Jessica Mann testifies, as Weinstein prosecution portrays a cunning mogul taking advantage of naive young girl

Jessica Mann, a native of rural Washington who spoke at times in a soft, childlike demeanor, made bold claims on direct examination to defend her choice to take part in a years-long relationship with Weinstein. At moments during her testimony, she sounded shy and reserved but would then quickly switch to expressing anger and defiance toward Weinstein.

Before her testimony, prosecutors made a point in open court of telling the defense that she is not on any psychotropic drugs at present.

The 34-year-old admitted to having a consensual relationship with Weinstein, claiming she felt bad for Weinstein after seeing what she took to be genital deformity and scarring on his body. 

"When I first saw him naked, I was filled with compassion, absolute compassion," she said, even offering that she thought "his anger came from a place of shame."

Mann said their relationship began when Weinstein performed oral sex on her at the Peninsula hotel in Los Angeles - before the rape she alleges - and she decided to carry on physically with him after that. Soon after, she claimed the relationship turned "degrading." 

"He would talk very dirty to me . . . [about] fantasies and things," she said, "and compare me to other actresses that he said were doing kinky, dirty things with him."

Mann was emotional from the moment she took the witness stand, fighting tears as she took her seat in front of dozens of people in the gallery.

The day of the alleged sexual assault in 2013, she said, he went into the bathroom of his hotel room and "he came out naked and he got on top of me" then "put himself inside me. His penis inside of me."

"Inside your vagina?" prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orban asked. 

"Yeah," she said, bashfully. She said it was the first instance of intercourse with Weinstein.

She wept as she detailed that Weinstein, who she said didn't use a condom, had injected himself in the penis with an erectile dysfunction medication.

Mann met Weinstein at a party in Los Angeles in 2013, and he took an interest in her. "I like how you look. I'm very interested in you as an actress," Mann said he told her. He called her not long after and asked her to meet at a bookstore so he could get her books on film history. 

Mann said she was excited about the prospect of having a movie mogul working to help her career. "With my religious background and everything, I thought it was a blessing," she said.

In describing her first sexual encounter with Weinstein, Mann said she and a friend were invited to his hotel suite to ostensibly look over scripts. There, he pulled her into the bedroom and said, "You're not leaving until I do something for you," she claims.

Her voice was breaking as he told the jury that he performed oral sex on her. "I started to fake an orgasm to get out of it," she testified. "He asked me how it was, if I liked it. I was nervous so I told him, 'Oh, it's the best I've ever had.' "

She said she felt "horrified" and "confused" by the incident. She also said that because she wasn't the type to have sex with strangers, she decided to stick with Weinstein, in what became a confusing string of testimony.

Jaws dropped in the courtroom when she said Weinstein didn't have testicles and "it appears like he also had a vagina." She also said his hygiene was "very bad."

"He smelled like s---. Excuse me, sorry. Like poop. And he was just dirty," Mann said.

At the end of the day's court session, a reporter asked Weinstein whether he agreed with Mann's account of his body.

"Yeah, perfect," he mumbled, sarcastically. 

Prosecutors have emphasized the point that Mann was completely outmatched by Weinstein as a 27-year-old, painting her as a "naive" country girl. She "was raised in the evangelical church in a small dairy town in Washington state," Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hast said in her opening arguments.

Mann sobbed and trembled when she described another encounter with Weinstein at the Peninsula hotel in November 2013, for which Weinstein isn't charged. She said she told Weinstein that she now had a boyfriend but was terrified to tell him he was a fairly known actor, which she thought would have set him off.

"His eyes changed and he wasn't there. They were very black, and he ripped me up from my chair from the table," she said. Weinstein "was screaming, you owe me!" 

On cross-examination Mann was confronted by Weinstein lawyer Donna Rotunno about her repeated sexual encounters with Weinstein and was grilled about what she wanted from him. 

Rotunno asked her whether she "wanted the benefit" of the secret liaisons, and Mann stumbled over her words and refused to answer. 

"I can't answer that question. I would like to explain," Mann said. 

"I think you answered it with your non-answer," Rotunno said, prompting an objection from prosecutors. 

Mann was also confronted with a strange missive recovered from the "Notes" app on her phone, which was supposed to be a humorous take on a group sex event that Weinstein allegedly pushed her into with an Italian actress in Los Angeles, also in 2013.

"Do I have to?" Mann asked Justice James Burke when he ordered her to read it aloud, per Rotunno's request.

Mann insisted the note was fiction based on truth, like other blog posts she wrote at the time. She never posted the one she read from, titled "The Failed Threesome, Part 1," in which she describes a stunning "skinny blond Italian." "I felt like a 14-year-old boy about to lose my virginity," she read.

Rotunno suggested the playful and erotic rhetoric undermines Mann's claim, that she ran into the bathroom terrified and traumatized instead of taking part. She admitted to involvement in threesomes with "friends."

Weinstein, 67, faces the most prison time on predatory sexual assault charges. For that, he faces a minimum of 10 years incarceration and up to life. Those charges, related to a pattern of sexual assaults, involve actress Annabella Sciorra.

Mann is the third accuser who is officially part of the case to take the stand. Weinstein is charged with two counts of rape in connection to Mann. He is also charged with forcing a sex act on Mimi Haleyi on July 10, 2006.