically described a series of attacks on six women, including three whose claims form the basis of rape, criminal sex act and predatory sexual assault charges that could send the movie mogul to prison for life.
The other three women are slated to bolster the case by testifying about Weinstein’s alleged MO.
The earliest incident dates to the winter of 1993-94, when Hast said Weinstein “violently and forcibly raped and orally assaulted Annabella Sciorra,” a Brooklyn native who’s best known for her early 2000s role in “The Sopranos.”
Weinstein unexpectedly showed up at Sciorra’s Gramercy Park apartment and attacked her there following dinner with her at an Irish pub, Hast said, adding that the then-rising star woke up on the floor the next morning with her nightgown “around her waist.”
“The former competent, on-top-of-the-world actress got very thin, very sad, losing her carefree personality and at some point started drinking and, even more sadly, cutting herself,” Hast said.
The prosecutor also made an oblique reference to the torrent of #MeToo allegations against Weinstein that followed the 2017 publication of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigations by the New York Times and the New Yorker.
“It took almost 25 years before she was able to confront her nightmare and tell her story,” the prosecutor said of Sciorra, 59.
Hast alleged that Weinstein injected himself with an erection drug before raping aspiring actress and Washington state native Jessica Mann in his room at the DoubleTree hotel in Midtown East on March 18, 2013.
“Different women from different places, decades apart, with the same crime,” Hast said as Weinstein shook his head from the defense table.
The rape occurred several months into Weinstein’s relationship with Mann when, Hast said, he “decided he wanted more and forcibly took it.”
After preventing Mann from leaving, Hast said, Weinstein forced her to undress, “ordered her onto the bed and disappeared for a moment into the bedroom,” then “came back out, got on top her and raped her.”
Mann, who Hast described as “distraught, disgusted and horrified,” ran into the bathroom and “saw a needle in the garbage can.”
“She looked at the label of the wrapper and later Googled it,” learning that it was for an erectile-dysfunction drug, Hast said.
The drug also figured in a November 2013 incident for which Weinstein isn’t charged, when Mann — then working as a hairstylist — told him she had a boyfriend while she was cutting his hair at his suite in the five-star The Peninsula Hotel Beverly Hills, Hast said.
Weinstein demanded she remove her clothes, but she refused, at which point he “ripped her jeans off so forcibly that it left scratch marks” while screaming that “she owed him one more time,” Hast said.
Weinstein then “disappeared briefly into the bathroom and came back erect,” she said.
After forcibly performing oral sex on Mann, Weinstein “put his whole weight on top of her and forced his penis into her vagina,” then dragged her into a bathroom and ejaculated into her mouth, Hast said.
Mann will testify that the taste left in her mouth by the erection drug was “particularly vile and unforgettable,” Hast said.
In 2018, a former personal assistant, Sandeep Rehal, filed a federal sex-discrimination and harassment suit again Weinstein that alleged she had to manage his stock of “Caverject,” a fast-acting medication in disposable syringes that’s injected into the penis to produce an erection.
Rehal’s suit was dismissed on a technicality, but she’s reportedly among more than 30 women who struck a tentative, $25 million deal last month to settle claims against Weinstein and his bankrupt movie studio, The Weinstein Co.
Weinstein’s other accuser, Miriam “Mimi” Haleyi, was hired by Weinstein to work on the set of his “Project Runway” TV series and accepted an invitation to visit his Soho loft on July 10, 2006, Hast said.
Once there, they sat at opposite ends of a couch and had a “friendly” chat until Weinstein lunged at her, Hast said.
Although Haleyi told Weinstein she wasn’t interested, he was “undeterred” they wound up in the bedroom, where she “started to realize that he wasn’t going to take ‘No’ for an answer” and “decided to just check out,” Hast said.
Weinstein allegedly began performing oral sex on Haleyi, who Hast said, “begged him to stop, telling him that she had a tampon in.
“Harvey Weinstein simply yanked it out and continued forcibly orally sexually assaulting Miriam Haleyi,” Hast said.
Hast also described a subsequent incident involving Haleyi, in which Weinstein isn’t charged, that took place in a room at the Mercer Hotel in Soho where he allegedly “demanded that she get undressed and get onto the bed.
“She didn’t fight it like the first time,” Hast said. “She just lay there motionless, like a dead fish, and let him violate her….She left feeling ashamed, stupid and worthless.”
The prosecution’s first witness was Lance Maerov, an exec with the British WPP communications conglomerate who was formerly a board member of The Weinstein Co.
Maerov described Weinstein as someone with a charming personality in public that was “diametrically opposed to who he was in person.”
Maerov also said that March 18, 2013 — when Mann was allegedly raped — was the same day that he was appointed “lead outside director,” giving him authority over Weinstein’s business decisions.
“He was not happy about it,” Maerov said.
Under cross-examination, Maerov said Weinstein was notified about the move “by email,” prompting Weinstein to shake his head and mutter, “Bulls–t” — and defense lawyer Arthur Aidala to swat his hand at his client.