Jurors in Los Angeles Superior Court were shown dozens of graphic photos that were taken during what prosecutors say were sexual assaults by disgraced Hollywood mogul Eric Weinberg, whose sex crimes trial began Thursday, more than four years after his initial arrest.
During their opening statements, prosecutors flashed images of Weinberg’s erect penis splayed between one woman’s buttocks and pushed down another one’s throat while he straddled her neck — two of more than 20 sex acts his seven criminal accusers say the former “Scrubs” executive forced on them after they were lured to his Los Feliz home on the pretense of a photo shoot.
“You’re not going to go to the cops and say I raped you, right?” he allegedly demanded of one before allowing her to leave after their encounter in 2019.
That woman, prosecutors said, went home and didn’t shower for three days, allegedly seeking to preserve his ejaculate on her body while working up the courage to report the incident to the Los Angeles Police Department.
“She knows she needs to go to the police and tell them what happened but she’s stuck,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Ariel Anson told the three women and nine men of the jury.
Another accuser, whose 911 tape was played during opening statements, called emergency services weeping from her job at the Boys and Girls Club in Santa Monica immediately after she’d left Weinberg’s house.
“I met him a couple times over here by my job,” she told the dispatcher. “His kids go at the school here.”
(In fact, Weinberg had lied to the woman about where his kids went to school.)
Weinberg was initially charged with more than a dozen counts of rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual battery, false imprisonment, assault by means to cause great bodily harm and sexual penetration by 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 and assaulting them.
During the defense’s opening statements on Thursday, attorney Phil Cohen repeatedly described his client as a “creep,” saying Weinberg didn’t dispute “95% of what took place” and that jurors would likely find it repellent — but that his lechery didn’t amount to sexual assault.
“This is where ‘creep’ and ‘criminal’ become so critical,” Cohen said.
“Do you want to raise your son like that? No! Do you want your husband to act that way? No!” Cohen told the jury. “But does that make it criminal?”
Far from a predatory pattern of a serial abuser, Cohen characterized the encounters as ham-fisted and occasionally tone deaf bumblings of a “creep” with limited social skills.
Cohen, too, showed the jurors graphic nudes taken during the encounters, arguing that Weinberg — and likely many jurors — would perceive the subjects as eager participants in the throes of passion and not victims snared in a trap they could not escape.
Weinberg faces more than 20 counts of sexual assault and abuse levied by seven women for incidents that took place between 2014 and 2019. The victims are identified in court filings as Jane Does, and in court by their first names.
Authorities said “dozens” of additional victims came forward after news of Weinberg’s arrest became public, including several of the women expected to testify at trial.
In a trial brief submitted earlier this year, prosecutors alleged Weinberg repeatedly traded on his Hollywood résumé and affiliation with “Scrubs” — the beloved hospital sitcom he wrote and produced for from 2001 to 2010.
In opening statements, prosecutors elaborated on that claim, saying Weinberg also traded on stories and pictures of his three children, presenting himself as a loving father looking for an outlet for his creative passion as an amateur shutterbug.
Several of the alleged assaults took place in a room that had belonged to his daughter.
During the encounters, prosecutors say Weinberg began making unwanted sexual advances on his victims, grabbing or kissing the women without consent. In some cases, Weinberg pushed the women to take pictures in increasingly suggestive poses while he escalated sexual commentary.
In multiple incidents, women said he forced himself on them, compelling them to perform oral sex on him, jamming his fingers inside their vaginas and masturbating in front of them.
“If he doesn’t know that someone is frozen out of fear, that would [damage] their case,” Cohen said.
Some were also choked — images jurors were shown by both the defense and the prosecution.
That doesn’t add up to a threat of force, Cohen said. Without that threat — or some proof that Weinberg knew the women were afraid of him and wanted him to stop, the prosecution can’t prove his actions were unlawful.
“You don’t see Kayra’s hand trying to push him away — no scratching, no kicking,” Cohen told jurors while showing a nude photo of a woman being choked.
Instead, Cohen said the women who reported him immediately only wanted to ensure Weinberg couldn’t use the photos to blackmail them — and those who came forward later were likely motivated by monetary gain.
“If the cops are involved, that means the photos will be deleted,” Kayra texted her sister immediately after the incident. “Well if I f— him over and have him arrested he could totally use those against me.”
Some told police they had been sexually assaulted before, and acquiesced to Weinberg’s unwanted advances out of fear resistance would only make things worse.
“When the photo shoot was done, [Weinberg] told Jane Doe 2 that she was free to leave and lucky that he did not rape her,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing describing an alleged 2018 assault.
After some of the attacks, Weinberg would ask the frightened women to speak with other potential models who were nervous about letting him photograph them, according to the February court filing.
After one encounter, a woman began using a Facebook group to warn others about Weinberg’s alleged behavior, according to a declaration filed in family court in 2022.
The trial is expected to last until mid-December, prosecutors said.
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