AL HAYAT - Ex-model testifies in NY court that Weinstein assaulted her as a minor

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 Thursday, 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.

Sokola is being heard this week in criminal court for the first time, 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 its timing is outside the statute of limitations.

The previous day Sokola testified that Weinstein also sexually assaulted her in spring 2006, in a Manhattan hotel when she was 19, claims that the former Miramax co-founder denies.

The other two accusers -- onetime production assistant Miriam Haley and then-aspiring actress Jessica Mann -- testified at Weinstein's original trial.

Their two accounts helped galvanize 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.

Sokola said that as an aspiring actress she met Weinstein at a restaurant dinner with other models in 2002 when she was 16.

The film producer who is nearly 40 years her senior called her a few days later to propose a lunch meeting, she testified, but instead they arrived at an apartment and he told her to take off her clothes.

"He forced me to the bathroom. I told him I didn't want to do it, and he said I had to work on my stubbornness," she told the court, testifying that Weinstein touched her and forced her to touch him until he ejaculated.

Sokola "felt stupid, ashamed," she said, as the 73-year-old Weinstein, seated in a wheelchair, looked at the jury or rested his hands on his forehead.

When she told Weinstein she wanted to leave, "he got upset" and said that "I had to listen to him if I wanted to pursue my career in Hollywood," added Sokola, who is now a psychotherapist.

Sokola acknowledged that a year later she began losing weight and suffered from conditions including anorexia and bulimia.

Asked by prosecutor Shannon Lucey why she never reported what happened, she said "I thought it was my fault."

"I was a happy teenager before that," she said. "I had boundaries, but this happened so rapidly without my permission."

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.

N.Khamees--al-Hayat