
UPDATED with statement from Weinstein spokesperson: Just weeks before Harvey Weinstein could discover his sentencing fate from the mixed verdict of his Los Angeles rape trial, the woman at the center of the case filed a rape lawsuit of her own today.
A former model-actress whom Weinstein identified as Jane Doe #1 alleges sexual battery, false imprisonment, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress over an alleged February 2013 sexual assault in her Beverly Hills hotel room. She is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Read the lawsuit here.
Weinstein’s criminal case attorney, Mark Werksman, told jurors in the criminal case trial that Jane Doe #1 “was not a woman who was alone and vulnerable and cut off from the world.” It is alleged that when Jane Doe #1 let Weinstein into her hotel room at Mr. C Beverly Hills ,she had a cell phone and the hotel room phone at her disposal.
Italian-born Jane Doe #1 was in LA to attend a film festival.
Similar to her testimony at last year’s criminal trial, Jane Doe #1’s suit states that Weinstein came to her room unexpectedly after she attended events that day related to the festival. “After he was done raping her, he acted as if nothing out of the ordinary happened and left,” the plaintiff’s court papers allege.
Jane Doe #1 did not report the incident until 2017, when she had a talk with her daughter and when Weinstein was at the forefront of the #MeToo movement, according to her court papers.
“Harvey has always denied the allegations, and even more, has maintained that they were never in the same place at the times alleged,” a Weinstein spokesperson said in a statement today. “Certain witnesses lied about crucial evidence that could have exonerated Mr. Weinstein, and it was deemed unnecessary by the court for the jury to hear or know about these facts. His attorneys submitted a motion detailing those facts and contend that the jury would not have convicted him had they had known the specifics and that motion speaks for itself and puts this in proper context.”
After a nearly two month long trial, the Oscar-winning disgraced former movie mogul was convicted in December of three of the seven counts he was facing in L.A. — forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object. All three of those counts related to Jane Doe #1.
He was found not guilty of sexual battery of Jane Doe #2, and the jury was hung on charges on Jane Doe #3 and Jane Doe #4 aka California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Judge Lisa Lench declared a mistrial on the counts where the jurors couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict.
Weinstein faces up to 18 years in prison but is seeking a new trial over a “false impression” by the L.A. County District Attorney’s office.
According to a motion filed January 31 in Los Angeles Superior Court (read it here), the Weinstein accuser and the Italian TV host and festival organizer “by her own admission to the prosecutors, Jane Doe 1 lied when she testified under oath that the extent of her relationship with Mr. Vicedomini was only that of friends and coworkers.”
City News Service contributed to this report.
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