Harvey Weinstein will seemingly spend the remainder of his life behind bars, a reality cemented by highly effective testimony from Evgeniya Chernyshova—a 43-year-old former mannequin and actress who had, till now, been identified publicly as Jane Doe 1. “I’m bored with hiding,” Chernyshova instructed The Hollywood Reporter. “I would like my life again. I’m Evgeniya, I’ve been raped. That is my story.”
Now a florist and mom of three, Chernyshova revealed her title a day after Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in jail for raping her in 2013. (The disgraced mogul, who’s serving a 23-year sentence in New York for intercourse crimes, can not serve his Los Angeles sentence concurrently, a Los Angeles County Superior Courtroom Decide dominated on Thursday. Weinstein denies all allegations.)
As for why she selected to stay nameless, Chernyshova defined: “I did it as a result of I used to be ashamed and humiliated. I assumed it was a great choice to guard my children. But it surely was a horrible choice for myself as a result of I’ve been minimize off from everybody. It isn’t proper to undergo this hell alone.”
In his Los Angeles trial, the 70-year-old Weinstein was convicted on three fees—forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, and penetration by a international object—in opposition to Chernyshova. Weinstein was acquitted of 1 cost, whereas jurors remained deadlocked on fees associated to his alleged assaults on two different ladies, together with Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who’s married to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Prosecutors dropped fees of allegations made by a fifth girl, who didn’t seem in court docket to testify. District Lawyer George Gascón has not introduced whether or not Weinstein will probably be retried on the counts for which the jury didn’t attain a verdict. “I consider the entire victims who testified,” Chernyshova instructed The Hollywood Reporter. “All of them. And I wish to say this—this isn’t solely my victory, that is our victory.”
In line with Chernyshova, Weinsten raped her on the Los Angeles Italia Movie Pageant throughout Oscars week 2013. The producer allegedly launched himself to her, though they’d beforehand met at an trade occasion in Rome, earlier than she retreated to her room on the Mr. C Beverly Hills Lodge. As Chernyshova was making ready for mattress, she says, she acquired a name from the entrance desk alerting her to Weinstein’s presence downstairs. After she rebuffed his try to return upstairs, Chernyshova says she heard a loud knock. “He’s like, ‘Hey, it’s Harvey Weinstein. Open the door. We have now to speak. I’m not going to fuck you, I simply have to speak to you,’” he mentioned, in response to Chernyshova.
In an try to cease his advances, Chernyshova opened the door. “And that’s the factor I’ve regretted for the final 10 years—that I did open this door,” she instructed the outlet. When Weinstein started to take away his jacket, “One thing clicked, like a change in his eyes,” she mentioned. “I spotted that one thing was fallacious.”
Chernyshova, who was married on the time, drew consideration to her marriage ceremony ring and talked about her youngsters to fend Weinstein off. “However he did what he did. He assaulted me within the bed room, after which he dragged me to the toilet and he raped me there.”
Chernyshova wouldn’t share her story till the autumn of 2017 throughout a dialog along with her then-16-year-old daughter, Maria. Maria had been assaulted in highschool. “I instructed her that there was just one situation that I used to be gonna be capable of [report my case], and that’s if she additionally got here ahead along with her case,” Maria instructed THR. She introduced her case to the LAPD simply weeks earlier than bombshell New York Occasions and New Yorker tales about Weinstein’s sample of sexual assault can be revealed.
5 years later, Chernyshova testified in opposition to Weinstein for 3 days, a interval she referred to as “the worst expertise of my life.” After Weinstein’s responsible conviction, she filed a civil go well with in opposition to him, in search of unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for sexual battery, false imprisonment, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional misery.
Following the sentencing, through which Chernyshova offered a stirring sufferer assertion pleading for Weinstein to die in jail, she instructed THR, “I be happy, and a heavy weight and burden has been lifted off my chest. I’m wanting ahead to a great evening’s sleep.”
