Kuzma/iStock(NEW YORK) — On Friday, Harvey Weinstein will come face-to-face with the woman he is charged with raping in a New York City hotel room in 2013.
The witness, who has not publicly identified herself, is not being named by ABC News because says she’s the victim of a sexual assault.
Her account represents the most complicated of all the accounts of the six women testifying against Weinstein at this trial — and will feature the first direct testimony about Weinstein injecting erectile dysfunction medication into his penis.
Weinstein is charged with performing a forcible sex act on Miriam “Mimi” Haleyi in 2006 and with raping the accuser taking the witness stand Friday. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has denied ever engaging in nonconsensual sex.
After the alleged rape on March 18, 2013, the witness, “distraught, disgusted and terrified, ran into a bathroom to collect herself,” Manhattan prosecutor Meghan Hast said during opening arguments. She noticed a hypodermic needle in the garbage, and panicked, since she said Weinstein hadn’t worn a condom.
Later, Hast said, she Google-searched the name on the label and learned that it was erectile dysfunction medicine.
At Weinstein’s urging, she and her roommate joined Weinstein the following night at a movie premiere, Hast said.
“Even after she was forcibly raped by the defendant, she continued some semblance of a relationship with him for years,” Hast said.
That included a disturbing account Hast gave of a meeting in November 2013 at the Peninsula Hotel in New York, where prosecutors said that after telling Weinstein she had a boyfriend, he grew angry and again violently raped her, insisting that she “owed him one more time.” (Weinstein is not charged in this incident.)
Defense attorneys will argue that the relationship was always consensual, and point to numerous emails she subsequently sent to Weinstein, including one from February 2017 that reads, “I love you, I always do. But I hate feeling like a booty call. :)”
If you or someone you know experienced sexual assault and is seeking resources, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
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