But that jury was never told about Kaja Sokola’s claim. Prosecutors have said they still were investigating the allegation when Weinstein, a onetime movie tycoon turned #MeToo pariah, was convicted in February 2020 of charges based on other women’s accusations.
On Wednesday, Sokola began to tell a new jury her story.
Prosecutors have said it happened after Weinstein arranged for Sokola to be an extra in the film The Nanny Diaries and met her visiting older sister, whom she was trying to impress.
“She was proud of knowing him,” her sister, cardiologist Dr Ewa Sokola, told jurors Wednesday.
She said the three of them met in a hotel lobby, chatted about Italian movies and the heavyset Weinstein’s heart health, and then he and the model left the table together.
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 anything about the alleged sexual assault, Ewa Sokola told jurors.
She said she was shocked to learn about the claim over a decade later, when she read about it in a magazine article.
Weinstein’s lawyers will get a chance to question Kaja Sokola in the coming days. In an opening statement last month, defence attorney Arthur Aidala questioned why she waited years to come forward. Prosecutors have argued that accusers were reluctant to speak up because of Weinstein’s wealth and influence.
Prosecutors have said they began investigating Sokola’s claims after her attorneys called on the eve of Weinstein’s first trial. But prosecutors set the inquiry aside 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 lawyers fought unsuccessfully to keep Sokola’s allegation out of the retrial. They accused prosecutors of “smuggling an additional charge into the case” to try to bolster other accusers’ credibility.
One of the others, Miriam Haley, testified last week that Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006. The third accuser in the case, Jessica Mann, is expected to testify later.
The Associated Press generally does not name sexual assault accusers without their permission, which Haley, Mann and Sokola have given.
