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Harvey Weinstein tried to silence and blame victims. At trial it no longer worked

<span>Photograph: Lev Radin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Lev Radin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

When the end came, there was no walking frame to lean on for Harvey Weinstein. As he was led away to spend the first of what promises to be many nights in a jail cell, he had to hobble along unaided with his arms handcuffed before him.

For the seven long weeks of his trial, the disgraced movie mogul had begun every day trundling into court behind his faithful trademark walker, with its incongruous fittings of two yellow tennis balls glued to its legs.

There was much speculation among court reporters about what it all meant – was this a classic cinematic touch by the master producer of Pulp Fiction and The English Patient designed to stir sympathy among the jurors? Or was it, more prosaically, a genuine expression of physical anguish from a man who recently underwent back surgery?

Either way, as soon as Weinstein, 67, entered court and seated himself at the defense table, any signs of vulnerability vanished in the chilly courtroom air.

Related: 'This is just the beginning': Hollywood reacts to Harvey Weinstein's conviction

Day after day, he was surrounded by his luxuriously-appareled and no doubt equally lavishly-paid team of defense lawyers attending to his every whim. It was as though he was not in court, so much as holding court, in an outpost of his once legendary (and now sold) Tribeca film offices.

Much attention has been paid in the course of these weeks to the figure of Donna Rotunno, the defendant’s larger than life and vastly outspoken chief defense lawyer. She spent the trial strutting in front of the jury as though she were in a throwback to the 1970s, berating the two main accusers for the choices they made in their dealings with the movie boss.

The clear implication of her cross-examinations was that when they accepted Weinstein’s invitation to come up to his SoHo apartment, or to his midtown Manhattan hotel room, it was at least partially their fault that he then went on to sexually attack them.

“You were manipulating Mr Weinstein so you’d get invited to fancy parties, correct? You wanted to use his power, correct?”, Rotunno said as she pummeled a key witness.

But the many huddles that she and her colleagues held around the defendant at his table suggested that if Rotunno were the messenger, Weinstein firmly dictated the message. When she grilled one of the two main accusers – a woman the Guardian has not named because her wishes over identification are not clear – so harshly over so many hours that the witness burst into uncontrollable sobbing, that was the product of a strategy that Weinstein had laid down personally years ago.

Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial in New York, 24 February 2020.
Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial in New York, 24 February 2020. Photograph: Jane Rosenberg/Reuters

Silence the women, that was the strategy. Accuse them of being serial liars, as the defense lawyers did with the Sopranos actor Annabella Sciorra, make out that they were only in it for the money as they did with the other main witness, Miriam Haley, suggesting to the jury that Haley planned to sue Weinstein the minute the trial was done.

Initially, this old-style attack machine of a defense appeared to be effective. It may have been blunt, it may have been outdated in the #MeToo era, but it landed several punches on the six accusers.

But then the women started speaking. One after another, they took to the witness stand.

When they pointed out Weinstein at his table their fingers were shaking and their voices faltering. But there was no mistaking the determination to have their day in court.

And then they began to tell their stories, or rather their story. Like a celluloid movie wheel stuck on a scene that repeats over and over, they recounted an identical chronology as though they were speaking as one.

First came the social introduction to Weinstein, a towering presence in the industry that they loved; then the promise of an acting part or audition; then the request for a massage, followed by the flash of anger when it was declined; and then the woman’s contrition and her fateful acceptance to come up to the apartment or the hotel room to continue the discussion.

He was a Jekyll and Hyde, the woman who was raped said about the defendant. “If he heard the word ‘no’, it was like a trigger for him.”

It was the Jekyll and Hyde moments that will stay in the mind, lingering long after the trial is over. The terrifying accounts of violence.

The rape victim describing how he blocked the door of his hotel room in March 2013, dragged her to his bed, injected himself with erectile dysfunction medicine and then attacked her. “I kind of shut down a little bit,” she said.

Haley relating how he held her down on his bed in July 2006, pushing her back when she tried to get up, yanking a tampon out of her before assaulting her.

Weinstein and his defense lawyers made much of the fact that his accusers stayed in touch with him after the attacks. Rotunno and co dwelt on the rape victim, teasing out every detail of how she sustained a relationship with the movie producer – degrading though it may have been – over several years.

The jury listened attentively, diligently took notes, then began their deliberations. Five days later they emerged on a blazingly sunny New York day to deliver a verdict that showed that the world has moved on. #MeToo has happened. A woman can lead her life in all its complexity, all its messiness and still expect a rape to be called a rape.

“I know the history of my relationship with him,” she had said under brutal cross-examination. “I know it was complicated and difficult. But that doesn’t change the fact that he raped me.”

  • In the US, Rainn offers support at 800-656-4673 or by chat at Rainn.org. In the UK, the rape crisis national freephone helpline is at 0808-802-9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800-737-7328) or1800respect.org.au. Other international helplines can be found at Ibiblio.org.