NEW YORK – Robert De Niro’s former top govt assistant mentioned she found it “creepy” when the actor insisted she scratch his again, an instance of behavior she found controlling and abusive prior to she surrender her activity in 2019, she testified Friday at a New York civil trial.
In a complete day of testimony, Graham Chase Robinson was emotional a number of occasions as she claimed that the trauma she persevered prior to she surrender running for De Niro in 2019 after 11 years has left her jobless and depressed.
“I was having an emotional and mental breakdown. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping. Couldn’t run. I was overwhelmed,” she instructed jurors in Manhattan federal court docket. “I felt like I hit rock bottom.”
She mentioned she suffers from anxiousness and despair and hasn’t labored in 4 years in spite of making use of for 638 jobs.
“I don’t have a social life,” she mentioned. “I’m so humiliated and embarrassed and feel so judged. I feel so damaged in a way. … I lost my life. Lost my career. Lost my financial independence. I lost everything.”
Robinson, 41, is looking for $12 million in damages from De Niro, 80, for gender discrimination and retaliation. De Niro has requested a jury to award him $6 million on breach of loyalty and fiduciary responsibility grounds.
Robinson mentioned the back-scratching had happened a number of occasions through the years till she introduced a gentle protest as soon as, suggesting to De Niro that there was once a tool he may just use as an alternative.
“I like the way that you do it,” she mentioned De Niro instructed her.
She described the remark as “creepy” and “disgusting.”
During testimony earlier in the week, De Niro scoffed on the back-scratching declare and different assertions, announcing he at all times handled Robinson with appreciate and not with “disrespect or lewdness.”
He additionally claimed he by no means yelled at her just before he did in court, shouting: “Shame on you, Chase Robinson!” He temporarily apologized for the outburst.
Robinson mentioned a part of her tasks that required her to be to be had across the clock integrated serving to De Niro navigate an advanced love existence that at one level concerned a spouse, an ex-girlfriend and a brand new female friend that he did not need the arena to but find out about.
Robinson portrayed De Niro in her testimony as sexist with his language towards feminine staff and discriminatory in how he paid them.
Her testimony was once undercut on cross-examination when a attorney for De Niro faced her with the truth that the actor’s highest-paid worker was once a girl and {that a} guy who labored for considered one of De Niro’s firms, Canal Productions, similar to Robinson, was once paid lower than a 3rd of the $300,000 wage she secured prior to she surrender.
Robinson testified about a number of circumstances when she claimed De Niro, who received popularity and two Oscars during the last 5 many years in movies like “Raging Bull,” “The Deer Hunter” and the brand new Martin Scorsese movie “Killers of the Flower Moon,” erupted angrily at her, once in a while the use of profanity.
Around Christmas of 2017, Robinson mentioned, an drunk De Niro known as her indignant one night as a result of he could not to find some gifts that have been despatched to him from the administrative center for the vacation.
“He was screaming about not being able to find some of the presents,” Robinson mentioned. “He was cursing left and right.”
He then known as her an expletive and hung up, she mentioned.
She mentioned she found it “incredibly hurtful … especially when you’re just trying to do your job.”