NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein ‘s #MeToo retrial opened Wednesday, giving a new jury a fresh look at familiar rape and sexual assault allegations – plus a newly added claim from a former model.
For the first time, prosecutors publicly identified Kaja Sokola and detailed her account of what unfolded between her and the Oscar-winning movie producer in the early 2000s. He is criminally charged with forcing oral sex on her in 2006, but she also accused him in a civil lawsuit of groping her against her will four years earlier, when she was 16.
Like the two other accusers in the case, Sokola alleges a complex series of encounters and reactions – being sexually assaulted, yet staying in touch, wary of Weinstein but wanting to remain on good terms with a power broker who dangled the possibility of an acting career.
“Why did the defendant hold this level of power and control in the eyes of these three women? … It’s because Harvey Weinstein defined the field,” prosecutor Shannon Lucey told jurors in an opening statement. “He knew how tempting promises of success were. He produced, he choreographed, he therefore directed, their ultimate silence for years.”
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty, and defense lawyer Arthur Aidala countered by portraying the accusers as willing partners in a showbiz quid pro quo.
“The casting couch is not a crime scene,” Aidala told the majority-female jury. He compared prosecutors’ allegations to the preview of a movie that “falls flat on its face.”
A reversal and a retrial
The 73-year-old Weinstein, seated in the wheelchair he now uses because of health problems, didn’t look at Lucey or the jury during her presentation. But Weinstein watched intently as Aidala outlined his defense.
The retrial is happening because New York’s top court last year threw out Weinstein’s conviction, which in 2020 was a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct. The high court found that the previous trial judge allowed prejudicial testimony about allegations separate from the charges.
Weinstein’s retrial is playing out at a different cultural moment than the first. #MeToo, which exploded in 2017 with allegations against Weinstein, has evolved and ebbed.
When Weinstein’s first trial began, chants of “rapist” could be heard from protesters outside. This time, there was none of that.
Sokola’s lawyer, Lindsay Goldbrum, has called Weinstein’s retrial a “signal to other survivors that the system is catching up – and that it’s worth speaking out even when the odds seem insurmountable.”
A teenage model and a movie model
While this jury won’t hear about the allegations that got the first conviction thrown out, the panel is expected to hear from Sokola. After the high court sent the case back for retrial, prosecutors added a criminal sex act charge based on her allegations.
The Polish-born Sokola met Weinstein in 2002 after traveling alone to New York for a modeling trip at age 16, according to prosecutors. She alleges he invited her to lunch to discuss potential acting jobs but detoured to his apartment and demanded she take off her shirt if she wanted to make it in the movie business. Then, Sokola alleges, Weinstein fondled her while making her touch his genitals.
Over the next few years, Sokola stayed in contact with Weinstein, even after telling him off for allegedly groping her in a car around 2004, Lucey told jurors. She said Weinstein arranged for Sokola to be an extra in the 2007 rom-com “The Nanny Diaries,” and she invited him to lunch to impress her visiting sister.
After the lunch, he asked Sokola to check out some scripts in his Manhattan hotel room, ordered her to undress, held her down on a bed, and performed oral sex on her while she tearfully implored him not to do so, Lucey said.
In the weeks after, Sokola was photographed with Weinstein and a third person at an event, and his company wrote her an acting-school recommendation, the prosecutor said. Lucey told jurors that power imbalances often “cause victims to behave in ways that laypersons possibly might not expect.”
After other allegations emerged against Weinstein in 2017, Sokola sued. Prosecutors said she received $3.5 million in compensation.
Two of the original charges remain
Aidala said the accusers were “trying to take advantage of Mr. Weinstein when he was at the top,” then benefited from making allegations amid his downfall.
Outside court, Sokola’s attorney decried Weinstein’s defense as full of “victim blaming” and “rape myths.”
In addition to the charge related to Sokola, Weinstein is being retried on a criminal sex act charge for allegedly forcibly performing oral sex on then-production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006, and a third-degree rape charge for allegedly assaulting then-aspiring actor Jessica Mann in 2013.
Weinstein’s 2020 acquittals on predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape charges still stand.
After the attorneys’ statements, testimony started Wednesday with details of Weinstein’s high-flying workdays around 2006. Witness Stefan Sterns – who was then one of Weinstein’s assistants – expounded on the producer’s reputation as a Hollywood kingmaker, recalled dropping him off to meet Haley in a hotel lobby and remembered seeing her name on a call log.
The Associated Press generally does not identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named, as Haley, Mann and Sokola have done.
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