Defense attorneys in the retrial of the disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein grilled one of the three women accusing him of sexual offenses during a tense cross examination, trying to convince the jury that the alleged victim made up her allegations and sued Mr. Weinstein so she could get enough money to escape her abusive husband. 

“I think you described it as ‘hell on earth,’” defense attorney Michael Cibella asked the witness, a former Polish model, Kaja Sokola on Friday, referring to the relationship with her ex-husband and father of her now six year old son.    

“It was turning worse and worse,” Ms. Sokola replied. “I was working two jobs and I was earning more money than he was.”   

“Your husband filed for a separation?” the defense attorney went on.  

“In late 2020, I escaped from my husband because my husband was physically violent to myself and my child,” the oft-spoken Ms. Sokola answered shyly.

The defense was trying to elicit testimony that would prove that Ms. Sokola filed two civil lawsuits against Mr. Weinstein so she could use the monetary compensation to leave her marriage and to depart her native Poland, where she was living at the time. Earlier in the day, Mr. Cibella asked her if she’d accused her husband of rape–and impregnating her in the process. 

“You alleged your son was born by virtue of your husband raping you, correct?” Mr. Cibella asked.  

“That’s not what I said,” Ms. Sokola answered. The prosecution immediately intervened and called for a sidebar to convene with the judge and the defense attorneys at the bench, where the jury could not hear their conversation.     

Prosecutors for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the charges against Mr. Weinstein, were concerned that the rape shield law, a legal rule which restricts the use of evidence about a complainant’s sexual past in sexual assault trials, had been violated.    

“You are claiming she (Ms. Sokola) filed a claim against Mr Weinstein to enable her to escape the marriage,” the presiding judge, Curtis Faber said later in open court, audible to everyone, adding, “I allowed you some degree of latitude to explore a physical and emotional abusive relationship. I never once gave you permission to explore rape.”      

The defense did not raise the rape issue again but pressed the witness about the lawsuits she pursued against Mr. Weinstein and his affiliated businesses, well after his downfall. She received settlements totalling about $3.5 million. 

Mr. Weinstein is on trial again after his previous conviction was overturned by the highest court in New York State, the Court of Appeals, last year. The court found that the trial judge had wrongly permitted damaging testimony from women whose allegations had not been part of the case. One of those women, “Sopranos” star Annabella Sciorra, gave devastating testimony that may have clinched the prosecution’s case, when she told the jury that Mr. Weinstein allegedly barged uninvited into her apartment, raped her, then proceeded to ruin her career.

In his retrial, Mr. Weinstein faces accusations of third-degree rape, for alledgy raping the former aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013 and two counts of criminal sexual acts for alledgely forcing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant, Miriam Haley and on Ms. Sokola in Manhattan in 2006.   

While the other two accusers already testified during the first trial in 2020, Ms. Sokola’s accusation was only added to the charges last year. Like Ms. Haley, she too alleges that Mr. Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006.  The charges for the alleged assaults on Ms. Haley and Ms. Sokola each carry a maximum sentence of 25 years behind bars. Mr. Weinstein has denied all allegations and insists all sexual encounters were consensual. 

After two days of questioning by the prosecution, the defense finally got its chance to grill Ms. Sokola on Friday, taking aim at the civil lawsuits she filed against Mr. Weinstein and the production company Miramax, which he had founded together with his brother Robert Weinstein in 1979, and which produced iconic films such as “Pulp Fiction,” “The English Patient,” and “Shakespeare in Love,” for which the producer received the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The defense had already alluded to Ms. Sokola’s civil lawsuits during opening arguments, but dug their nails further into the subject during cross-examination. Ms. Sokola received money twice. In early 2022, according to her own testimony, she received $475,000 through a victim compensation fund that had been established for women, who claimed they had been assaulted by Mr. Weinstein during the liquidation of his production company. Mr. Cibella asked how much Ms. Sokola had to pay her attorneys who represented her, and she said about one third, leaving her with approximately $300,000. 

Then, after 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 another 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 Mr. Weinstein’s transgressions, and against The Walt Disney Company, which had owned Miramax during the time of the alleged misconduct. The parties settled in 2023 and Ms. Sokola received $3 million. 

In 2022 Ms. Sokolad moved with her son from Poland to New York, where she currently rents an apartment in Manhattan for $11,000 a month, she testified on Wednesday. The defense insinuated that she used the money from the settlement with Mr. Weinstein to leave Poland and her abusive husband and to pay such an enormous rent bill. 

“It was clear to you that when you came in 2022 you needed to get away from your husband?” Mr. Cibella asked.  

“And I needed to get my son away,” Ms. Sokola added.  

“It was hell on earth,” the attorney said again and repeated the phrase several times.  

“Approximately two months after receiving the $475,000 you came from Poland to New York, is that true?” the defense attorney pressed. He then told the jury, “She’s living in an abusive relationship for four years, and once she gets the money from the Weinstein bankruptcy case, she leaves.”    

“No, I did not receive the money until the end of 2021, or the beginning of 2022,” Ms. Sokola interrupted, rejecting the claim that she used the compensation from the settlement to pay for her rent. “I rented this apartment and working two jobs, earning about $15,000 a month… I could afford the rent.” This was not a sufficient monthly income after taxes to afford the rent alone, but defense attorneys didn’t question Ms. Sokola further on the matter.  

During direct examination, Ms. Sokola had testified about three separate incidents, where Mr. Weinstein allegedly sexually assaulted her, though only one of those incidents is being charged as a crime. As the Sun reported, she alleges that in 2002, when she was only 16 years old, and came to New York to pursue her modeling career, Mr. Weinstein invited her to lunch to discuss her interest in acting. Instead of taking her to a restaurant, she claimed, he took her to his apartment, where he forced her to touch his penis, while he touched her vagina. Then in 2004, she said, she was in a car with him, where he groped her breasts in the backseat. Last but not least, the charged offense allegedly occurred in a hotel room in 2006, while her older sister was waiting in the lobby. Mr. Weinstein allegedly lured her up to the hotel room to show her movie scripts, and then pinned her to the bed, ripped off her undergarments and forcibly performed  oral sex on her. 

The defense questioned why Ms. Sokola kept interacting with Mr. Weinstein if she felt that she had been sexually assaulted by him. Ms. Sokola insisted that she never consented to any sexual interaction and that she still hoped Mr. Weinstein would help her with her acting career. She teared up when she told the jury that Mr. Weinstein effectively ruined her acting aspirations.

“My heart was broken,” Ms. Sokola testified. “I believed I could do it. I met a person who was on top of the world at the time… I didn’t want any shortcuts from Mr. Weinstein. If he said that I had talents,” she said she hoped he would prove it “by introducing me to casting agents. It was not a transactional relationship.”  

In 2006, Mr. Weinstein got her a role as an extra in the movie “The Nanny Diaries,” which starred Scarlett Johannson, but her scene ended up being cut from the film. 

“Harvey Weinstein got you on that set as an extra, correct?’ The defense attorney asked, and the witness confirmed. Then Mr. Cibella wanted to know if she had been disappointed that she had not gotten a bigger role, which she also confirmed. “You were even more disappointed that your scene where you were an extra was cut?” Mr. Cibella pressed.  

“Yes,” Ms. Sokola said, lowering her head.  

“You felt that people on set thought you were getting special treatment because of your relationship with Mr. Weinstein?” Mr. Cibella went on, seemingly provoking the witness. 

“Look, I wanted honesty from Mr. Weinstein and I never got that,” Ms. Sokolad answered loudly, tearing up as she spoke. “He broke my dreams and my trust in believing in myself… The only thing I wanted from Mr. Weinstein,” she added, was the confirmation that she had “the potential to be an actress.”  

The defense then pointed out that Ms. Sokola never enrolled in an acting school, even though a producer from Mr. Weinstein’s production company had written her a recommendation for a renowned school in New York called The Lee Strasberg Theater & Film Institute, which was founded by the acting coach Lee Strasberg, who taught stars like Marilyn Monroe (though many people believe Ms. Monroe would have been much better off without the Strasberg technique and the coach’s hawkish supervision). 

Ms. Sokola told the defense, she could not afford the school at the time, a claim Mr. Cibella quickly refuted by reminding the jury that Ms. Sokola was a working model who was traveling for photo shoots all over the world and frequently walked the catwalks during different fashion weeks. But Ms. Sokola insisted she didn’t have enough money to study acting in New York. 

“It was clear at this point you were trying to get out of modeling and move into acting?” Mr. Cibella then asked.  

“I never really liked modeling. It was never my intention to stay in the fashion business. But writing and acting were always my dreams,” she replied.    

“You believe that you had consensual sex with Mr. Weinstein… to get your foot into the door and become a movie star?” Mr. Cibella asked shortly before the trial day ended on Friday.  

“I never had a consensual sexual relation with Mr. Weinstein neither when I was 16 nor when I was 19,” the witness said.  

“But you felt like Mr. Weinstein hadn’t done enough for you in the movies?” Mr. Cibella clarified.  

“That’s how I felt, yes,” Ms. Sokola admitted.      

It’s questionable if the jury will believe that Mr. Weinstein’s alleged treatment led her to drop her acting dreams. When Ms. Sokola returned to Poland after taking a year off after high school to model, she studied psychology instead of acting. 

A spokesperson for Mr. Weinstein, Juda Engelmayer, told the Sun in a statement on Friday evening, “The witness’ testimony today was less about assault and more about unmet expectations. She expressed regret that Harvey Weinstein didn’t help her career—but regret is not rape. They met once, had a single encounter, and yet she expected him to open doors for her in Hollywood. He cast her in a film and gave her a school recommendation. What more was he supposed to do—and why did she believe he owed her anything at all? Her disappointment doesn’t turn a consensual moment into a crime.” 

An attorney for Ms. Sokola, Lindsay Goldbrum, told reporters outside the courthouse, “The defense used the typical victim blaming playbook in that they were trying to break her and shake her and use irrelevant personal aspects of her life that are incredibly traumatic and painful to try and jar her. But instead, in the face of that, she remained steadfast, she remained powerful, and she is a hero to all of the survivors of sexual abuse that… have and have not felt the courage to step forward.” 

Ms. Goldbrum added that she believes “in coming forward and being able to withstand what she withstood today, which was incredibly painful and dramatic,” her client sent “a message to everybody that there are people that will stand up and still fight against sexual abusers everywhere.”  

The trial and Ms. Sokola’s cross-examination will resume on Tuesday.