Former actress says Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her twice and told her ‘you're going to love it’
Warning: Content may be distressing, reader discretion is advised.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Kelly Sipherd, who was an aspiring actress in the 1980s and 1990s, testified about the sexual assaults she was subjected to 17 years apart in the same hotel room by Harvey Weinstein. Harvey Weinstein, who turned himself in for sexual assault in February 2020, had another victim on the stand tearfully describe her traumas. She testified as an uncharged witness, meaning her allegations will not form the basis of the 11 charges Weinstein faces, nor will jurors deliberate on the assaults. However, this would inform them about the alleged pattern of Weinstein's behavior.
She went on to recount how Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex in 1991 and then masturbated in front of her 17 years later in 2008. Both incidents occurred at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto. She explained the entire sequence of events in detail while recalling Weinstein's words when he said, "You're going to love this. ... It's okay ... it won't be long," while assaulting her for the first time.
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Kelly Sipherd told jurors how she kept asking him to stop while he kept asking her to 'just relax" while he said, "I'm going to f**k you. It won't take long. Just relax." Kelly recalled being introduced to Harvey at a party at TIFF in 1991 when she was 24. She and Weinstein got along very well and she thought the conversation was very friendly and professional, so she was careless when Harvey asked her to go to a public restaurant nearby to have a glass of wine. As Variety reports, Kelly and Harvey "really sincerely having a very nice time," she said. Kelly was also an ambitious, aspiring actress at the time and thought that meeting and connecting with him would help her acting career.
While they were having their drinks, Harvey mentioned that he wanted to show her a script, about which she testified, "I was pretty ambitious, I was thinking I wanted to get a part," and so she agreed to go to Weinstein's hotel. When asked about the next turn of events by Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez, she said, "It’s very hard for me to talk about." She then told her that after they arrived, Weinstein went into the hotel bathroom and when he came back "fast, aggressive, purposeful," he was naked while only wearing an unbuttoned shirt with no pants or underwear, holding a hot cloth.
Kelly did not have the time to react as she says, "It all happened fast," when Weinstein took off her skirt and put the hot cloth on her v****a as he said. "My wife loves this. You’re going to love this." She then further elaborated on the entire act of forced assault in detail after he forcibly performed oral sex on her. She said she could not process what was going on and feared what would happen if she tried to leave. "You have to understand how frozen I was, It was so out of nowhere. It was unexpected." She then told how she became "hysterical" and was "nauseous, scared, terrified."
Even after this, she kept receiving calls from Weinstein and said how Harvey Weinstein said that he liked her and would leave his wife for her. Later he offered her a role and called her to audition for him and in spite of the past traumatic event, she thought this would be a "good opportunity" to find her way to the industry and so she took her friend with her on the trip to New York, the travel and accommodation expenses for which were paid by Harvey Weinstein. She was asked to meet over a dinner where she asked her friend to accompany her so that she would feel safe but got stood up when they arrived. The next morning, she received a call from reception and Harvey was there on the other side of the phone even though she had not given him her room number. He kept calling and aggressively asking her to get rid of her friend as he was coming up, which she kept denying. But the calls didn't stop and it came to the point where the hotel staff had to interfere and ask her what had to be done. She urged them not to let him in her room and said, "I could hear him screaming in the hall." She then said she felt "Horrible, scared of him…he r***d me."
She explained how she was very serious about her acting career and in spite of all the required preparations she left her dreams due to her experience while dealing with Harvey Weinstein. She also talked about how it was not only her career but her life altogether including her marriage that was affected by this.
Much later in 2008, she along with her family were living at the Four Seasons Toronto as their home was under renovation. During their stay, the TIFF happened to overlap with the timings of her stay at the hotel. One day while she was in the lobby with her daughter and friend, she saw Harvey Weinstein and thought she was prepared for a confrontation. She wanted to ask why as the trauma had been there even after all those years and so she thought she was "ready to give it to him." So after Weinstein's assistant walked her to Harvey's room, "I blurted out, "How does it feel to be in front of the one woman who said no to you." She further elaborated that the secretary was in the hallway and since she was too loud, Weinstein "shuttled" her into the bathroom, closed the door, and started 'prepositioning' her for sex.
She was shocked as to how a confrontation suddenly turned into this as Harvey's demeanor changed immediately and he "pulled his p***s out and started masturbating." She said he wanted to see her breasts while he did the act and so "it became a negotiation" since she wanted it to end as she had no way out since he was way bigger in size. It all didn't take that long, according to her, and she tried not to look, though remembered some of the details.
She further said how she was "embarrassed" about the entire thing and felt "stupid" for having gotten into a situation like this so she stayed quiet all along and did not tell this her husband or her friends as she was "ashamed." Weinstein had told his assistant to invite her to the TIFF party and so she took her friends to the event as she played along their thoughts of her knowing Harvey Weinstein was "pretty darn cool."
Over the years she did tell about the incident to three of her very close friends and in October 2017 when the #MeToo movement got ignited following the assault stories of the victims of Harvey Weinstein, she told the jury, "I often wondered if I was the only person."