A woman whose name came up in testimony from an accuser last week at Harvey Weinstein's rape trial is expected to offer her own version of the episode for the defense
By
TOM HAYS and MICHAEL R. SISAK Associated Press
February 10, 2020, 4:24 PM
5 min read
NEW YORK -- A Harvey Weinstein accuser testified that a woman did nothing to stop the once-powerful movie mogul from groping her in a Beverly Hills hotel in 2013. On Monday, that woman is set to offer her own account of the encounter.
Taking the witness stand at Weinstein’s New York City rape trial last week, Lauren Marie Young testified that Claudia Salinas, a Mexican model and actress, closed the door behind her and Weinstein as they went into the bathroom and “was standing right there” when Young managed to get out.
Young told the jury she shot Salinas “an evil look, and I left as quick as I could without saying anything."
Salinas, now 38, is the latest defense witness in the fourth week of Weinstein's rape trial, which could see closing arguments by the end of the week. She has appeared in several films, including in the 2009 Weinstein-produced “Crossing Over” with Harrison Ford.
Weinstein’s lawyers started Monday by calling to the witness stand the longtime manager of an apartment building where actress Annabella Sciorra alleges Weinstein barged through her door, pinned her to a bed and raped her in late 1993 or early 1994.
Nelson Lopez, the manager of the Gramercy Park building for the past 31 years, testified that he remembers Sciorra living there for about a year and that she never complained about anyone being allowed up to her apartment without permission.
He said that when visitors arrived to the building, the procedure was for doormen to call residents on an intercom and asked if the visitor was “allowed to go in, yes or no?” Lopez said. If there was no answer, the visitors would have been turned away, he said.
Lopez said the two night doormen from that era retired to Puerto Rico. Rejecting the suggestion that Weinstein could've paid the doorman off to look the other way, Lopez said none of his men would do such a thing.
Sciorra testified on Jan. 23 that Weinstein showed up at her apartment door after he gave her a ride home from a dinner with Uma Thurman and others in the entertainment industry. Sciorra said they'd already said their goodbyes outside the building and that she had changed into a nightgown and was getting ready for bed when she heard a knock on the door.
Weinstein lawyer Donna Rotunno questioned Sciorra on cross-examination about why she didn't speak up when she says he first arrived at her apartment — why she didn’t ask why he was there or if the doorman had let him up.
Rotunno also questioned Sciorra’s behavior after the alleged assault, noting that she never went to the police, a doctor or a hospital and that she never sought out security footage of Weinstein entering her apartment building or got to the bottom of how he got past the doorman.
“At the time, I didn’t understand that that was rape,” Sciorra told the defense lawyer, who noted that based on her timeline of events she was 33 years old at the time.
Weinstein’s lawyers have said they also plan to call two friends of the woman he is charged with raping: a Hollywood talent agent and a Brazilian actress who lived with the woman in Los Angeles, who were on the March 2013 trip to New York City where she alleges Weinstein raped her at a midtown Manhattan hotel.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault, unless they come forward publicly.
Weinstein is charged with raping a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in March 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on a different woman in 2006. The 67-year-old Weinstein has maintained any sexual encounters were consensual.
The defense witnesses follow more than two weeks of prosecution testimony, including the accounts of six women who say Weinstein subjected them to vile sexual behavior.
Weinstein's lawyers last week used a memory expert, cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, to try to cement doubts about the women's allegations after cross-examinations that sought to highlight inconsistencies in some of their accounts. In some cases, the encounters the women were recalling happened a decade or longer ago.
False memories “can be experienced with a great deal of detail, a great deal of emotion, even though they’re false,” she told the jury. “The emotion is not a guarantee you’re dealing with an authentic memory.”
Weinstein's lawyers haven't said whether he will testify.
If he does, he faces the prospect of prosecutors grilling him over the allegations and could give them an opening to bring in more witnesses in an attempt to rebut anything he says.
“That is a question that does not have an answer at this point,” attorney Arthur Aidala said. “We want to see how our defense case goes."
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On Twitter, follow Tom Hays at twitter.com/aptomhays and Michael Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak
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For more coverage of Harvey Weinstein’s trial, visit http://apnews.com/HarveyWeinstein
