American actress Annabella Sciorra has testified in against film producer Harvey Weinstein, saying he pinioned and raped her at her home 25 years ago.
Annabella Sciorra, best known for her role in "The Sopranos", claimed that Harvey Weinstein forced himself into her apartment and brutally raped her. She narrated: "I was trying to get him off me. I was punching him, kicking him."
The 67-year-old producer denies all charges, including rape and sexual assault.
In her testimony, Sciorra mentioned that she had dinner with Weinstein in the winter of 1993-94 and he then offered to drive the actress back to her Manhattan apartment. After dropping her off, Sciorra heard a knock at her door.
She claims that Weinstein shoved his way into her apartment took her to a bedroom where he forced her on to a bed and sexually assaulted her. Fighting back tears, she said: "He got on top of me and he raped me. He had intercourse with me and I was trying to fight him, but I couldn't fight anymore because he had my hands locked."
"It was just so disgusting that my body started to shake in a way that was very unusual. It was like a seizure or something," she continued.
Sciorra said she confronted Weinstein at a dinner weeks later but the producer allegedly leaned into her and menacingly said: "This remains between you and I."Â She testified: "It was threatening and I was afraid."
While the incident Sciorra told would have happened too long ago to be pursued under New York law, prosecutors intend to use her testimony to support their argument that Weinstein is a sexual predator.
They are trying to prove that he committed a serious sexual offence against at least two people. Weinstein currently faces charges for raping one woman, Jessica Mann, in a hotel room in the New York borough in 2013, and performing a forcible sex act on a second woman, Mimi Haleyi, in 2006.
According to the producer's defense team, his actions were consensual, including one "loving" relationship.
