Kaja Sokola, a former runway model from Poland who accused disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault in a lawsuit, tearfully described the alleged encounter as the most “horrifying thing I ever experienced” during testimony at Weinstein’s sexual abuse retrial Thursday.
Sokola, 39, who said the assault happened in 2006 when she was 19 years old, told jurors in New York City that Weinstein put his hand inside her underwear and made her touch his genitals at a Manhattan apartment in 2002.
Sokola said she saw Weinstein’s eyes — “black and scary” — staring at her in a bathroom mirror as it happened.
Afterward, she said, he told her to keep quiet about what had happened, touting that he’d made the careers of A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow and Penélope Cruz and that he could help her Hollywood dreams come true.
“I’d never been in a situation like this,” Sokola testified. “I felt stupid and ashamed and like it’s my fault for putting myself in this position.”
Sokola was part of a group of women who filed a class-action lawsuit against Weinstein in 2019. She later filed her own separate lawsuit.
Sokola said she met Weinstein a month after she left Warsaw, Poland, for New York to pursue acting and modeling. She said in her lawsuit that she was introduced to him at an event involving her modeling agency and that he promised to help her become an actor.
The suit alleged that days after Sokola met him, Weinstein picked her up for what was supposed to be a business lunch but instead took her to his Manhattan apartment and demanded sex. When Sokola tried to resist, Weinstein told her that he had “made” the careers of other female actors and warned that she “would never work as an actress unless she acquiesced to his demands,” the complaint said.
Sokola dealt with immense emotional pain and suffering and gave up her acting dreams after the assault, the suit said.
“He told me to take my clothes off, and I didn’t want to do that. I was panicking,” Sokola testified. “And then he said that if I want to be an actress, that’s what actors do in films, so I should get used to it. If a director says you have you take your clothes off, you have to take your clothes off. I was scared. I was scared of him.”
Weinstein’s first trial resulted in a landmark 2020 conviction that was overturned last year after the New York Court of Appeals found the trial judge had improperly allowed testimony based on allegations that were not part of the case. Weinstein, 73, an Oscar-winning producer, has denied all allegations, and his lawyers argued that the sexual encounters with the accusers were all “transactional” and “consensual.”
Sokola’s allegations were not included in Weinstein’s first trial. He was indicted in September on charges related to her claims.
She testified after followed accuser Miriam Haley broke down in tears and stormed out of the courtroom on Friday. Haley, a former “Project Runway” production assistant, was about 30 minutes into testifying when Weinstein’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean began grilling her about what she was wearing when, Haley alleged, Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her at his SoHo apartment in 2006.
At one point during the exchange, Haley cursed, calling Weinstein a “f—ing a–hole.” Haley then requested a break.
