With former film producer Harvey Weinstein’s fate hinging largely on what his accusers remember about alleged sexual assaults years ago, his lawyers on Friday turned to an expert known for studying false, repressed and unreliable memories.
“It doesn’t take a PhD to know that memory fades over time,” cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus told jurors at Weinstein’s New York City rape trial.
As memories fade, people become vulnerable to “post-event information,” including media reports that can distort what they remember, Loftus said.
They can also distort their own memories with inferences and guesses about past events, she said.
False memories “can be experienced with a great deal of detail, a great deal of emotion, even though they’re false,” she said. “The emotion is not a guarantee you’re dealing with an authentic memory.”
Loftus took the witness stand a day after prosecutors rested their case against Weinstein. It featured more than two weeks of testimony, including the accounts of six women who say the former Hollywood boss subjected them to vile sexual behavior.
Weinstein’s lawyers are aiming to cement doubts about the women’s allegations after using cross-examination to highlight inconsistencies in some of their accounts. In some cases, the encounters the women were recalling happened a decade or longer ago.
Referring to actress Annabella Sciorra, who alleges that Weinstein barged into her apartment and raped her in 1993 or 1994, Loftus said: “that’s an extraordinarily long period of time where there can be substantial fading of memory.”
Weinstein’s lawyers have not said whether he will testify.
If he does, he faces the prospect of prosecutors grilling him over the allegations and could give them a opening to bring in more witnesses to rebut things he says.
“That is a question that does not have an answer at this point,” attorney Arthur Aidala said. “We want to see how our defense case goes.”
Weinstein is charged with raping a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in March 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on a different woman in 2006.
Weinstein, 67, says that any sexual encounters were consensual.
Loftus was on the stand for about an hour, her testimony curtailed by a ruling barring her from talking about memories specific to sexual interactions.
She testified that she also was not asked to evaluate any of the accusers or their testimony.
Loftus, who coauthored the 1994 book The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegation of Sexual Abuse, has stirred controversy in her field, partly because her work on behalf of big-name clients like serial killer Ted Bundy, but also because her testimony often helps undermine people who say they are victims.
On the stand on Friday, she sounded a similar note, telling jurors that interactions with law enforcement “can lead people to want to produce details,” she said.
“Some can be accurate, and some can be false and inaccurate,” Loftus said.
When prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon asked the witness whether she was originally asked to be a defense consultant, rather than a witness, she responded: “I don’t remember what I was asked exactly.”
“Is that due to post-event information?” Illuzzi quipped.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia