Once again, we are being treated to a tutorial on how “real” rape victims do and do not behave. And once again, what we’re being told is nonsense.
In a Los Angeles courtroom on Monday, a lawyer for prolific convicted predator Harvey Weinstein suggested that his client could not have raped California’s First Partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, years ago.
Why? Because in 2007, two years after the alleged assault, Siebel Newsom emailed Weinstein to ask his advice on how to handle “bad press” about her then-boyfriend Gavin Newsom’s affair with a married aide when he was mayor of San Francisco.
“Of all things you’d think a woman that is raped by Harvey Weinstein wouldn’t do, it’s (ask him) how to deal with a sex scandal,” defense counsel Mark Werksman told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench, according to a pool report.
You might think that, sure. Especially if you nodded along all those years ago as Joe Biden and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee implied that Anita Hill couldn’t really have been sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas, or else would never have followed him to a new job.
You might think that if you agreed that Bill Cosby must not have drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand or else she would not have continued to return his phone calls as part of her job at Temple University.
You might think that if you remember that the 2016 trial of a man accused raping a UC Davis student in 2012 ended in a mistrial because the jury couldn’t get past what they saw as the damning fact that his accuser, who had been stranded at his house, later let him drive her home. “I felt if I confronted him then and there, I don’t think I would have made it out of that house,” she said. Jurors thought otherwise.
Now Weinstein’s attorneys are set to argue that since “Jane Doe 4,” who is Siebel Newsom, later asked the producer for favors, then obviously nothing unwanted happened between them.
“The fact that she comes to Mr. Weinstein for that advice indicates the friendship and companionship of Jane Doe 4 and Mr. Weinstein,” his lawyer told the court. “The defense will be that they had an affair, that they had consensual sex.”
Maybe she even took Weinstein’s advice about the scandal, since she did blame Newsom’s aide for his ugly affair with someone who was not only an employee, but the wife of his best friend and campaign manager. Siebel Newsom also asked Weinstein for campaign donations for her partner.
But asking Weinstein for favors does not mean he didn’t rape her, and we should stop pretending that real victims always behave the way we think they should — initially emotional rather than numb, and then later, avoiding all contact.
In the California case now in jury selection, Weinstein faces a maximum of 140 years on multiple charges involving five women who say he assaulted them between 2004 and 2013. He’s now appealing his New York sentence, which makes this Los Angeles trial even more important to the more than 90 women who have accused him, and to everyone who hoped that rapists with power and money were no longer immune from consequences.
‘Nothing to do with politics’
I already admired Siebel Newsom for her willingness to testify. Because like all accusers, she’s doing so knowing that she’ll be vilified. But that she’d do so, fully aware that her entreaties to Weinstein would be aired in court, only makes what she’s doing more credible and commendable.
The judge said she will not allow prosecutors to introduce texts and a tweet from Siebel Newsom saying that if all of Weinstein’s victims came forward, he’d be in jail for life, and that Malia Obama, who at the time had just gotten an internship at Weinstein Co., would probably be assaulted, too.
“It is snarky,” Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez told the judge, “but it is snarky because she had been raped, and she wanted to let the public know.”
The judge said those comments were “based on things she’s heard” so would not be allowed.
The email asking Weinstein’s advice mentioned a movie she was part of, and said, “Harvey, regarding the press thing, I was calling because I wanted some advice” about how to respond to a story about Newsom’s affair.
“She comes to him to basically navigate a sex scandal,” which a real victim would not do, Werksman told the judge, who answered, “Very dramatic, Mr. Werksman.”
“Forgive the melodrama,” he answered.
“I’m not sure how Mr. Werksman knows” how a rape victim would behave, Martinez said. “They do not react in a matter how someone who has not been raped would think.”
As for why she’d go to Weinstein, of all people, the prosecutor said that “he was the person everyone looked to see how to deal with a bad press situation.” As a master media manipulator, she said, it only made sense.
Though he’s lost his power to control the narrative, how we see victims hasn’t changed as much as it should have.
Werksman complained, “They’re trying to whitewash and inoculate their client from tough questioning.” Of course they are.
The judge ruled that the defense could ask Weinstein whether Siebel Newsom “sought his advice over a situation with the press.” But details about that situation, she decided, are “too tangential in relation to this trial. … It is far less relevant than you think it is,” she told the defense. “And far more prejudicial.”
Werksman also said he might want to bring up the governor and his wife’s visit to the French Laundry restaurant during the pandemic shutdown to highlight their hypocrisy.
“We’re seeking to exclude anything political,” Martinez countered, “because this has nothing to do with politics.”
The alleged rape of California’s first partner by Hollywood’s best known bad actor is bound to be seen through a political lens.
But again, that she’s willing to do this regardless of how it reflects on her ambitious husband means it’s also about something more than politics.
____
