A woman draws chilling comparisons between the trial of Donald Trump and her own allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
In 2015, an Italian model claimed she was attacked by the then-film producer Harvey Weinstein during a casting meeting. She went to the police to report what had happened, expecting justice to be served.
But a decade later, she's still seeking answers - not just about her assault, but about the shortcomings of the criminal justice system and how victims are treated.
Battilana Gutierrez, who was only 22 at the time, had moved to New York City with just a thousand dollars in her bank account. After her assault, she reported Weinstein to the authorities, then followed their instructions.
"I was in a position where I had no one to turn to," Battilana Gutierrez told CNN in a recent interview. "Now, I know there were so many people against me."
The alleged attempts to silence her have taken a different form this month, not from Weinstein, but from the trial of former President Donald Trump.
Battilana Gutierrez sees similarities between the alleged conspiracy surrounding a hush-money payment connected to Trump and what happened to her.
During Trump's trial, David Pecker - who ran American Media Inc., the publishers of popular tabloid The National Enquirer - testified that he bought and suppressed negative stories to help his friend, Trump, win the presidency.
"I said I'd let Trump know about anything I heard that could harm him," Pecker testified. "And then he'd be able to have them killed in another magazine or kill them myself."
Pecker also said he looked out for other powerful people he was close to, like actors Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ari Emanuel, and his brother Rahm, who had been Obama's first chief of staff and later ran for mayor of Chicago.
CNN contacted representatives of all three for comment.
Yet another powerful figure who did not come up in the Trump trial was Weinstein.
"It'd be interesting to see if Pecker had to talk about the Harvey Weinstein trial," Battilana Gutierrez said.
"I'm a victim!"
According to Battilana Gutierrez, the National Enquirer tried to buy out her story in 2015 after she reported Weinstein for groping her breasts and putting his hand up her skirt during a casting meeting. She declined their $150,000 offer.
"The National Enquirer was in touch with me, and they were asking questions like 'What do you want? What do you want?' because they were trying to buy my story," she says. "I kept saying 'Nothing.' I wanted to tell my story, but I trusted someone."
While she was trying to go public with her story in 2015, she was suddenly smeared on the front pages of tabloids.
"I was called a liar, a prostitute, and a non-perfect victim because I worked in the fashion industry as a model," she says. "I just had my life destroyed because the media didn't know how to buy me. They saw that I didn't want to be silenced, I didn't want money, and they just destroyed my credibility."
The National Enquirer and its parent company did not respond to CNN's request for comment. However, during Trump's trial, Pecker testified to engaging in "catch-and-kill" practices, buying stories to suppress them.
While many details of Battilana Gutierrez's case have been reported by journalists who helped uncover the Weinstein scandal, she's never before spoken on-the-record in the media about these specifics.
However, she says it wasn't just the tabloid press in 2015 that was trying to silence her. Lawyers for Weinstein even offered her up to $1 million to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
"I knew they were offering me $100,000, and they went up to $300,000, $700,000, $1 million, but I still rejected every offer," she recounts.
Weinstein's spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, told CNN that Battilana Gutierrez's lawyers controlled the negotiations. Engelmayer didn't respond to CNN's queries about Weinstein's connection to Pecker, The National Enquirer, and their alleged joint efforts to kill her story and discredit her through the tabloid press.
But a representative of Weinstein did mention that Weinstein's recent reversed conviction has "opened the floodgates for some to get back into the spotlight, whereas it was almost non-existent before."
Battilana Gutierrez's representative, Engelmayer, stated about Weinstein's situation, "Even though he's in prison and has been convicted in Los Angeles, Harvey Weinstein's name alone seems to continue to spark coverage and fascination." He also mentioned about Gutierrez, "Harvey wishes her well and hopes only for happiness and success for her."
Battilana Gutierrez did eventually sign an NDA with Weinstein's legal team. She felt she had no choice after her brother in Italy was randomly approached by strangers who inquired about her situation. She expressed concern for her family's safety.
Weinstein's spokesperson didn't respond to CNN's request for comment about the allegations that her brother's safety in Italy was at risk due to her signing the NDA.
Battilana Gutierrez is breaking her NDA to speak for the interview. She claims it is "essential" to share her truth.
A quest for justice
Since the initial reporting by The New Yorker and The New York Times in 2017, Weinstein has been charged, convicted, and sentenced for sex crimes. In New York, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison following his conviction of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape, which have subsequently been overturned by the New York Court of Appeals. In Los Angeles, he received an additional 16-year prison sentence for rape and sexual assault.
During Weinstein's New York sentencing, Judge James Burke remarked, "This is a first conviction, but it isn't a first offense."
Gutierrez now confirms to CNN that she was an anonymous source for Ronan Farrow, who wrote for The New Yorker, providing an audio recording of Weinstein apparently admitting to groping her breasts during a NYPD sting operation.
Despite the evidence, prosecutors did not move forward with her case, asserting there wasn't enough evidence for a conviction.
Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan DA at the time, informed CNN via email that he assigned the head of the sex crimes unit to review Battilana Gutierrez's case. Although he believes she conducted "a thorough and detailed investigation," he also accepted her recommendation not to prosecute due to various factors.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office denies any involvement in the Weinstein investigation under Vance. However, they note new District Attorney Alvin Bragg is moving ahead with a re-trial of Weinstein after his conviction was overturned by the New York Court of Appeals – a decision that shook communities of sexual assault survivors and represented a major setback for the #MeToo movement.
"As we made clear in court, we will retry the case against Harvey Weinstein, and we urge anyone who has been a victim of sexual assault to contact us," a spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office said in response to this article.
Weinstein's spokesperson stated, "The DA's office knew all the facts and dismissed the case. If they had felt they could pursue it, they would've."
Buying the story to conceal it
Last month, a former editor from the National Enquirer published an essay in the New York Times Magazine, detailing his accounts pertaining to "catch-and-kill" operations involving both Weinstein and Trump. The reporter, Lachlan Cartwright, alleged that in an attempt to smear Battilana Gutierrez, lawyers for the Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc. (AMI), contacted the Manhattan DA's Office.
Cartwright reinforced this allegation to CNN, stating, "I learned that a top lawyer at AMI, in 2015, had been in touch with the Manhattan DA's Office and that person had effectively flipped the script and was telling the DA's Office that Ambra was trying to sell her story to the National Enquirer, which was the complete opposite of what was happening."
Cartwright shared with CNN that while working at the Enquirer, he was given a tip about Gutierrez's police report regarding her allegations against Weinstein. When he pitched the story (which would have been a significant scoop in the pre #MeToo era), his supervisors surprised him by suggesting they buy her story instead of reporting it. Cartwright's claims have not been independently confirmed by CNN, and Battilana Gutierrez states that she doesn't know whether a lawyer for the Enquirer contacted the Manhattan DA's Office, but she believes a "complex web of individuals were working together to destroy me."
In his email to CNN, Vance didn't flatly refute Cartwright's claim, but stated, "I have no memory of any information that I recall currently that the National Enquirer or anyone representing it spoke with our office about selling a story to the Enquirer."
Cartwright asserts that when he worked for the Enquirer, he received a tip in 2015 about Gutierrez's police report concerning her charges against Weinstein. He offered the story for publication and was taken aback when his supervisors suggested they buy her story rather than reporting it.
"Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump were both considered 'Friends of Pecker' by Cartwright according to CNN. The Ambra Battilana story almost seemed like a 'catch-and-kill' situation, implying that if she had consented to her story being sold, it was most likely to prevent it from being published.
Back in 2017, The New Yorker exposed how the National Enquirer provided Weinstein with information about Rose McGowan's accusation of rape, offering a heads up on allegations that later led to his downfall. In a conversation with CNN, Cartwright confirmed that the Enquirer's editor had talked to Weinstein about McGowan while he was working for the magazine.
When Battilana Gutierrez filed her police report in 2015, Weinstein and Pecker's companies had recently made a deal to create a TV show with the content from the AMI website Radar Online. The TV show never materialized, but the alliance between the two men provided Weinstein with protection.
"Harvey Weinstein was a protected species," Cartwright remarked. "People within American Media... were working to help Harvey Weinstein and safeguard him, utilizing the resources of American Media to do so."
Despite her claims against Weinstein dating back almost a decade, Battilana Gutierrez continues her quest for justice as his fate in New York is uncertain with a rescinded conviction and his assertion to further appeal his conviction in LA.
"I have a lot of unanswered questions from 2015," she remarks.
Through the Trump hush money trial and Weinstein's ongoing legal proceedings, she perceives a common theme: efforts to extinguish the voices of women to maintain powerful men's positions.
"I didn't aspire to be an activist," she says. "I just couldn't close my eyes when I realized something wasn't right."
Battilana Gutierrez serves on the board of directors at the Model Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that seeks to improve working conditions within the fashion industry. A working model, she asserts that abuse persists in her chosen field despite the efforts of the #MeToo movement.
In 2022, she had the opportunity to provide testimony during Weinstein's LA trial - not because her New York case had ever reached court, but because Los Angeles prosecutors invited her as a "prior bad acts" witness to provide further proof of Weinstein's alleged behavior pattern. At that trial, jurors heard Battilana Gutierrez's recordings with Weinstein.
Right after the verdicts were delivered in 2022, a juror commented that they had been significantly affected by Battilana Gutierrez's story, and would have voted to convict if her experience was directly linked to a charge against Weinstein.
Upon hearing this recollection during CNN's interview with her, she became emotional thinking about everything that had happened since her first encounter with Weinstein.
"In 2015, my sole intention was to help someone," Battilana Gutierrez says, filled with indignation and vigor. "The years that followed knew me losing everything. If I could've found the right person to release those recordings, none of this would have happened."
予期せぬ夜Harvey Weinsteinとドナルドトランプは、「FOP」 - フレンズ オブ ペッカーと一緒だったのでれいとカートライトはCNNで告じた。Ambra Battilanaの casoはpratically a "Catch-and-Kill"ということで、私は、彼女がそのストーリーを販売したことがあり、公開されないようにすることの意図はなかったと思う。
2017年、The New Yorkerはウェインシュタインとローズマクゴーバンの戦争の上で爆発的になった。ウェインシュタインに関する不正治療のクレームを点滅するために、ウェインシュタインが持ち帰った情報として、ローズマクゴーバンの性暴力事件は、世の中で殺候、ウェインシュタインの告発を順調にした事実でありました。カートライトは，マガジンでの仕事間に、上校総督はウェインシュタインにおいて話したとある。
Battilana Gutierrezが2015年に警告伝達したとき，プッコとウェインシュタインの会社ははるかに営業関係を継続していました。プッコとウェインシュタインの会社は、AMIサイトのラダーオンのコンテンツでテレビ節を作るプロジェクトに立ち上がった。プロジェクトは成果を放�9著でしたが，二人はフェリシュに乏しくない関係である。
"ウェインシュタインは被保護者でした"とカートライトが言った。"米メディアの中の人々は... ハーバリーウェインシュタインの保護と広 presidenteを使うことで彼を助けていた。"
十年以上前にウェインシュタインへの訴訟と同時にバトリアナグティエレスの戦を続けています。彼のニューЙークの失敗でも未職、武太はゆえにニューヨークへの処罰が門が閉まり合わない。
"私にデゥエーイと言う時にあった照漆は，自分が詭惑と驚いたためだった"と彼女が言います。
トランプの资金支uce TRIAL にハーバリーウェインシュタインの連続的な裁判プロセスのわきにある。彼女は，強な男は睨み回しているために，女性の声を漢語に閉じ目をしようとすることを見出せるトピックなテーマであると認識しています。
"活動家を抱える志願を持っていなかった"と彼女は言った。"私は見たことがないことを見た時に，気付けることをするのが意味がない"
戦闘を継続しているバトリアナグティエレスは，モデルアライアスは彼女の業界で欠���aktを感じつづく会社をSupportedするny基地の非営利団体です。彼女は，職業はモデルだが，#MeToo運動のエフェクトには overnight改善はないと抗議します。
2022年に，彼女が試着したウェインシュタインのLOS阻圧裁判で，バトリアナグティエレスは、彼の罪行の過去を指摘するために擬媒の則で testimonyした。遂にラジオニューヨークスを含んだAMIサイトのコンテンツ使えるTV節のプロジェクトに関係することで，彼
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Source: edition.cnn.com
