Woman whose testimony led to Harvey Weinstein’s L.A. rape conviction reveals identity
In December, Harvey Weinstein was convicted in L.A. of the 2013 rape of “Jane Doe 1.” On Thursday, he got a 16-year sentence that, added to the 23-year sentence he’s been serving in New York, likely ensures the 70-year-old ends his life in prison.
On Friday, Jane Doe 1 finally revealed her identity to the Hollywood Reporter.
She is Evgeniya Chernyshova, a 43-year-old mother of two who was born in Siberia, won a modeling contest at age 15 and eventually moved to Italy, where she was a model and actor. At some point she moved to Southern California; she now runs a floral design business in Beverly Hills, according to an interview published Friday by THR.
Harvey Weinstein gets 16 years in prison after his rape conviction in L.A. The sentence all but assures he’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars.
About two weeks ago, after Weinstein’s conviction but before his sentencing, Chernyshova sued the disgraced mogul in civil court under her alias, alleging sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
In October 2017, speaking anonymously to The Times after reporting the rape to police, she told the same story that was shared in court and with THR:
Weinstein, whom she had met briefly once before in Rome, introduced himself anew during Oscars week in 2013 at an Italian film festival at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. When they were in Rome, he had invited her up to his room, but she declined, she told The Times.
An Italian model whose testimony led to an L.A. jury finding Harvey Weinstein guilty of rape has filed a civil suit against him.
Later that night she returned to her hotel and changed into a robe, only to have Weinstein call up from the lobby “without warning” — she hadn’t told him where she was staying — and demand to know her room number. He told her they had to talk. She didn’t reveal her number, but he showed up at her door anyway, knocking loudly and telling her he just wanted to talk and was “not going to f—” her.
Chernyshova told THR that she let him in because she was embarrassed by the loud man outside her door.
She told The Times in 2017 that once he was in her room, Weinstein repeatedly bragged about his power and influence and told her not to fight him. She tried to show him pictures of her children and her mother, who was undergoing chemotherapy at the time, as she cried and begged him to go away, she said.
Harvey Weinstein was convicted of multiple charges of sexual assault and cleared of others, closing out a significant chapter in the #MeToo movement that saw the former Hollywood mogul’s career collapse under a wave of abuse allegations.
“He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to do something I did not want to do,” she said in 2017. “He then dragged me to the bathroom and forcibly raped me.” When he left, she said, he told her she was very beautiful and that she could work in Hollywood. Later, he invited her to several parties at his house, but she didn’t attend any of them.
“He acted like nothing happened,” Chernyshova said in 2017. “I barely knew this man. It was the most demeaning thing ever done to me by far. It sickens me still. … He made me feel like an object, like nothing, with all his power.”
Chernyshova appears to have a few regrets. One of them is that she stayed anonymous.
“I did it because I was ashamed and humiliated,” she told THR. “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.”
Chernyshova is well known in Italy, where she appeared on the cover of Italian Vogue and as an actor in Italian films, The Times reported in 2017. After the attack, she told THR, she fell into depression and began drinking heavily. She and her husband separated, and he has since died.
As the public face and pugnacious spirit behind his company, Harvey Weinstein made himself synonymous with a kind of prestige cinema that was designed to attract discerning audiences and scoop up Oscars by the armful.
She told The Times in 2017 that she revealed the rape while counseling her daughter about a week before the New York Times published the first investigation of Weinstein. That was followed days later by a similar piece from the New Yorker. Previously Chernyshova had told only her priest, her nanny and a friend about her experience with Weinstein. Her daughter pushed her to report the incident to the police, which she did.
Chernyshova also wishes she had never opened the door of her hotel room that night in 2013.
“That is the thing I have regretted for the last 10 years — that I did open this door,” she told THR, echoing what she told The Times in 2017.
On Dec. 19. 2022, an L.A. jury convicted Weinstein of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object, based on Chernyshova’s account of that night at the hotel.
Jurors have begun deliberating at Harvey Weinstein’s trial on multiple counts of rape and sexual battery in Los Angeles. If convicted of all charges, Weinstein would face a de facto life sentence in a California prison.
“Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night. I will never get that back,” she told The Times in a statement after the verdict was read, still identifying herself as Jane Doe 1 after her three days of painful testimony in his trial. “But I knew I had to see this through to the end. ... I hope Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime.”
And before Weinstein’s sentencing Thursday, trembling and crying as she spoke in court, Chernyshova told the judge, “There is no prison sentence long enough to erase the damage. ... He deserves to experience the same shame, humiliation and fear as I did.”
After sentencing the disgraced former producer, Judge Lisa Lench ruled that Weinstein could not serve his New York and L.A. sentences concurrently, likely fulfilling Chernyshova’s wishes. Weinstein, who is 70, will not be eligible for release until at least the 2050s.
Times staff writers Richard Winton and James Queally contributed to this report.
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