A former actor cried on the stand when testifying that Harvey Weinstein assaulted her two times, decades apart, during the Toronto International Film Festival.
Kelly Sipherd — who was an aspiring actor in the 80’s and 90’s, but has since left the entertainment business — went into graphic detail alleging Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 1991, and masturbated in front of her in 2008. Both alleged assaults occurred at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto.
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“You’re going to love this. … It’s okay … it won’t be long,” Sipherd remembered Weinstein saying when he allegedly assaulted and raped her for the first time. She told the jury that she repeatedly asked him to stop.
She recalled him saying, “I’m going to fuck you. It won’t take long. Just relax.”
Sipherd is an uncharged witness, meaning the 11 charges Weinstein faces do not stem from her allegations. The jury will not deliberate on the assaults Sipherd is alleging, but her testimony is designed to inform the jury of an alleged pattern of Weinstein’s behavior.
Sipherd met Weinstein at a party at TIFF in 1991 when she was 24 years old. She was an aspiring actor and was casually introduced to him, as she was mingling with friends at a event. She said she and Weinstein hit it off with a cordial conversation, which she considered to be friendly and professional. After “bantering about art and film,” Weinstein suggested the two grab a glass of wine to continue their discussion. Kelly S. agreed to go with Weinstein to a public restaurant close to the party where they had met. “We were getting along really well,” she told the jury, explaining that she had no reason to be alarmed by any of his behavior over drinks, and knew that being connected to Weinstein could be positive for her acting career. “We were really sincerely having a very nice time.”
Over drinks, Weinstein mentioned a role for Sipherd and said he wanted to show her a script. “I was pretty ambitious,” she said. “I was thinking I wanted to get a part.”
Sipherd agreed to go to Weinstein’s hotel to see the script. When Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez asked what happened next, she took a deep breath and said, “It’s very hard for me to talk about.”
Sipherd said when she arrived to the hotel room, thinking she was going to read a script, Weinstein went into the hotel bathroom. When he emerged “fast, aggressive, purposeful,” he was naked, only wearing an unbuttoned shirt with no pants or underwear. He was holding a hot cloth.
“It all happened fast,” Sipherd muttered. She said Weinstein then took her skirt off and put the hot cloth on her vagina. “My wife loves this. You’re going to love this,” she recalled him saying.
She told the jury that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her, and then inserted his fingers into her vagina. She said he was holding her down by her chest and legs, and she was scared what would happen if she tried to leave. “You have to understand how frozen I was,” she explained. “It was so out of nowhere. It was unexpected.” She became “hysterical,” and was “nauseous, scared, terrified.” She asked him to stop, and told jurors she told him, “Let me out of here … stop” to which Weinstein responded, “It’s not going to take long.”
It was then that she felt his penis inside her vagina “for a few seconds,” and reached toward his back, which she described as “mountainous with acne,” to escape. “I can’t recall exactly, but I got out from under.”
After the alleged assault in 1991, Weinstein often called Sipherd. This was before cell phones and caller ID, so she never knew it was him calling. The first time he called, she told the jury that she was very upset and asked “why was he raping me.” He told her that’s not what happened and said, “I really like you and I would leave my wife for you.” He then said he wanted her to come to New York to meet one of his executives in charges of casting, so that she could audition for a role. She told the jury that even though she was assaulted by Weinstein, she thought it would be a “great opportunity” and brought a female friend with her on the trip, so that she felt safe. Weinstein paid for her flight and hotel room in New York City. She had her friend stay with her in the same hotel room.
In New York, Weinstein had asked Sipherd to meet him for dinner, but when she arrived with her friend, Weinstein wasn’t there. Sipherd said that the next morning, Weinstein showed up to her hotel, which he had paid for, and had the front desk call her room, though she never gave him her hotel number. Over the phone, he was angry and told her that her friend had to leave. “He said, ‘Get rid of your friend, I’m coming up,’” Sipherd told jurors. When she refused, she says Weinstein began to yell and kept calling, upwards of 20 times. She kept hanging up and he kept calling. At one point, the hotel staff even knocked on her door and asked what they should do, but she informed them not to let him to her room. “I could hear him screaming in the hall,” she testified. When asked by the prosecutor how she felt, Sipherd said, “Horrible, scared of him…he raped me.”
Sipherd decided not to go to the audition in New York because of the phone call incident. She explained that she was “naive” and had hoped that by bringing her friend on the trip, she would be safe, and could pursue a career opportunity to audition for one of Weinstein’s films.
Sipherd told the jury that the assault “derailed” her career. She explained that she was very serious about acting in her early 20s, had an agent and had attended the School of Dramatic Arts. But after the alleged assault, she “didn’t want to go through anything like that … it was too much.” She said the alleged incident impacted her life over the years. “It hurt my marriage because I didn’t tell him,” she said through tears. “It’s been really hard.”
Years later, Sipherd lived at the Four Seasons Toronto for a handful of weeks with her husband and children, while their home was under renovation. She hadn’t seen or heard from Weinstein since the alleged 1991 assault, but she said she thought about the incident often and always wanted to confront him for what he did.
In 2008, when she was living with her family at the Four Seasons Toronto, the timeframe happened to coincide with TIFF. One day, she was in the lobby with her daughter and friend after playing tennis, and saw Weinstein in the hotel. Sipherd shouted, “Harvey!” and says she felt “angry.” She says she was “shocked,” but also “knew he could be around,” since it was during the film festival, which Weinstein frequented. Weinstein’s assistant, Victoria, approached Sipherd in the lobby and said that Weinstein wanted to see her.
“Actually, I wanted to see him because I wanted to ask why,” she testified. “All those years ago … I had thought about it often.” She added, “I felt like I was ready to give it to him.”
Weinstein’s assistant, Victoria, walked her up to Weinstein’s hotel room. “I blurted out, ‘How does it feel to be in front of the one woman who said no to you,’” she said she told Weinstein. She explained, “I was still in the moment of getting 20 years of answers.” Victoria was in the hallway, outside the hotel room, and Sipherd said she was very loud, so Weinstein “shuttled” her into a bathroom. He closed the door and started “propositioning” her for sex.
“I’m angry still. I’m afraid. And I feel stupid,” she recalled of her mindset, answering Martinez’s questions. “Once again, it came out of nowhere. His demeanor changed.” She remembered thinking, “I came to confront you … how did this happen?”
Sipherd said in the bathroom, Weinstein suddenly “pulled his penis out and started masturbating.” She said, “He wanted to see my breasts while he was masturbating,” so “it became a negotiation” because she was trying to get it all to end, but couldn’t get out. “There was no way I could get around him. He was much larger,” she said. She told the jury that Weinstein ejaculated onto a white bathmat. “It didn’t take very long,” she said, remembering that the bathroom incident lasted perhaps five minutes. She said she tried not to look, but remembered one specific detail. “His sperm was dark orange/yellow … it didn’t look normal,” she said.
When Weinstein and her exited the hotel suite, he told his assistant to invite Sipherd to TIFF parties. On the way down the elevator, Sipherd didn’t tell Victoria about the incident, explaining that she felt “sheer embarrassment.” She said, “It took me a while to even grasp what happened.”
She didn’t tell any of her friends or her husband what happened in Weinstein’s hotel suite because she was “ashamed.” She said while she was staying at the Four Seasons in Toronto, she continued to go to festival parties and took her friends to events that Weinstein had his assistant invite her to, and they “thought I was pretty darn cool because I knew Harvey Weinstein, so I played that.”
Sipherd never filed a police report for the 1991 or 2008 alleged assaults because she was “very, very embarrassed” and “felt stupid.” Over the years, she ended up telling three girlfriends what had happened in 1991 and 2008.
In Oct. 5, 2017, when the bombshell stories came out about Weinstein, igniting the #MeToo movement, Sipherd was notified by friends. “I often wondered if I was the only person,” she told the jury.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the full name of the witness, who was identified by the court as “Kelly S.” After her testimony concluded, her attorney, Jennifer Brevorka, approached members of the media in the courthouse hallway to offer her first and last name.
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