NEW YORK, United States: 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.
Multiple assaults
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.
#MeToo movement
Their accounts helped galvanise 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.
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.
