‘He Was Way, Way Larger Than Me’: Weeping Model Describes How Obese Harvey Weinstein Nearly Crushed Her in Alleged Hotel Room Rape

For a second time during the rape retrial of the disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, a woman accusing him of sexual assault broke down on the witness stand. Kaja Sokola, who in her teenage years was an up-and-coming model, cried as she told the jury about the first time she was alone with Mr. Weinstein, in 2002, when she was 16 years old. “I was scared. I was scared of him,” Ms. Sokola, 39, who is originally from Poland, testified at Manhattan criminal court on Thursday morning, as she remembered the day she says that the defendant, Mr. Weinstein, took her back to his apartment. The the film mogul then was 50. “I had never been in an intimate situation with another person like that,” Ms. Sokola told the jury. “Before that I had a high school boyfriend and we would kiss and hold hands. And my father was always a role model for me and I never had fear of men like that. So I thought it was safe.” But the movie tycoon, who had produced iconic films like “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love,” for which he won the Best Picture Academy Award, allegedly told the teenager to remove her shirt and justified his request by saying that any aspiring actress needed to learn to listen and to do what she was told. “He told me to take my clothes off and I didn’t want to do that. I was panicking and then he said that if I want to be an actress, that’s what actresses do in films so I should at least do it.” She remembered him saying, “If a director says you gotta take your clothes off, you gotta take your clothes off.” The teenager had traveled to New York from Poland in July 2002, alone, to pursue her modeling career and spend the summer months in the city, where her agency, Next Management, one of the biggest modeling agencies in the world at that time, was based. At a modeling event, a promoter had introduced her to Mr. Weinstein, who asked for her number. “I gave him my number,” Ms. Sokola testified. “He said he would call me about acting.” She added that she felt “special” that a renowned producer such as Mr. Weinstein had shown interest in her. “He contacted me a few days later and asked to arrange a lunch meeting. He said his driver and he would pick me up, and we would have lunch to talk about my acting,” the former model said. She agreed to the meeting, adding that her mother and her sister had never “really supported” her dreams to become an actress, and she was excited that “that a film producer thought I had potential.” But instead of taking the teenager to a restaurant, Ms. Sokola told the jury that the film mogul took her to his apartment in Soho, an exclusive neighborhood in downtown Manhattan favored by celebrities. She followed him into the elevator and up to his apartment, where she said he immediately led her to his bedroom, and asked her to take off her shirt. “I felt stupid and I felt ashamed that I was in that position. And I berated myself that I wanted to be an actress,” she said. As Ms. Sokola began to detail the encounter, she started to cry. Meanwhile, Mr. Weinstein was sitting in his wheelchair at the defense table, watching her, his hand on his forehead. “Then I took my top off and we went to the bathroom. I remember that his pants were down to his knee. s… His underwear was down. … He put a hand in my vagina under my underwear and he took my hand and put it on his penis,” Ms. Sokolad said, sobbing. “It was the most horrifying thing I have ever experienced until that time,” she continued, “I remember I looked in the mirror. … And I saw him, his eyes staring at me in the mirror reflection. … They were black and scary. I will never forget this.” She took a tissue and dried her eyes. Then she went on to describe the alleged incident. “Then he was using his hand to masterbute and then he put his hand on my breast and then he ejaculated on the floor,” Ms. Sokola testified, as the defendant sat in the courtroom and listened. “I walked back to the bedroom … I put my blouse on … I said to him that I want to leave and I want to get out of there, and I raised my voice and he got upset and then he said that I have to work on my stubbornness. He said he made the careers of Penelope Cruz and Gwyneth Paltrow and that I have to listen to him if I want to pursue this career,” she said. She added that the film producer instructed her “that this has to stay between us.” At the time of the alleged encounter, the age of consent in New York was 17, likely making Ms. Sokola underage at the time, if her recollection lines up with her birthday. Ms. Paltrow and Ms. Cruz have both said they never had intimate relations with Mr. Weinstein. However, Ms. Paltrow, who rose to stardom in Mr. Weinstein’s movies, cooperated with the New York Times for its blockbuster expose on his alleged conduct that destroyed him and catalyzed the #MeToo movement in 2017. The book, “She Said,” by two New York Times journalists, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who wrote the expose, describe a clandestine meeting between the reporters and Ms. Paltrow at her Hamptons estate. But it was the actress Ashley Judd, not Ms. Paltrow, who went on the record to the Times, for its initial story, about how Mr. Weinstein abused her. After Mr. Weinstein had fallen from power, Ms. Paltrow spoke out publicly about being harassed by him. The Spanish actress, Ms. Cruz, called the producer “a complicated person” but said she was never harassed by him. More than 80 women eventually spoke out about Mr. Weinstein’s decades of alleged sexual harassment and assaults, including actress Angelina Jolie.When Mr. Weinstein in 2020 was convicted on two counts, rape in the third degree and criminal sexual act in the first degree, the conviction was seen as a major milestone victory for the #MetToo movement. But in 2024, New York’s highest court, the court of appeals, vacated the guilty verdict and ordered a new trial, arguing that damaging testimony by women had been permitted during the trial, even though they were not part of the charges in the indictment. The gripping testimony from these women, including “Sopranos” star Annabella Sciorra, may have prejudiced the jury, the court ruled.Respecting that prior ruling and at the request of the defense attorneys, the presiding judge of the retrial, Curtis Faber, told the jury on Thursday to remember that the allegation described against Mr. Weinstein by the witness, the alleged incident from 2002, is not part of the charges, and was only being offered to the jury “as evidence to provide background information about the relationship between the parties.” The judge gave the jury another such instruction, after Ms. Sokola had testified that she saw Mr. Weinstein again in 2004 when, during a brief car ride, she said he groped her breasts. The accusation actually charged in the case, a criminal sexual act, which is part of the indictment and carries a maximum sentence of 25 years behind bars, allegedly occurred in 2006, shortly before Ms. Sokola’s 19th birthday. Ms. Sokola had stayed in touch with Mr. Weinstein, as she traveled the world for modeling while also managing to finish high school in Poland. She told the jury she was afraid of the powerful film mogul but also still hoped he could help her with her acting career. In 2006 she was back in New York for a few months and through Mr. Weinstein’s connections had gotten a part as an extra in the movie “The Nanny Diaries,” which starred Scarlett Johansson.Then, in April of that year, her older sister, Ewa Sokola, who testified at the retrial on Wednesday, as the Sun reported, came to visit her younger sibling in New York. Ms. Sokola wanted to introduce her to Mr. Weinstein. She explained that she wanted to impress her older sister, who was a cardiologist and whom she admired. On Wednesday, Ms. Sokola had told the jury, “My sister was the smart one, so I tried to keep it up.” “I wanted to show her that he [Mr. Weinstein] is a big producer. … A real person,” Ms. Sokola testified on Thursday. “That’s how I was hoping to get some validation from my family to still pursue this dream.” She was referring to her dream to become an actress. “At one point my mom stopped talking to me. She did not want me to go to acting school. … In my head he [Mr. Weinstein] was this anchor, who may believe in me,” she said. She went on to tell the jury that her sister “had no idea about the film industry. She never really cared about that.” Ms. Sokola hoped, she said, that her sister could be impressed by Mr. Weinstein and the many movies he had made, and that the fact that he was interested in her could prove to her family that her dreams were not a mere fantasy, and that through her sister’s help her mother “would not treat me like a joke.”The two sisters met the film producer at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, a trendy property in downtown Manhattan that was Mr. Weinstein’s stomping ground. “It was around brunch, lunch time … I’d say earlier in the day,” the former model recalled. “We met at the restaurant that was located at the ground level.” Ms. Sokola remembered sitting at the table, and her sister, the cardiologist, making an informed comment about Mr. Weinstein’s weight and that his weight “might cause serious health issues.” The producer, she further remembered, was “not happy to hear that.” Then her sister made the situation even worse when she told Mr. Weinstein she believed “great actresses” who came to work in the United States from Europe “become bad,” thus insinuating that the American film industry was not as good as the European one. “And he became even more upset,” Ms. Sokola testified, referring to Mr. Weinstein. Still, she said that during the conversation, she felt “confident” and “happy” that her sister was with her. Then Mr. Weinstein asked Ms. Sokola to accompany him to look at some movie scripts that he had in his hotel suite, she testified, and she followed upstairs, leaving her sister waiting at the restaurant. “The bed was on the left side of the entrance,” she remembered, adding that the producer and her had no conversation, and that he did not show her any movie scripts. Instead he allegedly immediately pushed her onto the bed, pulled off her undergarments, and forcibly performed oral sex on her. “I was standing in a position where the bed was behind me. … I remember that Harvey Weinstein put his hand on my shoulder and he pushed me onto the bed. … I was trying to resist and to not fall down on the bed but he pushed me farther to a lying position,” Ms. Sokola said. She spoke slowly and needed a short break to compose herself, visibly struggling to recall the story. “After that he took off my shoes, he ripped off my stockings and my underwear,” she said, taking a sip of water and telling the prosecutor, “I am sorry. It’s really hard.” The judge instructed the prosecutor, an assistant district attorney, Shannon Lucey, to ask a question, and she asked which shoulder Mr. Weinstein had pushed down. The witnesses remembered it was her right shoulder and she remembered asking the defendant, as he undressed her, to stop. “I kept saying, ‘Please don’t, please stop, I don’t want this,’” Ms. Sokola testified. “But he didn’t listen. He laid down with his whole body. … He was way, way larger than me. He forced me, he pinned me, he pushed me … I couldn’t move under him. I wanted to move. I wanted to get out, but I couldn’t. His left hand was on the area of my stomach, my hip, and I could feel his right hand was kind of touching my left thigh. … My soul was removed from me.” The prosecutor led the witness to tell painstaking details of this alleged encounter, including that Mr. Weinstein allegedly masturbated as he forced his mouth between the witness’s legs. “He forced himself on my vagina and he raped me. … His whole upper body was pinning me to the bed … I didn’t kick and I didn’t scream. There was no physical possibility to get out. He was too heavy, the force was too strong.” Finally, Ms. Sokola said, the defendant ejaculated and got dressed. “You see, that wasn’t so difficult,’” Ms. Sokolas testified that Mr. Weinstein told her as they both put their clothes back on. Then she said she followed him to the elevator and once they arrived back in the hotel lobby, he left, and she returned to her older sister, who had been waiting downstairs. “I did not tell my sister,” she testified. “We just had a meeting where she met the man I told her I trusted who would help me with my career. … I really cared about my sister’s opinion … I was putting in every effort to make her not notice that anything was off.” Ms. Sokola is expected to face cross-examination by Mr. Weinstein’s defense team on Friday. She admitted during her direct examination that at the time of the alleged assault, she was suffering from a series of health issues that can afflict models: eating disorders, depression, and an alcohol abuse disorder. The defense could possibly use these admissions against her. Ms. Sokola, who didn’t make her accusations until later than many of the women, also sued Mr. Weinstein and received a settlement of more than $3 million from the producer, which the defense will likely raise in cross-examination.Mr. Weinstein has denied all the charges, insisting that all sexual encounters were consensual and that his accusers sought his attention, and granted him sexual favors, because they were looking to be cast in movies he was producing at the time.

‘He Was Way, Way Larger Than Me’: Weeping Model Describes How Obese Harvey Weinstein Nearly Crushed Her in Alleged Hotel Room Rape

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