Poland's former runway model Kaja Sokola accused film tycoon Mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault in a lawsuit, tearfully described the alleged encounter as the horror of my all-time testimony in Thursday's testimony of the retrial of sexual abuse in Weinstein.
Sokola, 39, said the attack happened in 2006 when he told jurors that the former film honcho put his hand in his underwear, causing her to touch his genitals in a Manhattan apartment in 2002.
Sokora said she saw Weinstein's eyes - "Black and Horror" - staring at her when it happened.
Afterwards, she said, he told her to keep silent to tout his career as A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow and Penélope Cruz, who could help her Hollywood dream come true.
"I've never been like this," Sokora testified. "I feel stupid and ashamed, it's the fault of putting myself in this position."
Sokola, part of a group of women, filed a class action lawsuit against Weinstein in 2019. She later filed her own separate lawsuit.
Sokora said she met Weinstein a month after she left Warsaw, Poland, in search of New York for performances and styling. She said in the lawsuit that she was introduced to him during an event involving a modeling agency and that he promised to help her become an actor.
The lawsuit says that after a few days of meeting him, Weinstein picked Sokola for the business lunch item, but he took her to his apartment in Manhattan to ask for sex. When Sokora tried to resist, Weinstein told her that he had “engaged” in the career of other actresses and warned that she “would always be an actress unless she defaulted to asking him.”
The lawsuit says Sokora deals with huge emotional pain and pain and abandons her dream of acting after the attack.
"He told me to take off my clothes, and I didn't want to do that. I was panicked," Sokora testified. "Then he said, if I want to be an actress, that's what the actors do in the movie, so I should get used to it. If the director says you take off your clothes, you have to take off your clothes. I'm scared. I'm scared of him."
Weinstein's first trial led to a landmark 2020 conviction that was overturned last year after a court ruled that the trial judge improperly allowed testimony based on charges that did not fall into the case. The 73-year-old Oscar producer denied all charges, and his lawyer believes that sexual encounters with the plaintiff are both "deal" and "voluntary."
Sokora's allegations were not included in Weinstein's first trial. In September, he was charged on charges related to her claims.
Her testimony comes as plaintiff Miriam Haley stormed out of court on Friday in tears. The former "Project Runway" production assistant, about 30 minutes after testifying, when Weinstein's attorney Jennifer Bonjean started grilling her outfits, she claimed Weinstein had a blowjob on her Soho apartment in 2006.
At some point during the exchange, Haley cursed and called Weinstein "f --- in-a-hole". Hailey please rest later.
Weinstein was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer and faced other health problems, after being convicted in 2022, raped again in Los Angeles and sentenced to 16 years in prison. His lawyers are attracting this belief.