‘She had this evil look, like a smirk’: Harvey Weinstein accuser tells his LA rape trial she was ‘locked’ in bathroom with mogul by actress Claudia Salinas before she was sexually assaulted and describes his penis as ‘a sack that had been sewn back on’

• Lauren Young said she had met with Harvey Weinstein in 2013 to discuss her script when model Claudia Salinas ‘locked’ her and Weinstein in a bathroom 
• She said Weinstein, 70, had asked her to come to his room at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills to continue their conversation when she found herself trapped 
• Young said Weinstein proceeded to undress and get in the shower, before blocking her way out and masturbated in front of her 
• In cross-examination, Weinstein’s attorney Alan Jackson picked apart Young’s testimony and poked holes in her story about being ‘locked’ in the bathroom 
• Young had told detectives she was ‘trapped’ inside a sliding bathroom door at the hotel, but Jackson showed the jury photos of the door on a hinge
• Weinstein faces life in prison on 11 counts of sexual battery by restraint

One of the many women who have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault recounted to a jury on Monday how she was locked in a hotel suite bathroom — where the disgraced movie mogul masturbated on her.

Lauren Young told jurors at Weinstein’s Los Angeles rape trial that she was an aspiring actress at the time who had hoped to meet the former film producer about a script she wrote in 2013, when she claimed actress Claudia Salinas locked her and Weinstein in the bathroom of the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills. 

Young described Weinstein’s penis as ‘disgusting’ and said it looked like it ‘had been chopped off and sewn back on.’

She had previously recounted the experience at the disgraced mogul’s New York trial back in February 2020 after prosecutors asked her to help establish a pattern of Weinstein’s sex pest behavior.

In an animated cross-examination later on Monday, Weinstein’s attorney Alan Jackson picked apart Young’s testimony, as he dramatically acted out bits of it, pounded his fist on the podium, and prompting a rare reaction from his client, who laughed at his commentary.

Jackson poked holes in Young’s story about being locked in the bathroom, saying she ‘felt that you were locked in there,’ but wasn’t actually, and then added that she ‘felt’ she was ‘being sexually assaulted,’ but she ‘was not.’

Young was not one of the accusers whose stories would lead to Weinstein’s conviction of rape and sexual assault, and his eventual 23-year prison sentence.

Now, though, Weinstein, 70, is facing another 11 counts of sexual battery by restraint for the same crimes. If convicted, he could face life in a California prison.

Lauren Young told jurors at Weinstein’s trial how she was aspiring actress who had hoped to meet the former film producer about a script she wrote in 2013, when actress Claudia Salinas locked her and Weinstein in the bathroom of the Montage Hotel and he masturbated on her

During cross-examination of Young, Weinstein’s attorney Alan Jackson poked holes in her story about being ‘locked’ in the bathroom and gave visual drama with a dress she had worn

Weinstein, 70, is facing 11 counts of sexual battery by restraint and could get life in prison

In court on Monday, Young told jurors how she was working as a model in early 2013, but wanted to be an actress and a screenwriter.

She was able to set up a meeting with Weinstein through his personal assistant, Claudia Salinas whom she considered a friend, for the night of February 19, 2013 about a script she was working on.

Young initially told detectives that the assault had taken place a year earlier, days after she had been at a dinner with Weinstein at a Beverly Hills restaurant. Weinstein’s attorney Alan Jackson later pointed out that she was saying the same as recently as 2020, as he attempted to poke holes in her story. 

Jackson also brought up her previous confusion about the site of the assault, and she acknowledged that she could not name the hotel in her first three interviews with authorities, the most recent in 2020.

‘I had pushed it out of my memory,’ Young said.

She decided it was the Montage – which is now called the Maybourne – when police suggested it, stating she was taken to the suite there where Weinstein had been staying.

‘Are you sure as you sit here today that you actually went up to Harvey Weinstein’s hotel room that night?’ Jackson pressed. 

‘Yes I’m sure,’ she responded. 

During her testimony on Monday, on Young told the court that Weinstein was distracted and uninterested in anything she had to say, and suggested she might be a reality television host on a show like America’s Next Top Model, which his company helped produce.

At one point, Young said, Weinstein said he had to get ready to go present an award to Quentin Tarantino at the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival and suggested she accompany him to his room to continue the discussion. 

So Young said she followed Weinstein into his suite at the Montage and into his bathroom. 

Young added that she thought there would be another door on the other side, and he was leading her somewhere else — but was shocked to see actress Claudia Salinas close the door behind them, and that she was ‘trapped.’

Jackson later tried to rip apart her testimony, by showing the jury photos of the door on a hinge. 

Jackson later claimed that her ‘dramatic description’ of the door sliding closed past Salinas’ face was ‘completely false.’

‘Do you want to change your statement about being trapped and locked in that bathroom?’ Jackson asked. ‘You’re describing a full-blown kidnapping, right?’

Jackson pointed out that Young had told the detective she was ‘positive’ door was locked because she was ‘tugging’ on it.

‘And the problem is, the door doesn’t lock from the outside, and it’s not a sliding door, right?’ he pushed. 

She responded: ‘I felt trapped.’ 

‘I’m not asking what you felt, I’m asking what you said,’ he fired back.

‘I felt locked in there — I was describing how I felt,’ Young responded. 

Jackson shot back: ‘You felt that you were locked in there, but you were not locked in there. You felt that you were being sexually assaulted, but you were not.’

‘I was definitely sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein,’ Young said.

Young was not one of the accusers whose stories would lead to Weinstein’s conviction of rape and sexual assault, and his eventual 23-year prison sentence. She is pictured here in 2020

Young said Weinstein’s assistant at the time, Claudia Salinas, invited her to meet with the movie mogul to discuss her script. She is pictured walking into court on Monday

In Young’s earlier testimony, she said: ‘Harvey Weinstein started the shower and immediately took off his clothes.’ 

‘I was disgusted,’ she continued. ‘I had never seen a big guy like that naked.

‘I actually laughed nervously and thought ‘no, no, no,” she added as she began to cry.

Meanwhile, Young said, Weinstein simply continued their conversation.

‘He was just staring at me talking,’ Young recalled.

‘I had never seen someone that big naked, so I just couldn’t fathom what was even happening to me right now,’ she said.

‘He was just talking about the business and other actresses. And saying this is what they do, this is how I know you can act.’

‘I kept saying ‘no no no,’ she recounted. ‘He just ignored what I said.’

‘Everything happened so fast.’

At that point, Young said, Weinstein got into the shower while Young tried to make her escape.

But, she said, Weinstein got out of the shower and blocked her from the door before she could get away.

‘He said, ‘We’re just gonna talk,’ I said ‘no, no no no.’

Still, Weinstein continued to harass her, and soon started ‘touching’ her.

Young said she backed up toward the sink and turned away from the movie mogul, but he unzipped the back of her dress and pulled it down to around her hips.

‘He was grabbing my breasts and jerking off, like squinting at me, not looking at me,’ she said. ‘Holding me there and talking to me.’

‘He was just masturbating and groping me.’

She said she kept saying ‘no’ throughout, but he continued for several minutes, and also tried to touch her vagina — though she blocked him with her hands from penetrating her. 

Young  previously recounted the experience at disgraced mogul’s New York trial in February 2020 after prosecutors asked her to help establish a pattern of Weinstein’s sex pest behavior

‘I was really grossed out by his body and the look he was giving me,’ Young said. ‘I was wondering: ‘How do I get out of here safe, what am I going to do? What are they gonna do to me?’ 

‘I was very numb feeling,’ she continued.  ‘I felt like I was outside of my body watching what was happening, I couldn’t move I was frozen. I was so scared.’

‘I was scared of Harvey Weinstein. … that he would hurt me, or send someone to hurt me, or ruin my career, or make my life hell.’

After groping her for several minutes, Young said, ‘he went back to groping my right breast even harder’ before ejaculating on the towel he was using and leaving the bathroom.

‘I was in so much shock, I was wondering how I was going to leave, and if they were going to let me leave,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.’

‘I pulled up my dress and I exited the bathroom.’

‘I saw Claudia Salinas right there. I shot her an evil look. She didn’t say anything. She looked at me. She had this evil look. Like a smirk. Like she roped me in on something.’

She said she also saw Weinstein changing clothes before she walked out of the suite to a car.

‘I sat in my car and cried and was in complete shock. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I should call the cops. 

‘I wondered ‘What do I do? This guy is so powerful.’ I didn’t know what to do. I called my friends, got a hold of them, messaged them.’

Ultimately, Young said, she decided not to tell police about what she had experienced.

‘I was scared at that point that he might have an in with the cops or was corrupt like that,’ she said. ‘I knew he had a lot of power I was really scared.’

Young was then asked to describe Weinstein’s body. 

The incident allegedly occurred at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, now the Maybourne

‘He had rolls and he was really hairy and there was moles on his body,’ she replied. ‘His penis was disgusting. It looked like it had been chopped off and sewn back on, like something wasn’t right about it.’

And when asked about Weinstein’s testicles, Young said: ‘I didn’t really see a full sack, I literally just saw a penis.’

Young said she never saw Weinstein again, but the very next day she saw Barbara Schneeweiss from Weinstein Co. with Claudia Salinas sitting in the waiting room. 

‘I told her ‘Don’t f******talk to me,” Young said she told Salinas. 

‘She didn’t say anything. She stayed there and just was right by me until I went into the office room. She talked to Barbara for a little bit. She talked about job offers that they wanted to give me, I told her I wasn’t really interested in doing reality TV.’ 

Young then went on to say that she was afraid of what would happen if she did not go to the meeting, but she never followed up on it.  

It wasn’t until others started speaking out at the beginning of the #MeToo movement in 2017, Young said, that she decided to call a police hotline.

‘At that point, other people were coming out and I felt safe to do so,’ she said. ‘I wanted to prevent it from happening to anyone else.’

In her testimony, Young says Salinas, a Mexican model, locked her in bathroom with Weinstein

In court on Monday, Young also positively identified photos of herself with Salinas and identified the dress and slip she wore to the meeting, which she previously gave to New York authorities.

Young also drew a picture of Weinstein’s anatomy for LAPD, showing him naked, masturbating and holding up the hand that he was allegedly grabbing her breast with. 

Of the unusual testicles, Young said: ‘I wasn’t trying to look at it, but it was something I hadn’t seen before.’

Video played at the trial of suite 520 at the Montage, now the Maybourne, seemed to corroborate her story as a shower door appears to partially block the doorway out, and it seems like it would have been easy for Weinstein to step out and block the door. 

During cross-examination, though, Weinstein’s attorney, Alan Jackson pushed her on why the text message from Claudia Salinas  inviting her to meet with Weinstein has since apparently been deleted.

‘You would agree, that text from CS is pretty important,’ he said. ”It’s the catalyst that put you in touch with Mr. Weinstein on the 19th.

‘Where’s that text?’ he asks. ‘Did you seek to delete that text? Did you seek to destroy any communication with Miss Salinas?’

‘No,’ Young said in response, saying she dug through computers, WhatsApp and other places to try to find it.

Still, Jackson persisted, pointing to an October 2018 interview in which she told police: ‘It’s weird that I lost everything on my phone, when my phone erased except my numbers.

‘I was very distraught in the beginning and trying to remember everything,’ Young replied before Jackson questioned her about the date of the meeting — saying she had previously said it had happened much later.

Later Monday, Jackson gave the court rare moments of visual drama with a pair of clothing demonstrations during the continuation of his cross-examination.

He pulled out the dress Young had been wearing that night and got her to acknowledge that a DNA test failed to prove Weinstein had touched it.

Jackson pulled out the dress Young had been wearing that night and got her to acknowledge that a DNA test failed to prove Weinstein had touched it

Jackson also tried to cast doubt on whether Weinstein could have slipped out of his suit as quickly as she described. He pulled off his own suit coat to demonstrate.

‘I’m just going to take my jacket off, I’m not going to go any further,’ Jackson said.

‘Please don’t,’ Young answered.

When asked how Weinstein could have unfastened everything so quickly, Young answered that he may have gotten started while he was walking down the hall, a method she used to use for quick changes as a model.

‘Does Mr. Weinstein strike you as a model?’ Jackson asked.

‘No, but he’s definitely a monster,’ Young replied.

Jackson went on to put out her confusion in what she told detectives and her testimony.  

Jackson asked her: ‘And since then your testimony and your statements have gotten far more detailed and far more colorful, right?’ 

‘My trauma, I got to relive it by walking through that room,’ Young said. ‘I had been in other rooms and didn’t feel anything. When I walked in that room, I felt everything flow back in.’

Young also defended herself by saying that ‘when you are sexually assaulted, things get blocked out,’ so she remembers ‘bits and pieces,’ but added that through her interviews with authorities, she was able to remember details more clearly.

‘It was traumatic and it’s a memory that I have that I wish never happened,’ she said. ‘There are parts I will never be able to forget.’

‘I know that’s your story,’ Jackson started.

Young shot back: ‘It’s not a story. It’s what happened to me.’ 

Weinstein could be seen shaking his head from the defendant’s table.

According to allegations in an indictment and court testimony, the assault of Young came the day after Weinstein raped an Italian model at a different hotel during the run-up to that year’s Academy Awards, where Weinstein was annually a major player.

Weinstein, 70, has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of rape and sexual assault involving five women. He has said that many of those incidents were consensual, though in the case of Young his defense denies there was any sexual interaction. 

Young’s testimony echoes that which she gave at a New York trial in February 2020 

Young tried to keep a low profile by keeping her head down and covering her hair with a scarf when she arrived to court in New York

Her testimony on Monday echoes what she told a New York jury back in 2020.

But at the time, Weinstein’s defense lawyer Damon Cheronis tried to cast doubt on Young’s testimony by pointing out that she initially told the Los Angeles District Attorney that she ‘blacked out’ for a portion of the alleged assault.  

Young said: ‘I stated it was a blacking out of my memory. I blocked out some memories because it was such a traumatic experience.’      

‘So when you told (prosecutors in May 2019) you used all your strength to try and open the door, that was just wrong?’ she was asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied, adding she ‘recollected all my memories and retraced all my steps.’  

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