NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein callously preceded an alleged rape with reassurances that he’d had a vasectomy, one accuser testified Wednesday.
Another accuser said the once-revered Hollywood producer tried trading movie roles for sex, claiming the lewd offer was the kind of thing that happened all the time in the film business.
Choking back tears, Tarale Wulff told jurors there was nothing she could do to stop the much larger Weinstein once he grabbed her by the arm and pushed her onto the bed at his New York City apartment in 2005 during what was supposed to be an audition.
Wulff, now 43 and a model, said she froze, thinking that would make it “easier to get through, to get past it.”
Dawn Dunning testified that the year before, Weinstein put his hand up her skirt and fondled her genitals during a meeting in his hotel suite about her fledgling acting career.
At a subsequent meeting, she said, he offered to put her in three movies, but only if she had sex with him and his assistant.
“When he said that, I kind of laughed, I thought he was kidding, and he had kind of a crass sense of humor,” Dunning testified. “But when I started laughing, he got really angry and started screaming at me. He said, ‘you’ll never make it in this business, this is how this industry works.’”
Dunning, now 40, said Weinstein went on to namedrop actresses Salma Hayek and Charlize Theron, implying they had done similar things to achieve success — something both women have strongly denied.
Hayek has said she had to fight off Weinstein’s constant harassment and bullying. Theron was upset when some accusers said he implied they had slept together.
Wulff and Dunning’s experiences with Weinstein are not part of the underlying criminal charges against him, but their testimony could be a factor in whether he goes to prison at the end of his landmark #MeToo-era trial.
Prosecutors called them as witnesses under a state law that allows testimony about so-called “prior bad acts,” enabling them to explore things like motive, opportunity, intent and a common scheme or plan.
Weinstein, 67, is charged with forcibly performing oral sex on Mimi Haleyi, at the time a “Project Runway” production assistant, in 2006 and raping another aspiring actress in 2013. That woman could testify later this week.
Weinstein has insisted any sexual encounters were consensual.
Jurors have already heard from Haleyi, who tearfully testified that she tried to fight off Weinstein before he sexually assaulted her, and actress Annabella Sciorra, who testified that he overpowered and raped her after barging into her apartment in the mid-1990s.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault, unless they agree to be named or gone public with their stories, as Haleyi, Wulff, Dunning and Sciorra have done.
Wulff testified that on an occasion before the alleged rape, Weinstein grabbed her arm as she served cocktails at one of his usual Manhattan haunts, led her toward a darkened terrace and started masturbating.
Wulff, who’d met Weinstein at the members-only club, said she froze and scooted around him to go back to the bar.
Dunning went public about the alleged jobs-for-sex proposal in an October 2017 article in The New York Times. She said she didn’t disclose the alleged fondling to prosecutors until last summer.
Dunning told jurors that, like Wulff, she met Weinstein while waiting tables at a Manhattan night spot, one where bottle service was a trendy indulgence for the rich and famous.
Weinstein immediately appeared to take an interest in her fledgling acting career, she said, and invited her to a lunch meeting where, noting his infamous temper, she said he was “on the phone a lot yelling at people.”
Several meetings followed, Dunning said, including one at a boutique hotel in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood where Weinstein was using a suite as a temporary office. At one point, she testified, Weinstein led her into a bedroom and put his hand up her skirt.
“I stood up. I was in shock,” Dunning said, fighting back tears as she described the alleged incident when she was 24. “He just started talking really fast. He said, ‘Don’t make a big deal about this. It will never happen again.’”
Asked by prosecutor Meghan Hast whether she was gaining anything by testifying at the trial, Dunning responded: “No, if anything I’m losing. This is the worst and hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Dunning said she “just kind of gave him the benefit of the doubt” when Weinstein said it wouldn’t happen again. She said she didn’t scream or yell and didn’t tell anyone because she was embarrassed and didn’t want to be a victim.
Dunning said that she later agreed to meet Weinstein at a cigar bar, but that an assistant took her to a suite where the producer was standing in a bathrobe.
There, she said Weinstein showed her a contract for three movie roles she would get on the condition she had “a threesome with his assistant.”
Dunning said she didn’t know what Weinstein would do after she laughed off the offer, so she ran for the door and down the hall to the elevator.
“He was a big guy. He was towering over me,” she testified. “I was really scared.”
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