The first of three women who have accused a disgraced film producer, Harvey Weinstein, of sexual offenses testified during his retrial at Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday. Miriam Haley spent her time telling the jury how she met Mr. Weinstein. She is expected to talk about the sexual abuse and then face an excruciating cross-examination on Wednesday. 

“‘I heard about your reputation with women,’” Miriam Haley said to Mr. Weinstein in 2006, according to her own testimony, after the film mogul tried to convince her to fly to Paris with him on a private plane and stay at the Ritz.

“I just kept saying, ‘Thank you, but no thanks.’ … He wasn’t really happy with that answer,” Ms. Haley testified on Tuesday, referring to Mr. Weinstein. “He was being insistent and overwhelming … I was trying to figure out a way to shut it down. … So ultimately I said I am not coming and I heard about your reputation with women. …  He looked surprised that I said that. … He seemed offended.”   

Ms. Haley, who accuses Mr. Weinstein, of forcibly performing oral sex on her at his New York City apartment later that year, told the jury that she first met the Oscar-winning movie producer, who produced iconic films like “Pulp Fiction” and “The English Patient,” at an afterparty for the film premiere of “The Aviator” at London in 2004. 

“The Aviator,” which is based on the life of a reclusive billionaire and aviation tycoon, Howard Hughes, starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett, and was directed by Martin Scorsese. The jury saw a photograph of the actors and the director standing next to Mr. Weinstein, who had produced the movie. 

Ms. Haley, a Swedish TV and movie production assistant who was living at London at the time, had been invited to the premiere by the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Monty Python” producer, Michael White, for whom she was working at the time. Ms. Haley testified that Mr. White, who died in 2016, introduced her to Mr. Weinstein. 

“Weinstein made a joke that he was gonna name his company after me,” Ms. Haley said, explaining that she had the same first name as Mr. Weinstein’s mother, Miriam. When Mr. Weinstein, together with his brother, founded the production company Miramax in 1979, they combined the first names of their parents, Miriam and Max, for the company’s name. 

In 2005, Ms. Haley approached Mr. Weinstein, and asked him for work. Her boss, White, had fallen ill and had “made bad investments” and closed his office. Ms. Haley said she couldn’t afford her London apartment anymore, and was looking “for a change of scenery.”    

She told the jury that she had run into Mr. Weinstein again at the Cannes Film Festival, in the south of France, where Mr. Weinstein, then at the height of his powers, was a fixture. She asked him if he had any work for her, and he suggested that she come and see him the next day at the Majestic hotel, where he was staying.  

“I was excited to come and meet with him.” Ms. Haley testified.  “He had a lot of productions going. … I thought he may have a project that I could work on.” 

According to Ms. Haley’s testimony, a young, female assistant took her to Mr. Weinstein’s hotel room. “The assistant basically escorted me inside the room, and then the assistant left. … I remember that Harvey Weinstein commented on my legs which was odd because I have short legs but maybe because I was wearing platform shoes they seemed longer.”  

While Ms. Haley was hoping to discuss work options, Mr. Weinstein, she testified, “quickly started talking about other things like asking me whether I could give him a massage. … I was taken aback by the question. … I don’t really give massages.” 

Ms. Haley managed to get out of the room without having any physical contact with Mr. Weinstein, but she testified that she felt “humiliated.” 

“I felt … a kind of sinking feeling … like he wasn’t taking me seriously — at all,” the witness said, while the defendant, Mr. Weinstein, was sitting in his wheelchair at the defense table.   

Regardless of the uncomfortable incident at Cannes, Ms. Haley contacted the woman, whose phone number Mr. Weinstein had given her, who was working on the TV Show “Project Runway,” which he was producing and which was being recorded at New York. Ms. Haley succeeded in getting a production assistant job on the show. 

Born in Finland and raised in Sweden, the young assistant, who was then in her mid-20s, did not have a visa to work at New York, having entered the country on a tourist visa. Mr. Weinstein knew this, and offered his help in getting her a work visa. 

Ms. Haley testified that she did not see Mr. Weinstein while she was assisting on his TV show, but that she saw him one day at the office of his production company, and he offered to drive her to the apartment in the East Village, where she was staying. The driver, and an assistant of Mr. Weinstein’s, she testified, were also in the car. 

After dropping her off at her apartment, Mr. Weinstein, she said, returned unexpectedly to her apartment that same day and insisted that she accompany him on a trip to Paris, which she refused. 

Ms. Haley’s testimony on Tuesday did not get to the moment where he allegedly forced oral sex on her. She is expected to speak about the incident on Wednesday, as well as submit to cross-examination by the defense attorneys, who on Tuesday constantly interrupted her testimony with objections.   

This is the second time that Ms. Haley is on the witness stand at Manhattan criminal court. The first time she spoke out against the film mogul was in 2020, when she told another jury about the alleged criminal sexual act. That jury found Mr. Weinstein guilty of the charge and the judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison. He was also convicted of a third-degree rape charge against another women, a former aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, which added another three years to his sentence. 

The convictions were considered milestones of the #MeToo Movement, which was galvanized by an article published by the New York Times in 2017 that detailed decades of allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Weinstein. The article began with a first-hand, on-the-record account by an A-list actress, Ashley Judd, about how, when she was a young woman, Mr. Weinstein invited her up to his hotel room at the Peninsula in Beverly Hills and asked her to give him a massage. 

In the ensuing weeks, more than 80 women eventually came forward and spoke publicly about Mr. Weinstein’s alleged predatory behavior, including prominent actresses like Gweneth Paltrow and Angelia Jolie. 

Yet in 2024, New York’s highest court, the court of appeals, vacated the guilty verdict against Mr. Weinstein and ordered a new trial. The higher court had found that damaging testimony by several witnesses, who were not part of the charges, had wrongly been admitted at trial. 

One of these uncharged alleged crime witnesses, Lauren Young, was in attendance, listening to Ms. Haley’s testimony on Tuesday. Her attorney, Gloria Allred, who also defended Ms. Haley in a civil suit she brought against Mr. Weinstein along with eight other women — which was settled in 2020 for nearly $19 million — explained to the Sun that there were several reasons why prosecutors had not added the other #MeToo witnesses to the charges against Mr. Weinstein in 2020. 

“For example, if the assault didn’t happen in New York then you can’t file the charge here, or maybe it was too long ago. There were various reasons,” Ms. Allred said outside the courthouse on Tuesday afternoon.

Ms. Young was 22 years old when she first met Mr. Weinstein, she testified at the trial in 2020, at an event during the Oscar season in February 2012. The following year, she was supposed to discuss a script with him, which she was writing at a hotel. Instead she testified that she ended up being trapped inside a bathroom, CNN reported, with Mr. Weinstein blocking the door so she couldn’t leave. He then, according to her testimony, masturbated while he touched her dress.          

On Tuesday, Ms. Young told the Sun that seeing Mr. Weinstein in the courtroom still makes her uncomfortable. 

“It’s very triggering seeing someone that did me a lot of harm, and harmed a lot of other people. It’s still very uncomfortable,” Ms. Young said. 

Mr. Weinstein has denied assaulting anyone and insists that any sexual encounter was consensual. 

The trial will resume on Wednesday and is expected to last about six weeks.