Call it a curveball! When Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial kicked off in Los Angeles in October, it was clear that we’d hear some pretty disturbing details from the five women who were accusing him of rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force, sexual battery, and sexual battery by restraint — in various incidents that occurred over a nine-year period. What we weren’t necessarily expecting was how much we’d learn about the disgraced movie mogul’s genitals, including his how testicles were surgically placed into his thighs and that his penis apparently bears a striking resemblance to a fish. And as Variety reports, these bizarre details have become a key focus of the case, which went to the jury for deliberations on Friday.
As Elizabeth Wagmeister wrote for Variety, Weinstein’s attorneys seized upon the testimony of one of the former Miramax head’s alleged victims, a European actress and model simply identified as Jane Doe #1, who says she was raped and sexually assaulted by Weinstein in 2013, when she was staying at Mr. C Beverly Hills Hotel as a guest of the L.A. Italia Film Festival:
During her testimony, Jane Doe #1 spoke at length about Weinstein’s testicles. On the stand, she tearfully told the jury that Weinstein demanded she “suck his balls,” or forced her to perform oral sex on him. Rehashing the graphic details, she said, “He forced me to do what he asked… I was crying, choking.” But during cross-examination, one of Weinstein’s attorneys, Alan Jackson, asked Jane Doe #1 how Weinstein’s “balls were in your mouth,” if he does not have testicles. “The reason that you changed your story is because you realized at some point that Mr. Weinstein does not have testicles in his scrotum,” Jackson said to Jane Doe #1 during her three-day testimony. She disagreed and said she never changed her story, and always told detectives that Weinstein had abnormal testicles. “I recall that he didn’t have one,” she said. “It was like empty skin.”
During final arguments, Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson, the lead prosecutor, allowed that even if Jane Doe #1’s description of Weinstein’s ballsack wasn’t perfect, the fact that she knew there was something off about his genitals at all only strengthened their claims against him. “Jane Doe #1 is able to describe Mr. Weinstein’s anatomy,” Thompson said. “She can do that because he assaulted her. There’s no other explanation for that.”
Early on in the trial, the jury was given the unenviable task of examining photos of Weinstein’s mangled junk in order to better understand the testimony of the women who were accusing him of rape and assault.
But it’s not only Weinstein’s scrotum that is strange; Jane Doe #2 described his penis as looking like it had “been chopped off and sewn back on,” while Jane Doe #4 — who we know is Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California governor Gavin Newsom — recalled “being shocked by everything” she saw of Weinstein’s nude body. She said he had “Lots of bruises, markings, yellow and green, lots of stretch marks on his belly, very not physically fit at all,” described his penis as being “kind of fish-like,” and said that “something was distorted in the testicles … Lots of skin, lots of skin down there.”
The jury is scheduled to enter their second day of deliberations today.
(Via Variety)