Ex-model Kaja Sokola takes the stand in Harvey…
Days into Harvey Weinstein’s first sexual assault trial in 2020, prosecutors privately spoke for the first time with a former model who alleged that he had pressured oral intercourse on her.
But that jury was never advised about Kaja Sokola’s declare.
Prosecutors have mentioned they still have been investigating the allegation when Weinstein, a onetime film tycoon-turned- #MeToo pariah, was convicted in February 2020 of prices primarily based on different girls’s accusations.
Harvey Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to prices against him.
On Wednesday, Sokola started to inform a new jury her story.
Sokola didn’t look at Weinstein as she walked previous him and onto the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom where he’s on trial again.
An appeals court overturned his 2020 rape and sexual assault conviction, sending those prices back for retrial, and prosecutors subsequently added one other sexual assault charge primarily based on Sokola’s allegations.
As she started testifying about her life before the alleged 2006 assault, Weinstein regarded toward her, with his proper hand across his mouth.
Weinstein, 73, has pleaded not guilty to all the prices.
His attorneys contend that his accusers consented to sexual encounters with him in hopes of getting film and TV alternatives, and the protection has emphasised that the girls stayed in contact with him for a while after the alleged assaults.
The girls, meanwhile, say the Oscar-winning producer used the prospect of show business work to prey on them.
The Polish-born Sokola, 39, is a psychotherapist and creator and mentioned she not too long ago launched a movie manufacturing company.
Kaja Sokola is a former model who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexually assaulting her. Getty Images for AFI
She sued Weinstein after industry whispers about his habits toward girls turned a refrain of public accusations in 2017, fueling the #MeToo motion against sexual misconduct.
Prosecutors have mentioned Sokola finally obtained $3.5 million in compensation.
Sokola testified that she was never in modeling — but somewhat in appearing and writing — but her mom and sister determined she ought to enter a Polish modeling contest at age 14.
She gained a contract with a modeling company and was soon juggling center college with photograph shoots.
The next two years “were a very fast growing-up lesson,” she mentioned.
Dr. Ewa Sokola is Kaja Sokola’s sister. AP
By 2002, she was 16 and in New York to make the modeling rounds, without any of relations on hand.
Sokola, who’s anticipated to proceed testifying Thursday, hasn’t been requested yet about Weinstein.
Prosecutors have mentioned she was launched to him while on that 2002 modeling journey to New York.
In her lawsuits, Sokola mentioned that shortly after she met Weinstein, he invited her to lunch to talk about her profession but then sexually assaulted her.
The lawsuits alleged he sexually harassed and emotionally abused her for years afterward.
The legal charge stems from one occasion when Sokola maintains that Weinstein forcibly carried out oral intercourse on her in a Manhattan lodge in May 2006.
Prosecutors have mentioned it occurred after Weinstein organized for Sokola to be an additional in the movie “The Nanny Diaries” and met her visiting older sister, whom she was making an attempt to impress.
“She was proud of knowing him,” her sister, heart specialist Dr. Ewa Sokola, advised jurors Wednesday.
She mentioned the three of them met in a lodge foyer, chatted about Italian motion pictures and the heavyset Weinstein’s coronary heart health, and then he and the model left the desk collectively.
Kaja Sokola was tense when she returned about a half-hour later — “like somebody waiting for the result of an exam” or the Oscars — but didn’t say something about the alleged sexual assault, Dr. Sokola advised jurors.
She mentioned she was shocked to be taught about the declare over a decade later, when she learn about it in a magazine article.
Weinstein’s attorneys keep that he had consensual encounters with girls. Steven Hirsch
Weinstein’s attorneys will get a probability to query Kaja Sokola in the coming days.
In an opening assertion final month, protection attorney Arthur Aidala questioned why she waited years to come ahead.
Prosecutors have argued that accusers have been reluctant to communicate up because of Weinstein’s wealth and affect.
Prosecutors have mentioned they started investigating Sokola’s claims after her attorneys referred to as on the eve of Weinstein’s first trial.
But prosecutors set the inquiry apart after he was convicted and the coronavirus pandemic loomed.
They revived the Sokola investigation after New York’s highest court reversed Weinstein’s conviction.
Weinstein’s attorneys fought unsuccessfully to keep Sokola’s allegation out of the retrial.
They accused prosecutors of “smuggling an additional charge into the case” to strive to bolster different accusers’ credibility.
One of the others, Miriam Haley, testified final week that Weinstein pressured oral intercourse on her in 2006.
The third accuser in the case, Jessica Mann, is predicted to testify later.
The Associated Press usually doesn’t title sexual assault accusers without their permission, which Haley, Mann and Sokola have given.
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