CNN
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For years, Ambra Battilana Gutierrez says she knew she was being silenced.
It was 2015 when the Italian mannequin says she was assaulted by then film mogul Harvey Weinstein throughout a casting assembly. She instantly went to the police to report what occurred, assuming regulation enforcement would assist her.
Almost a decade later, she remains to be looking for solutions – not, she says, about simply her assault, however what she says are failures of the legal justice system and the way victims are handled.
“I used to be 22 years outdated, in New York Metropolis, I had simply received right here. I had little or no, a thousand {dollars}, in my checking account and I used to be assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. I reported him after which I simply tried to observe the justice and what they instructed me to do,” Battilana Gutierrez instructed CNN in a current interview.
“Now, I do know there have been so many individuals towards me,” she says.
The alleged efforts to silence her have come into clearer focus for Battilana Gutierrez this month – and never from something to do with Weinstein, however from the continuing trial of former President Donald Trump.
Battilana Gutierrez says she sees chilling parallels between the alleged conspiracy surrounding a hush-money fee linked to Trump and what occurred to her.
Throughout Trump’s trial, tabloid king David Pecker – who oversaw American Media Inc., the mother or father firm to the influential grocery store journal, The Nationwide Enquirer – testified to buying and suppressing negative stories to assist his good friend, Trump, win the presidency.
“I mentioned that something that I hear within the market, if I hear something adverse about your self or if I hear something about girls promoting tales, I might notify Michael Cohen,” Pecker testified he instructed Trump. “After which he would be capable of have them kill in one other journal or have them not be revealed or anyone must buy them.”
He mentioned on the stand that he additionally appeared out for different highly effective males he was near, professionally or personally – males like Arnold Schwarzenegger, mega expertise agent Ari Emanuel and his brother Rahm, who resigned as President Barack Obama’s first Chief of Employees to run for and win the Chicago mayorship.
CNN has reached out to representatives for Schwarzenegger, Ari and Rahm Emanuel for remark.
However one other highly effective determine in Pecker’s world who by no means got here up within the Trump trial was Weinstein.
“It might be very attention-grabbing to see if he had to talk about the Harvey Weinstein trial,” Battilana Gutierrez mentioned of Pecker.
Battilana Gutierrez says she was focused by the Nationwide Enquirer in a “catch-and-kill” story operation in 2015 after she instructed police in New York Metropolis that Weinstein groped her breasts and put his hand up her skirt throughout a casting assembly.
She tells CNN that she acquired a suggestion of $150,000 from The Nationwide Enquirer in 2015 to purchase her story. She declined the big sum of cash.
“The Nationwide Enquirer was in contact with me, and so they had been asking questions: ‘What would you like? What would you like?’ as a result of they had been making an attempt to purchase my story,” Battilana Gutierrez says. “I saved answering, ‘Nothing.’ I needed to inform my story, however I needed to belief somebody.”
As she was making an attempt to return ahead together with her story in 2015, out of the blue, she was smeared on the entrance pages of tabloid magazines.
“I used to be put beneath accusation of not being truthful and to be a prostitute or not an ideal sufferer as a result of I’m a mannequin and I work with bikinis and lingerie. It’s ridiculous,” she says. “I simply received my life destroyed as a result of the media didn’t know the right way to purchase me. They noticed that I didn’t need to be silenced, I didn’t need to get cash and so they simply destroyed my credibility.”
Pecker and The Nationwide Enquirer’s mother or father firm didn’t reply to CNN’s request for remark. However throughout Trump’s trial, Pecker testified to partaking in “catch-and-kill” practices, paying for tales so they’d by no means come to mild.
Most of the circumstances surrounding Battilana Gutierrez have beforehand been reported by journalists who helped crack the Weinstein case open. Battilana Gutierrez has spoken to the media extensively as a distinguished face of the Weinstein saga – however up till this dialog with CNN, she has by no means spoken on-the-record to the media herself about many of those particulars.
It wasn’t simply the tabloid media in 2015 that she says tried to silence her. Battilana Gutierrez tells CNN that legal professionals for Weinstein supplied her as much as $1 million to signal a non-disclosure settlement, as soon as they heard that she was making an attempt to return ahead together with her allegations.
“I knew that they had been making an attempt to supply me $100,000,” Battilana Gutierrez says, detailing the specifics of Weinstein’s alleged settlement presents. “They went as much as $300,000, $700,000, $1 million, and I nonetheless turned down each time.”
Weinstein’s spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, instructed CNN in a press release, “Ms. Gutierrez’ legal professionals managed these conferences and set the phrases for it.”
Engelmayer didn’t reply to CNN’s inquiries particularly relating to Weinstein’s relationship to Pecker, The Nationwide Enquirer and their alleged joint efforts to kill Battilana Gutierrez’s story and plant adverse items about her throughout the tabloid media.
However his spokesperson did say that Weinstein’s current overturned conviction has “opened the flood gates for some to get again into the highlight, whereas it had all however disappeared.”
“Though he’s in jail and convicted in Los Angeles, Harvey Weinstein’s title alone appears to proceed to encourage protection and a spotlight,” Engelmayer mentioned. Of Battilana Gutierrez, he added, “Harvey needs her nicely and hopes just for happiness and success for her.”
Finally, Battilana Gutierrez did signal a non-disclosure settlement with Weinstein’s authorized staff. She mentioned she felt she had no selection, after her brother again in Italy was randomly approached by strangers inquiring about her, and she or he was involved that her household’s security was at risk.
Weinstein’s spokesperson didn’t reply to CNN’s request for remark relating to Battilana Gutierrez’s allegations about her brother being approached in Italy, which she says scared her into finally signing the NDA.
Battilana Gutierrez is disregarding her NDA to talk for this interview. She says it’s “extra necessary” to share her fact.
Because the preliminary reporting by The New Yorker and The New York Times in 2017 that led to his downfall, Weinstein has been charged, convicted and sentenced for intercourse crimes. In New York, he was first sentenced to 23 years in jail after being convicted of first-degree legal sexual act and third-degree rape – responsible verdicts that have now been overturned by the New York Courtroom of Appeals. In Los Angeles, he was sentenced to an additional 16 years in prison for rape and sexual assault.
At Weinstein’s New York sentencing, Choose James Burke mentioned: “It is a first conviction, however it’s not a primary offense.”
Gutierrez now confirms to CNN that she was an nameless supply for Ronan Farrow, who wrote for the New Yorker, giving him audio of Weinstein apparently admitting to groping her breasts, which was recorded throughout a NYPD sting operation.
Even with the recording, prosecutors didn’t transfer ahead together with her case, claiming there wasn’t sufficient proof for a conviction.
Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan DA on the time, instructed CNN by way of e mail that he assigned the top of the intercourse crimes unit to look at Battilana Gutierrez’s case and believed she performed “a full and detailed investigation” earlier than recommending towards prosecution for quite a lot of causes.
“I accepted her advice as a result of I used to be personally acquainted with her expertise, judgment and dedication on this space of legal investigations,” Vance mentioned.
The Manhattan District Lawyer’s Workplace declined to touch upon the Weinstein investigation beneath Vance, however famous that present District Lawyer Alvin Bragg is transferring ahead with a re-trial of Weinstein, after his conviction was overturned final month by the New York Courtroom of Appeals – a choice that despatched shockwaves via communities of survivors of sexual assault and marked a surprising set-back for the #MeToo motion.
“As we said in court docket, we are going to retry the case towards Harvey Weinstein, and we urge anybody who has been a sufferer of sexual assault to name us,” a spokesperson for the Manhattan District Lawyer’s Workplace instructed CNN in response to this story.
Weinstein’s spokesperson instructed CNN, “The DA’s workplace knew all of the details and handed on this case. Had they felt they might pursue it, they’d have.”
Final month, a former editor from the Nationwide Enquirer published an essay in New York Instances Journal, sharing what he claims he witnessed throughout his time on the tabloid, each pertaining to “catch-and-kill” efforts with each Weinstein and Trump. The reporter, Lachlan Cartwright, alleged that in an effort to smear Battilana Gutierrez, attorneys for the Enquirer’s mother or father firm, American Media Inc. (AMI), engaged in conversations with the Manhattan DA’s Workplace.
He doubled down on that declare, telling CNN, “I discovered {that a} high lawyer at AMI, in 2015, had been in contact with the Manhattan DA’s Workplace and that individual had successfully flipped the script and had been telling the DA’s Workplace that Ambra was making an attempt to promote her story to the Nationwide Enquirer, which was the exact opposite of what was occurring.”
Cartwright instructed CNN he discovered about this when he served as an nameless supply for the New York Instances’ investigation into Weinstein. CNN has not independently verified Cartwright’s declare, and Battilana Gutierrez says whereas she doesn’t have direct information whether or not a lawyer for the Enquirer approached the Manhattan DA’s Workplace, she believes {that a} “very difficult net of individuals had been [was] working collectively to destroy me.”
In his e mail to CNN, Vance didn’t immediately deny Cartwright’s declare, however mentioned, “I’ve no info that I recall presently that the Nationwide Enquirer or anybody representing it spoke with our workplace about promoting a narrative to the Enquirer.”
Cartwright says that when he labored on the Enquirer, he acquired a tip in 2015 about Battilana Gutierrez’s police report regarding her allegations towards Weinstein. He pitched the story – which might have been a serious scoop in a pre #MeToo world – and was shocked when his bosses requested to purchase her story, relatively than report the story.
“Each Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump had been ‘FOPs’ – Mates of Pecker,” Cartwright instructed CNN. “The Ambra Battilana story is sort of a ‘catch-and-kill’ in that I believe if she had have agreed for her story to be bought, I don’t assume the intention was to publish it. I believe the intention was to ensure it wasn’t revealed.”
In 2017, The New Yorker reported that the Nationwide Enquirer shared unpublished materials with Weinstein relating to actress Rose McGowan’s rape accusation, giving him a heads up on allegations that might finally show to be damning for Weinstein. Chatting with CNN, Cartwright confirms that in his time on the journal, the Enquirer’s high editor spoke to Weinstein about McGowan.
On the time Battilana Gutierrez filed her 2015 police report, The Weinstein Firm was in enterprise with Pecker. Simply weeks earlier than Weinstein’s alleged assault on Battilana Gutierrez, Weinstein and Pecker’s firms had signed a deal to create a TV present with the content material of the AMI web site Radar On-line. The present by no means got here to fruition, however the relationship, nonetheless, did profit Weinstein.
“That meant Harvey Weinstein was a protected species,” Cartwright mentioned, including, “Individuals inside American Media … had been working to assist Harvey Weinstein and shield him and utilizing the assets of American Media to take action.”
Almost a decade after she first got here ahead together with her allegations towards Weinstein, Battilana Gutierrez remains to be persevering with her struggle for justice – particularly as Weinstein’s destiny in New York stays unknown with an overturned conviction and he vows to enchantment his Los Angeles conviction.
“I’ve quite a lot of questions on 2015 that I’ve by no means had solutions,” she says.
Via Trump’s hush cash trial and Weinstein’s persevering with authorized battles, she sees a typical theme: Huge efforts to silence girls, so as to preserve influential males in energy.
“I by no means actually needed to be an activist. It was one thing (that) simply got here as much as me,” she says. “I simply felt like I couldn’t shut my eyes after I see one thing that’s not proper.”
At present, Battilana Gutierrez is on the board of administrators on the Mannequin Alliance, a New York- based mostly nonprofit that works in the direction of higher therapy of staff within the vogue trade. A working mannequin, she says that her trade remains to be rife with abuse, regardless of the efforts of the #MeToo motion.
In 2022, she received the possibility to testify about what she says occurred to her at Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial – not as a result of her New York case was ever prosecuted, however as a result of Los Angeles prosecutors introduced her in as a “prior dangerous acts” witness, so as to present extra proof to assist set up a sample of the disgraced film mogul’s prior sample of alleged conduct. In that trial, the jury heard Battilana Gutierrez’s recordings with Weinstein.
Quickly after the verdicts had been handed down in 2022, a juror instructed this reporter he had been notably struck by Battilana Gutierrez’s story and would have voted to convict if her expertise had been immediately linked to a cost towards Weinstein.
When the story was recounted to Battilana Gutierrez in CNN’s interview, she grew to become emotional at every thing that had handed since her first assembly with Weinstein.
“My entire want in 2015 was to be useful for somebody,” Battilana Gutierrez now says, crammed with anger and hope. “All these years which have been passing for me, figuring out that if possibly I may have simply (discovered) the proper individual to launch these recordings, I wouldn’t lose every thing I misplaced.”
Battilana Gutierrez tells CNN that she hopes the New York case is re-tried this fall, because the DA has introduced its intention to take action. And if Weinstein’s Los Angeles enchantment is profitable, she says she would testify once more.
She says she received’t cease looking for solutions till justice has been served.
“Who was the accountable person who made that occur? As a result of it wasn’t simply him. I do know there [are] extra folks behind him which have positions of energy that he was utilizing as nicely.”
She provides, “Issues which can be dangerous – lies – at all times come out to mild.”
CNN’s Jason Kravarik contributed to this story.