Prosecutor: Women’s stories show Weinstein’s predatory power

LOS ANGELES (AP):

A prosecutor at Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial told jurors yesterday that the accusers who will testify will tell uncannily similar stories of themselves as young aspiring women who were cornered in hotel rooms by a man who at the time was the definition of Hollywood power.

"Each of these women came forward independent of each other, and none of them knew one another," Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson said during his opening statement at Weinstein's Los Angeles trial.

The 70-year-old former movie mogul, already serving a 23-year sentence in New York, is charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault in California.

The defence countered in its opening statement that the incidents either did not happen or were consensual sex that the women redefined in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein, prosecutor Thompson said, lorded his status as "the most powerful man in Hollywood" over them, talking about the female A-list actors whose careers he had made before growing aggressive.

Thompson played a video presentation with composite photos of the women who will testify and quotes from prior testimonials. Most were aspiring actors. One was an aspiring screenwriter who thought she was going to pitch him a script.

All will testify that Weinstein ignored clear signs that they did not consent, the prosecutor said, including "their shaking bodies, their crying, their backing away from him, their saying 'no.'" Four women whom Weinstein is not charged with assaulting in the case will also testify about what he did to them to demonstrate his propensity for such acts, Thompson said.

Weinstein's attorney, Mark Werksman, told jurors that what Weinstein did with the women was considered acceptable, "transactional" behaviour in Hollywood, where young women were seeking roles and other advantages by having sex with the powerful movie magnate.

"You'll learn that in Hollywood, sex was a commodity," Werksman said.

The accusers Weinstein is charged with assaulting are expected to be identified only as Jane Doe in court, but they include Jennifer Siebel Newsom, an actor and documentary filmmaker who is married to California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Siebel Newsom had not yet met Newsom and was an aspiring actor in 2005 when, according to his indictment, Weinstein raped her at a Beverly Hills hotel.