At trial, accusers face a loaded question: Why stay in touch with Weinstein? Many victims, who were previously reluctant to come forward, have now found their voice.
“I would never have gotten out of bed in the morning,” Patricia Spence testified. “I would have still been at work.”
Two other victims who alleged that Weinstein drugged them for sex told jurors they did not come forward because of Weinstein’s reputation, but also because their own families and friends did not want to make them.
“It’s not about reputation or anything else, but he is a human being,” said Amy Morton, who in 1991 was the youngest of more than 120 women to go public with abuse allegations against Weinstein. “I don’t blame him, it’s not how he is.”
As the case moves forward in New York, which prosecutors believe will be the state whose law would most effectively protect Weinstein from a criminal conviction, there are signs that his legal troubles are gaining traction.
Prosecutors are preparing to call a former police detective and police investigator to testify that they followed a lead on Weinstein’s alleged abuse in 1992 from a woman in Arkansas who said that when she was giving birth, Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him and covered her mouth so she would not scream.
A New York police detective, John E. Morris Jr., is expected to testify before the grand jury that is investigating Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct, NBC News and other outlets reported. The detective was one of nine witnesses prosecutors have called to testify, including women who allege Weinstein raped them on a hotel bed in the 1990s, and victims of the actor’s predatory behavior who have accused him of assaulting them decades ago.
Morris’s testimony would likely bolster the contention that Weinstein, who has been accused of assaulting and harassing scores of women for decades, had a long-running pattern of abusing women dating back to the 1960s, as well as a well-developed sexual relationship with a woman he