Ex-model testifies in NY court that Weinstein assaulted her at 16
A Polish former model testifying through tears Thursday at the trial of Harvey Weinstein said the disgraced movie mogul sexually assaulted her when she was a minor at age 16.
Kaja Sokola, 39, alleged in a New York criminal court circumstances surrounding an alleged assault in 2002 when she met with Weinstein in a Manhattan apartment.
"I was scared, I never had been in an intimate situation before that," Sokola said in graphic testimony, adding that as he molested her she noticed Weinstein "staring at me in the reflection" of a bathroom mirror.
"I'll never forget this," she said.
Sokola is being heard this week in criminal court for the first time, as one of three accusers in a 2020 New York case alleging Weinstein committed multiple sexual assaults.
Weinstein does not face charges in the alleged 2002 incident with Sokola because it falls outside the statute of limitations.
On Wednesday, Sokola testified that Weinstein also sexually assaulted her in spring 2006, in a Manhattan hotel when she was 19, claims the Miramax co-founder denies.
The two other accusers -- onetime production assistant Miriam Haley and then-aspiring actress Jessica Mann -- testified at Weinstein's original trial.
Their accounts helped galvanize the #MeToo movement nearly a decade ago, but the case is being re-prosecuted as Weinstein faces a new trial in New York.
His 2020 convictions on charges relating to Haley and Mann were overturned last year by the New York Court of Appeals, which ruled that the way witnesses were handled in the original trial was unlawful.
Sokola said she was a 16-year-old aspiring actress when she met Weinstein at a dinner with other models.
The film producer who is nearly 40 years her senior called her a few days later to propose a lunch meeting, she testified, but instead they arrived at an apartment and he told her to take off her clothes.
"He forced me to the bathroom. I told him I didn't want to do it, and he said I had to work on my stubbornness," she told the court, testifying that Weinstein touched her and forced her to touch him until he ejaculated.
Sokola recalled feeling "stupid, ashamed," as the 73-year-old Weinstein, seated in a wheelchair, looked at the jury or rested his hands on his forehead.
When she told Weinstein she wanted to leave, "he got upset" and said "I had to listen to him if I wanted to pursue my career in Hollywood," added Sokola, who is now a psychotherapist.
Sokola acknowledged that a year later she began losing weight and suffered from conditions including anorexia and bulimia.
Asked by prosecutor Shannon Lucey why she never reported what happened, she said "I thought it was my fault."
"I was a happy teenager before that," she said. "I had boundaries, but this happened so rapidly without my permission."
Sokola said she saw Weinstein again at a lunch in 2006, and that he had lured her to a Manhattan hotel room under the pretext of showing her a script.
She said Weinstein pushed her onto a bed and forced her to have sex.
"I told him to stop," he said in testimony set to continue Friday, "but he didn't listen."
Weinstein, the producer of box-office hits "Pulp Fiction" and "Shakespeare in Love," has never acknowledged wrongdoing.
He is serving a 16-year prison sentence after being convicted in California of raping and assaulting a European actress more than a decade ago.
J.Manu--HStB
