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A fancy dress designer and former actress instructed jurors in Harvey Weinstein rape trial on Wednesday (Jan 29) that the previous producer groped her beneath her skirt and later propositioned her for intercourse in alternate for film contracts.
The girl, Daybreak Dunning, isn’t among the many ladies Weinstein is charged with assaulting.
She is certainly one of three ladies who prosecutors are calling to bolster their case towards Weinstein by attempting to supply proof of his motives or strategies.
Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not responsible to sexually assaulting Mimi Haleyi and Jessica Mann. Since 2017, greater than 80 ladies, together with many well-known actresses, have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct.
The accusations fuelled the #MeToo motion, during which ladies have accused highly effective males in enterprise, leisure, media and politics of sexual misconduct. Weinstein’s trial is extensively seen as an necessary milestone within the motion.
Weinstein, who produced The English Affected person and Shakespeare In Love, has denied the allegations and stated any sexual encounters have been consensual.
Dunning stated on Wednesday that within the spring of 2004, Weinstein invited her to a resort in SoHo the place a movie was being staged.
When she arrived, she stated, Weinstein led her right into a bed room and, with out warning, put her hand up her skirt and on her vagina.
“It was just a few seconds, however I simply form of froze for a minute after which stood up,” she stated.
“He instructed me to not make an enormous deal about it. He apologised, stated it would not occur once more.”
Just a few weeks later, Dunning testified, Weinstein’s assistant invited her to a different assembly in a resort to debate performing alternatives.
When she arrived, she stated, Weinstein greeted her in a bathrobe, and instructed her he would signal her for his subsequent three films if she had three-way intercourse with him and his assistant.
Dunning stated she laughed, considering it was a joke, however Weinstein turned offended and screamed at her, “You will by no means make it on this enterprise. That is how this trade works,” including that different actresses, together with Salma Hayek and Charlize Theron, had helped their careers in the identical means.
Dunning stated she ran out of the room, down the corridor and to the elevator as Weinstein continued to scream behind her.
Jurors within the trial have already heard from Haleyi, who labored as a manufacturing assistant on the tv present Challenge Runway.
She testified on Monday that Weinstein invited her to his Manhattan residence in July 2006 and attacked her, backing her right into a bed room and forcing oral intercourse on her.
They’ve additionally heard from actress Annabella Sciorra, recognized for her function on HBO’s The Sopranos, who testified final week that Weinstein pressured his means into her Manhattan house one winter evening in 1993 or 1994 and violently raped her.
Whereas Sciorra’s allegation is simply too previous to help a separate rape cost towards Weinstein, prosecutors hope it’ll present he’s a repeat sexual predator – a cost that would put him in jail for all times.
Weinstein’s attorneys have sought to undermine the ladies’s allegations by way of cross-examination, emphasising that Sciorra didn’t report her alleged rape to authorities and that Haleyi remained involved with Weinstein after her alleged assault, at occasions asking him for jobs.
Mann, a former aspiring actress, has not but testified.
Prosecutors have stated Weinstein raped her in 2013.
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