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The actress who was the victim of the 2013 rape Harvey Weinstein was jailed for yesterday has come forward a day after his sentencing.
Evgeniya Chernyshova, now 43, has previously only been referred to as ‘Jane Doe 1’, a nameless Italian actress who Weinstein attacked in Beverly Hills ten years ago.
Today, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she is speaking out for the first time.
Weinstein was yesterday sentenced for an additional 16 years following a trial in Los Angeles. He was already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York.
‘I’m tired of hiding. I want my life back. I’m Evgeniya, I’ve been raped. This is my story.
Evgeniya Chernyshova, now 43, has previously only been referred to as ‘Jane Doe 1’, a nameless Italian actress who Weinstein attacked in Beverly Hills ten years ago. She is shown in 2013 during the trip where Weinstein attacked her
Weinstein is shown in court in October 2022. He was already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York but has now been given an additional 16 years behind bars
‘Part of me, I’m fearing for my future. But I’m proud of myself. If I continue to hide, I cannot do anything. I will just be there with my pain,’ she said.
Chernyshova told the court how Weinstein raped her in 2013 after showing up uninvited at her hotel room at the Mr. C Beverly Hills hotel.
Chernyshova grew up in Siberia but had moved to Italy and was living there with her husband at the time of the attack.
She was in L.A. for a business trip when Weinstein attacked her. She still lives in L.A.,where she runs a florist.
After showing up at her hotel room, he told her through the door: ‘Hey, it’s Harvey Weinstein. Open the door. We have to talk. I’m not going to f**k you, I just have to talk to you.”‘
They had met just twice prior; once in Rome, and earlier that day at an event.
Weinstein presented himself at her hotel room and she allowed him to come inside.
‘And that is the thing I have regretted for the last 10 years — that I did open this door.
Chernyshova, left, in 2013, and right, more recently. She has decided to come forward now after enduring the ‘hell’ of remaining anonymous and not being able to connect with Weinstein’s other victims
Chernyshova told the court how Weinstein raped her in 2013 after showing up uninvited at her hotel room at the Mr. C Beverly Hills hotel
‘He just walked through me and went directly to the chair. He was like, “We’re just talking. There’s nothing happening. Why are you so nervous?”
‘Something clicked, like a change in his eyes. I realized that something was wrong,’ she said.
‘He opened his pants, and I became hysterical. I was continuing to show my kids’ pictures, to try to convince him that, “I have kids, please do not do that.”
‘But he did what he did. He assaulted me in the bedroom, and then he dragged me to the bathroom and he raped me there.
‘I felt very, very dirty and like I have to die,’ she said.
After the rape, Chernyshova and her husband separated. He has since died. She later moved to the US with her children.
‘I was hating myself. I was thinking all the time, “There were a lot of beautiful women and stars there, and he chose you. So it’s you who did something.”
‘I was depressed, I was mentally not stable. I was out of my mind.’
In 2017, her Maria, who is 21 now but was 16 at the time, told her she’d been sexually assaulted by a boy at school.
She begged her to allow her to go the police, but the teenager resisted, telling her she ‘wouldn’t understand’ what she was going through.
‘I told her that she would never really be able to understand me. And she told me that she does understand, because she has been raped,’ Maria, who agreed to be identified, said.
They made a pact that they would both report their abusers.
She had begun consulting with a lawyer when The New York Times broke the first story of Weinstein’s abuse of women in Hollywood.
Chernyshova chose to remain anonymous throughout the trial in an effort to shield her children’s privacy.
Now, she says she wished she’d come forward sooner.
‘I did it because I was ashamed and humiliated. I thought it was a good decision to protect my kids.
‘But it was a horrible decision for myself because I’ve been cut off from everyone. It isn’t right to go through this hell alone,’ she said.
She watched Weinstein’s New York trial from afar, awaiting her own day in court, which came this year.
Testifying was the ‘worst experience of her life’, she said.
‘The defense lawyers’ techniques, how they harass and humiliate you, it is brutal,’ she said.
Weinstein’s lawyer asked why she’d posted a photo from the film festival after the rape in which she appears smiling next to Al Pacino.
‘He wanted to make me look not credible. “You don’t go out, you don’t smile, You have to die. If you’ve been raped, you have to die, that’s it. It’s no life after.”‘
Chernyshova’s testimony led to her claim being the only one that was convicted among four.
The jury acquitted Weinstein on one other allegation, and failed to reach a verdict on the other two.
She says she believes all of the women who testified, and considers his conviction a victory for them all.
Weinstein, at his sentencing, accused her of lying.
‘This is a made-up story. Jane Doe 1 is an actress, and she turned the tears on,’ he told the court.
The once powerful media mogul, 70, was found guilty of rape and two other counts of sexual assault at a trial in Los Angeles in December after previously being sentenced in 2020 for sex crimes in New York City.
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