'Never happened': Model denies trapping Weinstein accuser

NEW YORK (AP) — In the strongest defense testimony yet, a Mexican model and actress denied a Harvey Weinstein accuser’s claim that she stood by and did nothing while the once-powerful movie mogul groped her in a Beverly Hills hotel in 2013.

“Never happened," Claudia Salinas told jurors Monday at Weinstein’s rape trial in New York City.

Testifying last week, model Lauren Marie Young said Salinas closed the door behind her and Weinstein as they went into the bathroom, where she said he stripped off his clothes, grabbed her breast and masturbated. Young said Salinas “was standing right there” when Weinstein was finished and she managed to get out.

“If I had done that, I would remember that,” Salinas testified. “I would never close the door on anybody.”

Salinas, now 38 and working as a social media influencer, took the witness stand as the defense called witnesses for a third day after more than two weeks of prosecution testimony. She said she met Weinstein in 2012 while an aspiring actress and never had a romantic relationship with him, adding that he had a “very strong personality" and "at times, he wasn’t nice to me.”

Among the prosecution witnesses were six women, including Young, who say the once-powerful Hollywood boss subjected them to vile sexual behavior.

Weinstein is charged with raping a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on a different woman in 2006, but other accusers such as Young were called as witnesses as part of a prosecution effort to show he has used the same tactics to victimize many women over the years.

Young's allegations were included in criminal charges filed against Weinstein in California on Jan. 6, just as his New York case was starting.

The 67-year-old Weinstein has maintained...