How a Self-Described #MeToo Feminist Decided Not to Convict Harvey Weinstein of Rape

A young woman, who considers herself a feminist and an advocate of the #MeToo movement, says she surprised herself to be among the jurors who voted to acquit Harvey Weinstein in his rape retrial last week.The jury did not reach a unanimous verdict in the case against the movie mogul, whose downfall in 2017 became a defining moment of the #MeToo movement.“I was surprised at where I arrived with my decision,” 25-year-old Sarae Perez told reporters outside Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday after the hung verdict.“I like to pride myself on being a feminist,” Ms. Perez, who was the youngest jury member, went on. “One of my majors was history, another was social sciences. I’ve even taken classes on the different waves of feminism,” she said. “I’m super surprised by this whole process for me personally.”During the four-week-long trial, Ms. Perez, seated in the back row on the bench, diligently took notes as the parties presented their case. Some jurors yawned or leaned back in their chairs, often expressing exhaustion. Others rolled their eyes at times. Not Ms. Perez; she was always attentive.The trial revisited the allegation by the former aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, that Weinstein raped her at a Midtown Manhattan hotel in 2013. It was the third time in six years that Manhattan prosecutors brought Ms. Mann’s rape charge against Weinstein. It may not be the last.The two previous trials had included other victims, the former production assistant, Miriam Haley, and model Kaja Sokola, who was added to the indictment in 2025. Both Ms. Haley and Ms. Sokola accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting them. Next to them, Ms. Mann’s accusation was part of a broader pattern of alleged behavior. In 2020, a jury convicted the movie executive of the charges brought by Mss. Mann and Haley. The New York Court of Appeals overturned the convictions in 2024, reasoning that testimony from women whose accusations were not part of the indictment had improperly prejudiced the jury. Prosecutors then sought a new trial in 2025.In that trial, the jury rendered a split verdict, finding Weinstein guilty of the charge brought by Ms. Haley but not guilty of the charge brought by Ms. Sokola. The jury could not agree on a verdict for Ms. Mann’s rape allegation. Deliberations descended into chaos, with shouting and claims of intimidation. Jurors sent multiple notes to the judge alerting him to conflicts inside the room, with the foreman complaining that some jurors were “attacking” others and pressuring people to change their votes. After five days of intense deliberations, the foreman refused to return to the jury room. The judge declared a mistrial on Ms. Mann’s charge. Weinstein, who has insisted all his sexual encounters were consensual, refused to take a plea deal. The district attorney’s office charged Ms. Mann’s allegation again. But this time the case was just about her. No other women, no pattern. Ms. Perez recalled when she was brought into the courtroom during jury selection, a lot of candidates were excused because they were biased against the producer.“‘This is People versus Harvey Weinstein,’” she recalled the judge saying. “‘If that makes you biased in any way, walk out,’ and the whole entire courtroom walked out, and I was like, ‘What?’” Ms. Perez said. She said she wanted to approach the case with an open mind and just “go along with what they gave me in the courtroom.” Weinstein’s rape trial was the first time she had ever served on a jury. “Isn’t that something?” She asked, smiling. The jurors were notably more cordial with one another than the group in 2025. Ms. Perez and another female juror exchanged phone numbers before they parted ways on Friday afternoon.“We got along well,” a sculptor and real estate investor, Josh Hadar, told reporters. “Everyone was very mindful and respectful, and listened,” he added. “There was a little bit of tension, a little bit of heat, when we were in the thick of the deliberations, but overall, we all got along well.”Mr. Hagar said the panel felt “upset that we couldn’t come up with a verdict. We tried. We tried really hard.” Another juror, a 55-year-old musician, added that jurors “didn’t have a lot of facts to grasp onto.”According to the four jurors who spoke to reporters outside the Lower Manhattan courthouse last week, only three members of the panel wanted to convict Weinstein, while nine wanted to acquit him.“It all came down to the credibility of her testimony,” Ms. Perez explained, referring to the accuser. “Three people thought her testimony was credible. And the rest felt certain things were a little performative or maybe evasive or lying, and that created a level of doubt.”The accuser spent five grueling days on the witness stand, often breaking down in tears. Ms. Mann, who is 40 now, met Weinstein in early February 2013 at a party in Los Angeles. Born and raised on a dairy farm in a small town in Washington state, the then-27-year-old had recently moved to Hollywood to become an actress. She was working as a hairdresser and living out of a suitcase while Weinstein was a 60-year-old, Oscar-awarded veteran movie producer who flew around the world in private jets.About six weeks after they met, in mid-March, Ms. Mann traveled to New York with two friends. She testified that she planned to have breakfast with Weinstein at the hotel where she was staying. She wanted to introduce him to her friends, she said. According to her testimony, Weinstein arrived earlier than planned, booked a room, aggressively urged her to follow him, forcefully pinned her onto the bed, and raped her.“I don’t want to say that he did or didn’t rape her,” Ms. Perez explained. “But I wasn’t convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. And that’s what it came down to for a lot of people.”Ms. Perez elaborated that it was “the little things” Ms. Mann appeared to be dishonest about or attempted to avoid in her answers which made the juror question the entire testimony.For example, Ms. Mann testified she was interested in Weinstein for professional reasons — getting acting jobs and learning about the film industry. But the lead defense attorney, Marc Agnifilo, contradicted those statements in his summation. He read testimony from her friend and roommate at the time, a Brazilian actress, Talita Maia, who said she once accompanied Ms. Mann to Weinstein’s room at a Los Angeles hotel because she knew “Jessica was already seeing him.”The defense attorney also highlighted that Ms. Mann joined Weinstein for dinners, and though she claimed she wanted to discuss business with him, he insisted “they had no business to discuss.”These arguments resonated with Ms. Perez. “If you tell us the truth about everything,” Ms. Perez said, referring to Ms. Mann, “even the ugly parts that you think sway a jury or its perception; if you tell me even those tough parts, if it was more transparent, I could trust the whole entirety of this testimony.”During cross-examination, the defense questioned Ms. Mann about feeling ashamed of her relationship with Weinstein in front of her friends because they could think “she was sleeping her way to being an actress in Hollywood,” as defense attorney Teny Geragos phrased it.Ms. Mann replied she was “spacing out” and feeling dizzy, because she hadn’t slept much the night before. The judge ended the day early and told the witness to get some rest. The reaction raised doubts, Ms. Perez said. She could understand that Ms. Mann didn’t want her friends to know she was intimate with the much older producer or that she changed her plane ticket shortly after the alleged rape to spend another two days in New York to attend a film premiere; or even that Ms. Mann continued to have sex with Weinstein after the alleged rape, which the accuser admitted; or that their on-and-off-again relationship lasted four years.“Just tell the truth,” Ms. Perez went on, “because I could be on your side about all these little things that are not relevant for me.”The defense also confronted the accuser with a journal entry she had written into her notes app two days after the alleged rape, where she expressed having “become emotionally attached to someone” and wanting that “person to love me back.”Ms. Perez said the love note was not “the nail in the coffin.” She agreed with an expert who testified that it’s possible for victims to develop affection for a person who raped or sexually assaulted them.Instead, the biggest concern for Ms. Perez, she said, was an overall sense of doubt. The decision process was hard for her, she said, “on a moral basis.” “How can I not find this guy guilty prematurely, you know? But I really did try to keep an open mind. And a lot of us were surprised. We’re like, ‘Wow, I can’t even believe that I’m questioning the validity of her testimony.’” When the #MeToo movement peaked in 2017, Ms. Perez was only 16 years old. After investigations by the New York Times and the New Yorker revealed decades of sexual harassment and assault allegations against Weinstein, a worldwide reckoning erupted. Ms. Perez said she viewed herself “very much as an advocate for the #MeToo movement,” adding that she loves “that women have a platform and are more comfortable coming out about someone, especially if that someone has a lot more money and there is that power dynamic.”But she couldn’t convict a person of a crime if she wasn’t sure. “I can’t convict someone, whoever they are, if I’m not fully convinced,” she said. Weinstein’s defense attorney, who cross-examined Ms. Mann, also described herself as a feminist. “Feminism and due process are not contradictory,” Ms. Geragos wrote to The New York Sun in an email. “Women are strong, intelligent, autonomous people capable of making complicated decisions.” “The justice system has to preserve room for nuance while still protecting actual victims of crime,” she added.After the judge declared a mistrial, Ms. Mann released a statement saying the “mistrial doesn’t in any way detract from the truth I told and the violent crimes Harvey Weinstein committed upon me and so many others.”“I submitted myself to the highest standards — transparency, and accountability — in coming forward through the justice system, choosing integrity even when the process flayed me open,” Ms. Mann said.Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in his statement that Ms. Mann “has fought for justice” for “nearly a decade” and “relived unthinkably painful experiences in front of complete strangers” during three separate trials.Mr. Bragg did not rule out taking the producer to trial for a fourth time. He said he would “consider the next steps in consultation with Ms. Mann.”Prosecutors are expected to tell the judge what they intend to do at the next hearing, which is scheduled for June 25.

How a Self-Described #MeToo Feminist Decided Not to Convict Harvey Weinstein of Rape

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