In December, Harvey Weinstein was convicted in LA of the 2013 rape of ‘Jane Doe 1’. On Thursday, he received a 16-year prison sentence that, on top of the 23-year sentence he is serving in New York, is likely to see the 70 year-old ends his life in prison.
On Friday, Jane Doe 1 finally revealed her identity to the Hollywood Reporter.
She is Evgeniya Chernyshova, a 43-year-old mother of two who was born in Siberia, won a modeling contest at age 15, and eventually moved to Italy where she was a model and actor. At some point she moved to Southern California; she now runs a floristry business in Beverly Hills, according to an interview published Friday by THR.
About two weeks ago, after Weinstein’s conviction but before his sentencing, Chernyshova sued the disgraced mogul in civil court under her alias, alleging sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
In October 2017, she spoke anonymously to The Times after reporting the rape to police and shared the same story shared in court and with THR:
Weinstein, whom she had briefly met once before in Rome, introduced herself again during Oscars week in 2013 at an Italian film festival at Hollywood’s Chinese Theater. When they were in Rome, he had invited her to his room, but she declined, she told The Times.
She returned to her hotel later that night and put on a bathrobe, but Weinstein called “without warning” from the lobby—she hadn’t told him where she was staying—demanding her room number. He told her they needed to talk. She didn’t reveal her number, but he showed up at her door anyway, knocked loudly, and told her he just wanted to talk and “wouldn’t fuck” her.
Chernyshova told THR she let him in because she was embarrassed by the rowdy man outside her door.
She told The Times in 2017 that once Weinstein was in her room, he repeatedly bragged about his power and influence and told her not to fight him. She tried to show him pictures of her children and her mother, who was undergoing chemotherapy at the time, crying and begging him to go away, she said.
“He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to do something I didn’t want to do,” she said in 2017. “He then dragged me into the bathroom and violently raped me.” When he left, she said, he told her she was very beautiful and she could work in Hollywood. He later invited her to several parties at his house, but she did not go to any of those parties.
“He acted like nothing had happened,” Chernyshova said in 2017. “I hardly knew this man. It was by far the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to me. It still makes me sick. … He made me feel like a object was, like nothing, with all its power.
Harvey Weinstein arrives at the Oscars in Hollywood in February 2015.
(Vince Bucci / Invision/Associated Press)
Chernyshova seems to have a few regrets. One is that she remained anonymous.
“I did it because I was embarrassed and humiliated,” she told THR. “I thought it was a good decision to protect my children. But it was a terrible decision for myself because I’m cut off from everyone. It is not good to go through this hell alone.”
Chernyshova is well known in Italy, where she appeared on the cover of Italian Vogue and as an actor in Italian films, The Times reported in 2017. After the attack, she told THR, she fell into depression and began drinking heavily. She and her husband separated and he has since passed away.
She told The Times in 2017 that she revealed the rape while escorting her daughter about a week before the rape New York Times published Weinstein’s first research. That was followed days later by a similar piece from the New Yorker. Previously, Chernyshova had only told her priest, her nanny and a friend about her experience with Weinstein. Her daughter urged her to report the incident to the police, which she did.
Chernyshova also wished she never opened her hotel room door that night in 2013.
“That’s what I’ve regretted for the past 10 years — opening this door,” she told THR, echoing what she told The Times in 2017.
On December 19, 2022, a jury in LA convicted Weinstein of forced rape, forced oral copulation, and sexual penetration by a foreign object, based on Chernyshova’s account of that night at the hotel.
“Harvey Weinstein destroyed a part of me forever that night. I’ll never get that back,” she told The Times in a statement after the verdict was read, still identifying herself as Jane Doe 1 after her three days of painful testimony in his trial.” But I knew I had to keep this up to the end. … I hope Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell in his lifetime.
And before Weinstein’s sentencing on Thursday, trembling and crying as she spoke in court, Chernyshova told the judge: “There is no prison sentence long enough to erase the damage. … He deserves to experience the same shame, humiliation and fear as I did.
Following the sentencing of the disgraced former producer, Judge Lisa Lench ruled that Weinstein could not serve his sentences in New York and LA at the same time, likely to fulfill Chernyshova’s wishes. Weinstein, who is 70, will not be eligible for parole until the 2050s.
Times staff writers Richard Winton and James Queally contributed to this report.
