For years, Ambra Battilana Gutierrez says she knew she was being silenced.
It was 2015 when the Italian model says she was assaulted by then movie mogul Harvey Weinstein during a casting meeting. She immediately went to the police to report what happened, assuming law enforcement would help her.
Nearly a decade later, she is still searching for answers â not, she says, about just her attack, but what she says are failures of the criminal justice system and how victims are treated.
âI was 22 years old, in New York City, I had just got here. I had very little, a thousand dollars, in my bank account and I was assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. I reported him and then I just tried to follow the justice and what they told me to do,â Battilana Gutierrez told CNN in a recent interview.
âNow, I know there were so many people against me,â she says.
The alleged efforts to silence her have come into clearer focus for Battilana Gutierrez this month â and not from anything to do with Weinstein, but from the ongoing trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Battilana Gutierrez says she sees chilling parallels between the alleged conspiracy surrounding a hush-money payment connected to Trump and what happened to her.
During Trumpâs trial, tabloid king David Pecker â who oversaw American Media Inc., the parent company to the influential supermarket magazine, The National Enquirer â testified to buying and suppressing negative stories to help his friend, Trump, win the presidency.
âI said that anything that I hear in the marketplace, if I hear anything negative about yourself or if I hear anything about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen,â Pecker testified he told Trump. âAnd then he would be able to have them kill in another magazine or have them not be published or somebody would have to purchase them.â
He said on the stand that he also looked out for other powerful men he was close to, professionally or personally â men like Arnold Schwarzenegger, mega talent agent Ari Emanuel and his brother Rahm, who resigned as U.S. President Barack Obamaâs first Chief of Staff to run for and win the Chicago mayorship.
CNN has reached out to representatives for Schwarzenegger, Ari and Rahm Emanuel for comment.
But another powerful figure in Peckerâs world who never came up in the Trump trial was Weinstein.
âIt would be very interesting to see if he had to speak about the Harvey Weinstein trial,â Battilana Gutierrez said of Pecker.
'What do you want?'
Battilana Gutierrez says she was targeted by the National Enquirer in a âcatch-and-killâ story operation in 2015 after she told police in New York City that Weinstein groped her breasts and put his hand up her skirt during a casting meeting.
She tells CNN that she received an offer of US$150,000 from The National Enquirer in 2015 to buy her story. She declined the large sum of money.
âThe National Enquirer was in touch with me, and they were asking questions: âWhat do you want? What do you want?â because they were trying to buy my story,â Battilana Gutierrez says. âI kept answering, âNothing.â I wanted to tell my story, but I wanted to trust someone.â
As she was trying to come forward with her story in 2015, suddenly, she was smeared on the front pages of tabloid magazines.
âI was put under accusation of not being truthful and to be a prostitute or not a perfect victim because I am a model and I work with bikinis and lingerie. It is ridiculous,â she says. âI just got my life destroyed because the media didnât know how to buy me. They saw that I didnât want to be silenced, I didnât want to get money and they just destroyed my credibility.â
Pecker and The National Enquirerâs parent company did not respond to CNNâs request for comment. But during Trumpâs trial, Pecker testified to engaging in âcatch-and-killâ practices, paying for stories so they would never come to light.
Many of the circumstances surrounding Battilana Gutierrez have previously been reported by journalists who helped crack the Weinstein case open. Battilana Gutierrez has spoken to the media extensively as a prominent face of the Weinstein saga â but up until this conversation with CNN, she has never spoken on-the-record to the media herself about many of these details.
It wasnât just the tabloid media in 2015 that she says tried to silence her. Battilana Gutierrez tells CNN that lawyers for Weinstein offered her up to US$1 million to sign a non-disclosure agreement, once they heard that she was trying to come forward with her allegations.
âI knew that they were trying to offer me $100,000,â Battilana Gutierrez says, detailing the specifics of Weinsteinâs alleged settlement offers. âThey went up to $300,000, $700,000, $1 million, and I still turned down every time.â
Weinsteinâs spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, told CNN in a statement, âMs. Gutierrezâ lawyers controlled those meetings and set the terms for it.â
Engelmayer did not respond to CNNâs inquiries specifically regarding Weinsteinâs relationship to Pecker, The National Enquirer and their alleged joint efforts to kill Battilana Gutierrezâs story and plant negative pieces about her across the tabloid media.
But his spokesperson did say that Weinsteinâs recent overturned conviction has âopened the flood gates for some to get back into the spotlight, whereas it had all but disappeared.â
âEven though heâs in prison and convicted in Los Angeles, Harvey Weinsteinâs name alone seems to continue to inspire coverage and attention,â Engelmayer said. Of Battilana Gutierrez, he added, âHarvey wishes her well and hopes only for happiness and success for her.â
Eventually, Battilana Gutierrez did sign a non-disclosure agreement with Weinsteinâs legal team. She said she felt she had no choice, after her brother back in Italy was randomly approached by strangers inquiring about her, and she was concerned that her familyâs safety was in danger.
Weinsteinâs spokesperson did not respond to CNNâs request for comment regarding Battilana Gutierrezâs allegations about her brother being approached in Italy, which she says scared her into ultimately signing the NDA.
Battilana Gutierrez is disregarding her NDA to speak for this interview. She says it is âmore importantâ to share her truth.
A pursuit of justice
Since the initial reporting by and in 2017 that led to his downfall, Weinstein has been charged, convicted and sentenced for sex crimes. In New York, he was first sentenced to 23 years in prison after being convicted of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape â guilty verdicts that have now been overturned by the New York Court of Appeals. In Los Angeles, he was sentenced to an additional 16 years in prison for rape and sexual assault.
At Weinsteinâs New York sentencing, Judge James Burke said: âThis is a first conviction, but it is not a first offense.â
Gutierrez now confirms to CNN that she was an anonymous source for Ronan Farrow, who wrote for the , giving him audio of Weinstein apparently admitting to groping her breasts, which was recorded during a NYPD sting operation.
Even with the recording, prosecutors did not move forward with her case, claiming there wasnât enough evidence for a conviction.
Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan DA at the time, told CNN via email that he assigned the head of the sex crimes unit to examine Battilana Gutierrezâs case and believed she conducted âa full and detailed investigationâ before recommending against prosecution for a number of reasons.
âI accepted her recommendation because I was personally familiar with her experience, judgment and commitment in this area of criminal investigations,â Vance said.
The Manhattan District Attorneyâs Office declined to comment on the Weinstein investigation under Vance, but noted that current District Attorney Alvin Bragg is moving forward with a re-trial of Weinstein, after his conviction was overturned last month by the New York Court of Appeals â a decision that sent shockwaves through communities of survivors of sexual assault and marked a stunning setback for the #MeToo movement.
âAs we stated in court, we will retry the case against Harvey Weinstein, and we urge anyone who has been a victim of sexual assault to call us,â a spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorneyâs Office told CNN in response to this story.
Weinsteinâs spokesperson told CNN, âThe DAâs office knew all the facts and passed on this case. Had they felt they could pursue it, they would have.â
Buying the story to bury it
Last month, a former editor from the National Enquirer in New York Times Magazine, sharing what he claims he witnessed during his time at the tabloid, both pertaining to âcatch-and-killâ efforts with both Weinstein and Trump. The reporter, Lachlan Cartwright, alleged that in an effort to smear Battilana Gutierrez, attorneys for the Enquirerâs parent company, American Media Inc. (AMI), engaged in conversations with the Manhattan DAâs Office.
He doubled down on that claim, telling CNN, âI learned that a top lawyer at AMI, in 2015, had been in touch with the Manhattan DAâs Office and that person had effectively flipped the script and had been telling the DAâs Office that Ambra was trying to sell her story to the National Enquirer, which was the complete opposite of what was going on.â
Cartwright told CNN he learned about this when he served as an anonymous source for the New York Timesâ investigation into Weinstein. CNN has not independently verified Cartwrightâs claim, and Battilana Gutierrez says while she does not have direct knowledge whether a lawyer for the Enquirer approached the Manhattan DAâs Office, she believes that a âvery complicated web of people were [was] working together to destroy me.â
In his email to CNN, Vance did not directly deny Cartwrightâs claim, but said, âI have no information that I recall presently that the National Enquirer or anyone representing it spoke with our office about selling a story to the Enquirer.â
Cartwright says that when he worked at the Enquirer, he received a tip in 2015 about Battilana Gutierrezâs police report concerning her allegations against Weinstein. He pitched the story â which would have been a major scoop in a pre #MeToo world â and was surprised when his bosses asked to buy her story, rather than report the story.
âBoth Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump were âFOPsâ â Friends of Pecker,â Cartwright told CNN. âThe Ambra Battilana story is almost a âcatch-and-killâ in that I think if she had have agreed for her story to be sold, I donât think the intention was to publish it. I think the intention was to make sure it wasnât published.â
In 2017, The New Yorker reported that the National Enquirer shared unpublished material with Weinstein regarding actress Rose McGowanâs rape accusation, giving him a heads up on allegations that would eventually prove to be damning for Weinstein. Speaking to CNN, Cartwright confirms that during his time at the magazine, the Enquirerâs top editor spoke to Weinstein about McGowan.
At the time Battilana Gutierrez filed her 2015 police report, The Weinstein Company was in business with Pecker. Just weeks before Weinsteinâs alleged assault on Battilana Gutierrez, Weinstein and Peckerâs companies had signed a deal to create a TV show with the content of the AMI website Radar Online. The show never came to fruition, but the relationship, nevertheless, did benefit Weinstein.
âThat meant Harvey Weinstein was a protected species,â Cartwright said, adding, âPeople within American Media ⌠were working to help Harvey Weinstein and protect him and using the resources of American Media to do so.â
A chance to testify
Nearly a decade after she first came forward with her allegations against Weinstein, Battilana Gutierrez is still continuing her fight for justice â especially as Weinsteinâs fate in New York remains unknown with an overturned conviction and he vows to appeal his Los Angeles conviction.
âI have a lot of questions about 2015 that I have never had answers,â she says.
Through Trumpâs hush money trial and Weinsteinâs continuing legal battles, she sees a common theme: Enormous efforts to silence women, in order to keep influential men in power.
âI never really wanted to be an activist. It was something (that) just came up to me,â she says. âI just felt like I couldnât close my eyes when I see something that is not right.â
Today, Battilana Gutierrez is on the board of directors at the Model Alliance, a New York- based nonprofit that works towards better treatment of workers in the fashion industry. A working model, she says that her industry is still rife with abuse, despite the efforts of the #MeToo movement.
In 2022, she got the chance to testify about what she says happened to her at Weinsteinâs Los Angeles trial â not because her New York case was ever prosecuted, but because Los Angeles prosecutors brought her in as a âprior bad actsâ witness, in order to provide more evidence to help establish a pattern of the disgraced movie mogulâs prior pattern of alleged behaviour. In that trial, the jury heard Battilana Gutierrezâs recordings with Weinstein.
Soon after the verdicts were handed down in 2022, a juror told this reporter he had been particularly struck by Battilana Gutierrezâs story and would have voted to convict if her experience had been directly connected to a charge against Weinstein.
When the story was recounted to Battilana Gutierrez in CNNâs interview, she became emotional at everything that had passed since her first meeting with Weinstein.
âMy whole wish in 2015 was to be helpful for someone,â Battilana Gutierrez now says, filled with anger and hope. âAll these years that have been passing for me, knowing that if maybe I could have just (found) the right person to release those recordings, I wouldnât lose everything I lost.â
Battilana Gutierrez tells CNN that she hopes the New York case is re-tried this fall, as the DA has announced its intention to do so. And if Weinsteinâs Los Angeles appeal is successful, she says she would testify again.
She says she wonât stop searching for answers until justice has been served.
âWho was the responsible person that made that happen? Because it wasnât just him. I know there [are] more people behind him that have positions of power that he was using as well.â
She adds, âThings that are bad â lies â always come out to light.â
CNNâs Jason Kravarik contributed to this story.