‘The Casting Couch Is Not a Crime Scene’: Harvey Weinstein’s Lawyers Denounce His Accusers as ‘Manipulating and Conniving’ Women as Producer’s Rape Retrial Begins

The women accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse and rape are “manipulating and conniving” schemers who made themselves the powerful film producer’s “friends with benefits” in order to advance their Hollywood careers, Mr. Weinstein’s defense attorney said in opening arguments in the fallen producer’s retrial on Wednesday. The defense attorney, Arthur Aidala, disagreed with the prosecution’s allegations that his client forced himself on the women. The retrial against the disgraced movie producer will examine the question of when sexual encounters are consensual, and when they are not. Mr. Aidala described the three accusers as “smart, sophisticated” women entered willingly into sexual relations with Mr. Weinstein as a means to an end. The third – and new – accuser, a Polish former model, Kaja Sokola, alleges she was sixteen years old when the movie producer first sexually abused her in 2002. The defense told the jury that Ms. Soloka received over $3 million dollars after settling a civil lawsuit she filed against Mr. Weinstein in 2019. “She was 16 years old when she met the defendant,” a prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Shannon Lucey, told the jury during her opening statement on Wednesday before she unveiled to the public, for the first time, Ms. Sokola’s name.Mr. Weinstein, 73, an Oscar-winning movie producer behind iconic films like “Pulp Fiction” and “The English Patient,” is on trial again, after New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals vacated his 2020 conviction and ordered a new trial last year. In February 2020, a Manhattan jury found Mr. Weinstein was guilty of committing a first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape. He was accused of raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013 and forcibly performing an oral sex on a TV and film production assistant, Miriam Haley, in 2006. The judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison. But four years later, while Mr. Weinstein was incarcerated in upstate New York in rapidly declining health, the higher court threw the guilty verdict out because it found the trial judge had wrongly permitted damaging testimony from women whose allegations had not been part of the case. One of those women, Ms. Sciorra, gave devastating testimony that may have clinched the prosecution’s case.Prosecutors may hope that adding Ms. Sokola could strengthen the case and fill the void left by Ms. Sciorra as they seek to convict Mr. Weinstein, again.In the retrial, which heard opening statements on Wednesday, Mr. Weinstein faces the two previous charges, plus a new charge that he committed a criminal sexual act on Ms. Sokola. Ms. Sokola, who is originally from Poland, came to New York as a teenager to pursue her modeling career with NEXT Model Management, one of the biggest modeling agencies in the world, when she met Mr. Weinstein in 2002. “Alone in New York City, at 16 years old,” Ms. Lucey said and went on to describe how the alleged victim met Mr. Weinstein “within days of arriving” at a restaurant, where a modeling promoter had taken her. “What do they discuss?” Ms. Lucey asked the jury, and quickly answered that the film producer and the young model spoke about acting, and exchanged phone numbers. A few days later, Ms. Sokola agreed to meet Mr. Weinstein again “because they were gonna go to a restaurant and talk about acting,” the prosecutor said. Mr. Weinstein picked Ms. Sokola up in his car. But the car “passed the restaurant,” Ms. Lucey told the jury, and suddenly the 16-year-old found herself in an elevator with the movie mogul, who was fifty at the time, going up to his apartment. The elevator door opened directly into Mr. Weinstein’s luxury apartment. Then, as relayed by Ms. Lucey, the defendant allegedly told the teenager “take off your shirt, you have to be comfortable to take off your clothes… This is what happens in the industry,’” meaning the entertainment industry. He then “dropped his pants and underwear,” Ms. Lucey said. The prosecutor described how Mr. Weinstein grabbed Ms. Sokola’s breasts, how he forced her to touch his private parts, while he moaned loudly. After he was finished, he told her that he had “made” the careers of Penelope Cruz and Gwyneth Paltrow, and that Ms. Sokolad needed “to work on her stubbornness.” Ms. Paltrow and Ms. Cruz have both said they never had intimate relations with Mr. Weinstein. Ms. Paltrow, who rose to stardom in Mr. Weinstein’s movies cooperated with the New York Times for their blockbuster expose on his conduct that destroyed him and catalyzed the #MeToo movement in 2017. After Mr. Weinstein had fallen from power, Ms. Paltrow spoke out publicly about being harrassed by Mr. Weinstein. The Spanish actress, Ms. Cruz called the producer “a complicated person” but said she was never harassed by him. Over 80 women spoke out about Mr. Weinstein’s conduct, including Angelina Jolie and Ashley Judd. After the incident in 2002, Ms. Sokola and Mr. Weinstein stayed in touch. Prosecutors allege that he met with Ms. Sokola for lunch in 2006, when he told her, he needed to go to his apartment quickly to pick up some screenplays. “‘Kaja, come with me, I got some scripts upstairs,’” the prosecutor cited Mr. Weinstein saying, and that’s when the incident occured for which Mr. Weinstein is being charged. “She goes up the elevator with the defendant,” Ms. Lucey went on, “as he opens the door, she gets more nervous… The door shuts, she panics… He says, ‘quickly, take off your clothes, take off your tights.’” Ms. Luicey described how Mr. Weinstein pressed Ms. Sokola down onto his bed, how she landed “on her backside” and “with his body weight, three times Kaja’s” he forcibly performed oral sex on her “while she cried and said ‘please don’t do this’.” Ms. Lucey characterized Mr. Weinstein as a man who does not take ‘no’ for an answer. “Harvey Weinstein,” she said, “held unfettered power for over 30 years” in the entertainment industry. “His rolling headquarters were rolling hotels… countless meetings in hotel rooms with models… He had enormous control over those in TV and film because he decided who was in and who was out… He used those dream opportunities as a weapon.” When the prosecutor detailed the account of another alleged victim, the aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, who said that Mr. Weinstein raped her, Ms. Lucey told the jury that the defendant used to inject himself with erectile dysfunction medication, and that hotel staff would testify during the trial to corroborate that they were warned to watch out for hazards like discarded needles in the bathrooms of the hotel suites where Mr. Weinstein had stayed. Unlike the first trial, which was led by homicide prosecutors, the Manhattan district attorney’s office had now assigned its special victims unit (the fictional version of which starred in the hit NBC series) to handle the case. Ms. Lucey is the deputy chief of the special victims unit. Her boss, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, attended her opening statement and sat in the courtroom in the morning. The defense attorney, Arthur Aidala, shook his hand in a friendly gesture. But during his opening statement, Mr. Aidala told the jury that “the casting couch is not a crime scene,” and that there is a difference “between immorality and illegality.” Mr. Aidala described the relationship between Ms. Mann and his client as a “mutually beneficial relationship,” and that all three women wanted Mr. Weinstein to “make their dreams come true.”Having produced films like “Shakespeare in Love,” which won the Best Picture Oscar, as well as Best Actress for Ms. Paltrow, rocketing her to superstardom, Mr. Aidala argued, the women saw in Mr. Weinstein an opportunity to get roles in prominent films. “They realized very soon… he’s got the key to that room where they all wanna go… None of them have the qualifications to get into that room,” the defense attorney said, explaining that none of the three accusers had studied at established and renowned acting schools such as Julliard. “They were flirtatious… They needed him… And although he doesn’t look like George Clooney or Leonardo DiCaprio, you will hear from their own words that he was charismatic, generous,” Mr. Aidala said, and asked the jury to use their “common sense.” If Ms. Mann did not want to sleep with Mr. Weinstein, as she alleged, why didn’t she leave the hotel room? Mr. Aidala asked. “She is on the bed… He is in the bathroom… According to her, he is using a needle… A crowded hotel… in the middle of the day… Why doesn’t she walk out?… She wants to make it happen… She wants to please him… She is proud that she is with him.” The defense attorney said. “These women are addicted to that fame… They want to be heroes.” Mr. Aidala also told the jury that two of the women sued Mr. Weinstein and received money when the lawsuits were settled. Prosecutors had also briefly mentioned the settlements, perhaps to get ahead of the issue.After opening statements concluded, another defense attorney, Imran Ansari, told the Sun in the courthouse hallway that Ms. Sokola received “about $3.4 million dollars” when she settled her lawsuit against Mr. Weinstein, his brother, Robert Weinstein, the co-founder of their production company Miramax, and The Walt Disney Company and Disney Enterprises, which owned Miramax from 1993 to 2010. In 2019, New York passed a Child Victims Act, which briefly opened a window for underaged victims of sexual violence to sue their abusers even if the statute of limitations had passed. Ms. Sokola filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Weinstein for battery and a cause of action for negligence against his brother, who was long accused of looking the other way at Harvey Weinstein’s transgressions. During the alleged assault, the lawsuit states, “Harvey Weinstein … intimated that Sokola would never work as an actress unless she acquiesced to his demands.” After the lunch break, the prosecution called its first witness, Mr. Weinstein’s personal assistant in 2006 and 2007, who topl;d the jury that he once forwarded a phone call from one of the three accusers, Miriam Haley, to Mr. Weinstein, and also said, he saw her inside a hotel lobby. Witness testimony is expected to continue on Thursday.

‘The Casting Couch Is Not a Crime Scene’: Harvey Weinstein’s Lawyers Denounce His Accusers as ‘Manipulating and Conniving’ Women as Producer’s Rape Retrial Begins

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