Former style testifies in Harvey Weinstein retrial about alleged sexual attack

A former style has informed a New York court docket that disgraced film tycoon Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her when she used to be 16 years outdated, calling it probably the most “horrifying thing I ever experienced.”

Kaja Sokola informed jurors at Weinstein’s retrial that he put his hand within her lingerie and made her contact his genitals at his Manhattan condominium in 2002 when she used to be 16.

Sokola testified that Weinstein had informed her that actors needed to be comfy disrobing within the movie trade and directed her to undress, “so I should get used to it”.

She testified that she took off her shirt and adopted him into a rest room as a result of, she stated, “I was 16 years old, and I was alone with a man for the first time, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I was scared. I was scared of him,” she persevered. “I’d never been in an intimate situation with another person like that.”

Sokola described Weinstein’s eyes as showing “black and scary” right through the alleged attack and that he had afterwards informed her to stay quiet, boasting he’d made Hollywood careers and may just lend a hand her appearing desires come true.

Sokola, the second one accuser to testify on the trial in Manhattan, stated from the stand that 4 years later – in 2006 – the defendant lured her right into a lodge room and forcibly carried out oral intercourse on her.

The Polish style stated Weinstein invited her to peer some film scripts however as an alternative driven her directly to a mattress. “I kept saying, ‘Please don’t, please stop, I don’t want this,’” she informed jurors. “But he didn’t listen.”

Sokola testified that Weinstein, 73, pinned her to the mattress along with his frame and got rid of her sneakers, lingerie and stockings. He then allegedly compelled his mouth directly to her vagina whilst he masturbated.

“My soul was removed from me,” Sokola stated. “It felt like I was dead.” At the tip of the roughly 15-minute come across, Weinstein allegedly stated: “You see, that wasn’t so difficult.”

Sokola’s 2006 alleged come across paperwork a brand new accusation in Weinstein’s legal retrial and the one alleged crime no longer incorporated in his unique trial in 2020 that used to be later thrown out by way of an appeals court docket on grounds that prosecutors had used “Molineux” witnesses, or testimony no longer associated with the crimes as charged. .

Jurors have already heard from former Project Runway manufacturing assistant Miriam Haley, 48, who testified that Weinstein forcibly carried out oral intercourse on her in July 2006. Another accuser, Jessica Mann, could also be set to take the stand in make stronger of accusations that Weinstein raped her in 2013.

The defendant is charged with one depend of attractive in a legal intercourse act in reference to Haley’s allegations and one depend of third-degree rape in Mann’s case. Weinstein has pleaded no longer in charge to all the fees and denies sexually assaulting someone.

Weinstein is already serving a 16-year sentence for a 2022 sexual-assault conviction in California. But that conviction, too, is being appealed at the identical grounds that noticed the primary New York case overturned.

He is being transported to the court docket day-to-day from Bellevue clinic after his protection crew filed an emergency petition ultimate month in search of to switch him from Rikers Island as a result of he’s affected by continual myeloid leukemia, diabetes mellitus and “extensive” coronary artery illness.

Weinstein’s defence crew has thus far referred to as for a mistrial on 3 separate events, each and every denied by way of presiding pass judgement on Curtis Farber. The defendant isn’t charged with first-degree rape and predatory sexual attack – claims that failed in 2020 – as a result of double-jeopardy protections. The case continues.