Defence questions ex-model who accuses Harvey Weinstein of sex assaults
Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers have sought to raise doubts about a former model’s sexual assault allegations against him, noting that she did not mention a key claim for years, even in her own lawsuits.
In Weinstein’s ongoing sex crimes retrial, Kaja Sokola has accused the former film studio boss of repeatedly sexually abusing her when she was a teenage fashion model.
Weinstein is criminally charged with just one of those allegations, a claim of forced oral sex in 2006, which he denies.
Prosecutors added the charge to the landmark #MeToo case last year, after learning they would have to retry the case because of an appeals court ruling.
Ms Sokola sued Weinstein several years ago over another allegation that was beyond the legal time frame for potential criminal charges.
Her lawsuits did not include anything about the claimed 2006 assault.
Weinstein lawyer Mike Cibella pointed that out on Friday as he began questioning Ms Sokola, suggesting she was financially motivated to make allegations against the once-powerful producer.
Ms Sokola, who is embroiled in contentious divorce proceedings, ultimately received about 3.5 million dollars in compensation from her lawsuits and from the Weinstein Company’s bankruptcy.
She batted back Mr Cibella’s suggestion that she sued to gain financial independence from her estranged husband.
“I was working at two jobs, and I was earning more money than he was,” she said.
Ms Sokola is the second of three accusers to give evidence at Weinstein’s rape and sexual assault retrial, and she is the only one who was not part of the one-time Hollywood honcho’s first trial in 2020.
Weinstein is being retried because an appeals court overturned his landmark #MeToo 2020 conviction, saying the judge at the time allowed prejudicial evidence.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denies ever sexually assaulting anyone.
Polish-born Ms Sokola, 39, is a psychotherapist who had a jet-setting modelling career as a teenager.
She gave evidence earlier this week that Weinstein exploited her youthful interest in an acting career to subject her to unwanted sexual advances, starting days after they met in 2002, while she was on a modelling trip to New York.
Ms Sokola told jurors that four years later, when she was 19, Weinstein lured her to a hotel room by saying he had a script for her to see, then pinned her down on a bed and performed oral sex on her as she implored him not to.
She acknowledged that she had not told the whole story in her lawsuits.
“The first encounter, when I was 16 years old, I could partly forgive myself for being in that situation. But then it was very, very hard for me to come to terms with what happened to me in 2006,” she said on Thursday, under a prosecutor’s questioning.
During defence questioning on Friday, Mr Cibella pointed to differences in some details of Ms Sokola’s evidence this week and what she told a grand jury last year, including the month of the alleged 2002 sexual abuse.
The lawyer also noted that Ms Sokola is pursuing various legal pathways to stay in the US long term, and her involvement in the criminal case could help with one of them.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who allege they have been sexually assaulted, but Miriam Haley, Jessica Mann and Ms Sokola have given their permission to be identified.
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