Massage Therapist Says Harvey Weinstein Molested Her, Promised Not to Do It Again – Then Did It 3 More Times
A licensed massage therapist to the stars testified Wednesday that Harvey Weinstein hired her, assaulted and masturbated in front of her during their very first session – then continued to do it on subsequent visits after promising her he would stop.
Jane Doe 3 said they met through a mutual friend in 2010 when she was 28, that he took an interest in her practice as a masseuse specializing in pain and, through his assistant, booked an appointment at the Montage Hotel. When she showed up with her massage table, his assistant Barbara took her to his room, where Harvey was sitting on a chair in a bathrobe.
She said he was “very friendly” at first, asking lots of questions about her before he dismissed Barbara from the suite. The massage began without incident in the bedroom, she said, though Weinstein was more talkative than most clients, she said.
“He was very nice, talking to me very friendly, very curious about me, complimenting my massage technique,” she said. Then he suggested she should write a book about massage, and “talked about how he has a publishing company.”
Suddenly, 40 minutes into the scheduled hour, she said he stopped it, saying “I’m done, I’m done.”
When she went into the bathroom to wash up, she said he barged in, standing five feet from her, naked and masturbating.
“I said, ‘What are you doing, this is not appropriate, can yo please go back in the other room, and get your clothes on?” she testified. Asked to describe him physically, she said: “Discoloration in the crotch area. He was a heavier man. His penis was hanging, that’s the only way I can describe it, while he was masturbating.”
“He said, ‘Look at me, tell me how big my cock is. Look at me, look at me, fucking look at me.'”
Then Jane Doe 3 began to tear up.
“I was terrified,” she said. “I thought I was about to get raped.”
She said he kept repeating “Look at my cock and tell me how big my cock is” as she backed away and he advanced.
“He went toward me in a very aggressive manner,” she said. “He pushed me against the wall. That’s when he started to put his hand under my bra and feeling my chest.”
She said there was no getting away at that point: “It was not possible. He’s a big man, he’s strong. There was no going around him. … I was in shock. I felt frozen, I felt paralyzed. I was trying to understand what was about to happen to me.”
She said she told him to “Stop. I told him to leave me alone,” but he continued groping at her so aggressively that she said it left red marks.
“He ejaculated on the floor,” she said. “He moved away from me. He said ‘Now I know I can trust you, we’re close friends.’ … He kept saying ‘We’re close friends now, you have full access to me, I want to get you a book deal to write about massage.'”
She said he suddenly tried to “normalize” what he had done. “He made me feel like it was strange for making it awkward, like masturbation is something everybody does. Basically humiliating me, like my reaction wasn’t normal.”
She eventually left the bathroom and started packing up her table. All the while, “he was doing things like flashing me, almost taunting me, he was laughing about it. I believe like he was trying to make me feel like what he did was normal.”
Meanwhile Barbara, who had been standing right next to the suite’s bedroom door, escorted her out. She said Weinstein continued to contact her after the incident – and she was responsive.
“He was calling me, he was texting me, I wanted to make sense of certain things that had happened. I wish I didn’t.”
She said she was engaged to be married at the time, and felt that reporting him would be disastrous for her practice.
“If I told my fiancé that I was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, he would have made me go to the cops. If I did that, I would have been alone, on trial against him. I would have been the massage therapist that couldn’t be alone with a high-profile client because I would accuse them of sexual assault.”
She did get books from Weinstein, who continued to encourage her to write her own. She tried out a synopsis, with the working title “Naked Massage” because “when someone is laying on the massage table they’re naked they’re vulnerable, they shed everything from the entire day, their pain and discomfort. It’s just leaving everything behind when you’re on the table.”
There was no intention of sexual innuendo, she said [though Weinstein would later proposition a dancer with a suggestion of “naked massage,” she testified last month]. He was persistent about the book idea, and when she declined his meeting invitations, he promised here there would be no more sexual activity.
She agreed to meet him about a month later, again at the Montage, for another massage appointment. They talked a bit about the book – he liked the name – and again he started with the “flashing” by opening and closing his robe as he laughed.
“I wasn’t entertaining it,” she said. “I said stop doing that. You told me you weren’t going to do that anymore.”
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After some more back-and-forth with Weinstein’s people about the book, they ultimately dropped the idea: “I wasn’t a writer,” she said. “I was a terrible writer, and they knew it. And said I just don’t understand how you were going to write a book about massage? … I honestly didn’t care.”
As much as a year later, she said, Weinstein started texting her again, saying he would be in Los Angeles soon and wanted another massage.
“I was repulsed by him,” she said. “I didn’t want to put myself in a position again to be alone with him.” But he texted a picture of his injured foot, saying she was the only one who knew how to make it feel better.
She arrived one last time at the Montage, this time with Epsom salts only.
“I didn’t think it would be an issue for him to sexually assault me again with an injured leg,” she said. “I didn’t have my table with me.”
She worked on a fully clothed Weinstein’s foot, and when she was done, she remembered him saying: “‘Do you want to continue to be close friends with me, have full access to me, or do you just want to be invited to a movie premiere?'”
“I said ‘No,'” she said. “I just went into shock. … I said you cannot touch me, you are not allowed to put a finger on me.”
She said he ordered her to go into the bathroom again, where he “pulled down his pants, stood about six feet away from me, and he masturbated.”
Once again, she ordered him to “watch him …. and I was telling him it’s really big Harvey, you have a really big cock.”
Now Crying, Jane Doe 3 said she was “disgusted. Disgusted that that just happened to me, and I just stood there.”
She said a year or two later, a male friend name Sean with a publishing company begged her to get a meeting with Weinstein. Figuring
She ended up working with someone named Sean who had a publishing company, did coffee table books, wanted to do a book on Los Angeles. She mentioned she knew Weinstein. He begged her to get a meeting.
Figuring there was no way she’d wind up alone with Weinstein this time, they set a meeting at the Peninsula hotel. In the lobby, she said, Weinstein at one point asked Sean to step away, and he agreed to do so.
She said they chatted as he walked her to the elevator, and once again, they ended up in his room. She said she told him “Don’t touch me,” and wound up taking off his pants and masturbating yet again.
“He told me to lift up my shirt,” she said. “He started yelling at me again, he said ‘lift up your fucking shirt’ … He started [grabbing at her breasts] again and this time I screamed.”
She said she told him they were no longer friends, went downstairs, and left with Sean, whom she had never told about the assaults. In fact, she kept the incidents to herself for a long time, but finally told someone.
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“I ended up telling a friend of mine, Mel,” she said.
“Mel who?” asked the prosecutor.
“Mel Gibson,” she replied.
She said she was giving Gibson a massage when the actor brought up a movie that he might be working on with Weinstein.
“I freaked out, I started basically … ‘How could you ever want to work with this man, why would you ever want to work with this person?’ He asked what happened.” She said she went into shock and started crying [and is again crying at this point in her testimony].
“He was the first person that I finally opened up with about what happened,” she said. “I told him that he sexually assaulted me, but I didn’t want to get into all the details, I was embarrassed and humiliated.”
She said Gibson asked if she wanted to go to police, or get a lawyer. Gibson was on the initial list of more than 80 witnesses, and the judge wrangled with lawyers before testimony began about what they might be able to ask the “Braveheart” actor, but it wasn’t clear whether he would be called to corroborate Jane Doe 3’s testimony.
“It was the first time I had ever opened my mouth and told someone about it verbally, and it was a lot for me to say that.”
She also told Gibson’s friend, Allison Weiner, who testified earlier Wednesday about hearing Jane Doe 3’s tale.
Jane Doe 3 was expected on the stand Thursday for cross-examination.
Weinstein faces 11 charges of sexual assault from allegations spanning from 2004-2013. The trial is expected to last into December after a two-week jury selection process seated a panel last Thursday of nine men and three women. Weinstein could face up to 140 years in prison if convicted.
He is already serving 23 years in a New York prison for criminal first-degree sexual assault and third-degree rape, a conviction he has been granted the right to appeal. Weinstein has maintained his innocence since the New York Times first published accusations against him five years ago this month.
