Jurors in Los Angeles Superior Court were shown dozens of sensational photos taken during the sexual assaults of disgraced Hollywood mogul Eric Weinberg, whose sex crimes trial began Thursday, more than four years after prosecutors first arrested him.
During opening statements, prosecutors showed footage of Weinberg’s erect penis spreading between one woman’s buttocks and pushing down her throat while straddling the neck of another; The seven accusers are two of more than 20 sex acts the former “Scrubs” executive forced on them after he lured them to his Los Feliz home under the pretext of a photo shoot.
“You’re not going to go to the cops and tell them I raped you, are you?” he allegedly demanded one after their encounter in 2019 before letting her go.
Prosecutors said the woman went home and didn’t shower for three days, allegedly trying to keep his ejaculate in her body while she worked up the courage to report the incident to the Los Angeles Police Department.
“He knows he needs to go to the police and tell them what happened, but he’s stuck at an impasse,” said the Deputy Regional Director. Lawyer. Ariel Anson told the three women and nine men on the jury.
Another accuser, whose 911 tape was played during opening statements, called emergency services crying from her job at the Boys and Girls Club in Santa Monica immediately after leaving Weinberg’s home.
“I’ve run into him a few times through my job here,” he told the dispatcher. “Their children go to school here.”
(In fact, Weinberg had lied to the woman about where his children went to school.)
Weinberg was initially charged with more than a dozen counts of rape, forcible oral sex, sexual assault, false imprisonment, assault inflicting great bodily harm, and sexual intercourse with a foreign object when he was arrested in August 2022. Multiple women told police that Weinberg lured them to his home, almost always under the guise of a photo shoot, before restraining them and attacking them.
In the defense’s opening statement Thursday, attorney Phil Cohen repeatedly described his client as a “creep,” saying Weinberg did not object to “95% of what happened” and that jurors would likely find that repulsive, but that lasciviousness does not amount to sexual assault.
“This is where ‘creep’ and ‘criminal’ become very critical,” Cohen said.
“Is this how you want to raise your son? No! Do you want your husband to behave this way? No!” Cohen told the jury. “But does that make him guilty?”
Far from the pattern of a predatory serial harasser, Cohen characterized these encounters as the clumsy and occasionally tone-deaf fumblings of a “creep” with limited social skills.
Cohen, too, showed jurors graphic nude photos taken during the encounters, arguing that Weinberg — and likely many jurors — would perceive the subjects as willing participants in the throes of passion, rather than victims caught in a trap they could not escape.
Weinberg faces more than 20 sexual assault and abuse charges filed by seven women related to incidents that occurred between 2014 and 2019. The victims are identified in court filings as Jane Does and in court by their first names.
Authorities said that after news of Weinberg’s arrest became public, “dozens” more victims came forward, including women who were expected to testify at the trial.
In a trial transcript filed earlier this year, prosecutors alleged Weinberg repeatedly traded away his Hollywood resume and his involvement with the hit hospital comedy “Scrubs,” which he wrote and produced from 2001 to 2010.
In opening statements, prosecutors elaborated on that claim, saying Weinberg also traded stories and pictures of his three children and presented himself as a loving father seeking an outlet for his creative passion as an amateur photography enthusiast.
Many of the alleged assaults took place in a room belonging to his daughter.
During the encounters, prosecutors said Weinberg made unwanted sexual advances towards his victims, grabbing or kissing women without their consent. In some cases, Weinberg forced women to take photos in increasingly suggestive poses while escalating the sexual comments.
In many cases, women said he forced himself on them, forcing them to perform oral sex on him, inserting his fingers inside their vaginas and masturbating in front of them.
“If he doesn’t know that someone is frozen with fear, that’s [damage] their situation,” Cohen said.
Some also drowned; The footage was shown to jurors by both the defense and prosecution.
That did not amount to a threat of force, Cohen said. Without that threat or evidence that Weinberg knew the women were afraid of him and wanted him to stop, the prosecution cannot prove his actions were illegal.
“You don’t see Kayra’s hand trying to push her away; there’s no scratching, there’s no kicking,” Cohen told jurors as he showed a nude photo of a drowning woman.
Instead, Cohen said, the women who immediately reported him simply wanted to make sure Weinberg couldn’t use the photos to blackmail them, and those who came forward later were likely motivated by monetary gain.
Kayra sent a message to her sister right after the incident, saying, “If the police get involved, the photos will be deleted.” “Well, if I kidnap him and get him arrested, he can totally use these against me.”
Some told police they had been sexually assaulted before and that acquiescing for fear of resisting Weinberg’s unwanted advances would make things worse.
“When the photo shoot is over [Weinberg] He told Jane Doe 2 that he was free to go and that he was lucky he didn’t rape her,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing describing an alleged assault in 2018.
After some of the attacks, Weinberg asked frightened women to talk to other potential models who were uneasy about allowing their photos to be taken, according to a February court filing.
Following an encounter, a woman began using a Facebook group to warn others about Weinberg’s alleged behavior, according to an affidavit filed in family court in 2022.
The trial is expected to last until mid-December, prosecutors said.