Jessica Mann, who has testified that Harvey Weinstein trapped her in a hotel room and sexually assaulted her in 2013, ended five days of grueling testimony Friday, sobbing as she left the Manhattan courtroom. “I’m not doing too good right now, so I’m really trying to remember,” Mann had told the judge earlier in the day, after a defense lawyer resumed a cross-examination that scrutinized her communications with Weinstein in the years following the alleged attack.
Weinstein, 73, is being retried on charges including rape after his 2020 conviction was overturned by an appeals court and a later trial ended with a deadlocked jury on the rape count. He has denied the allegations, saying he “acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone.”
Mann, a 40-year-old former hairstylist and aspiring actor, first met Weinstein in early 2013 when he was a powerful studio head. She testified that he soon began making advances, and while she was taken aback, she decided to embark on a relationship with the then-married mogul. She alleges that in March 2013 he summoned her to a midtown Manhattan hotel, trapped her, ignored her protests, and raped her.
During cross-examination, Weinstein’s lawyer Teny Geragos displayed a series of friendly emails and text messages Mann sent to or about Weinstein over the years, including a May 2013 text in which she told a friend, “I like the Harvey we know. I feel some sense of protection.” Mann told jurors that Weinstein helped her navigate the film industry and that “there was a time when I felt he did protect me.”
The defense also introduced a note Mann wrote to herself two days after the alleged rape, which surfaced for the first time at this retrial. In it, she reflected on her conflicted feelings about an unnamed man and asked herself, “Do I love him or the idea of him?” The note did not mention any sexual assault. When Geragos asked why, Mann paused and said, “I don’t have to write that down.”
Mann acknowledged that her relationship with Weinstein continued on and off for years afterward. She said she loved “a part of him” and “always tried to see the good in him,” but she also testified that she feared Weinstein’s influence. He boasted that his “enemies don’t step a foot in this town,” she said, and she was wary of crossing “a well-connected man.”
On redirect, prosecutor Nicole Blumberg sought to underscore that Mann’s memory of the alleged rape was clear. “I remember,” Mann said. Then she was told there were no more questions and walked, sobbing, from the room.
The proceedings are the latest chapter in a case that helped ignite the #MeToo movement. Weinstein’s 2020 conviction was a landmark, but it was overturned on appeal, and a 2024 retrial ended in deadlock on the rape count, leaving the case unresolved. The current trial — the third — is expected to continue with additional witnesses.