The jurors of the new rape trial of Harvey Weinstein in New York heard this morning a testimony corroborating a sexual assault of 2006 by the Oscar -winning producer. The courtroom also received a sample from the accused Hobnobbing with the very rich and very influential at the height of his power.
A friend of the accuser of Weinstein, Miriam Haley, said Thursday that a “shaken” Haley told him in 2006 that the producer then powerful “put his mouth on his vagina without his consent”.
Elizabeth ENTIN, an author and podcaster based in New York who, in 2006, shared an apartment in the city with Haley, said that one evening during this summer, Haley stood at the door of the ENTIN Chamber, seeming “uncomfortable”, with her obvious look, as she described what had happened between her and Weinstein.
The famous film and television portfolio of the producer included Project trackA reality TV show of the MTV fashion industry where Haley worked as a production assistant. Weinstein is accused of having committed a sexual act in the first degree against Haley in his loft apartment in downtown Manhattan in July 2006.
Manhattan’s deputy prosecutor Shannon Lucey said on Wednesday that a “nearly 300 pounds” Weinstein had supported Haley of 115 pounds in an apartment room that night, pushed her to a bed, placed all his body weight on Haley and forced his mouth to his vagina. Mimi oral rape, “said the accusation in the opening arguments.
ENTIN, on the second day of the testimony of the new trial of Weinstein, 72, for rape and sexual assault, said that she had responded to Haley’s revelation saying: “It looks like rape. I think you should call a lawyer.”
Haley did not adopt the idea and they did not discuss the incident or how to manage it more, said Entin. But from that day, Haley’s behavior changed, and the spontaneous and fun friend, Entin, had become sadder and more moderate during their remaining months as roommates at East Village de New York, said Entin.
“She spent much more time in her room,” said Entin. “She seemed to appreciate things much less.”
Having proclaimed his innocence of all accusations and insisting that relations were all “friends with advantages”, as a defense lawyer said yesterday, Weinstein could spend the rest of his life in state prison if he was found guilty in this trial.
Before I was part of Thursday, the second day of testimony to the new Weinstein trial opened with a poignant example of a show and story. We have shown that jurors have shown a series pulp Fiction Producer at its peak to define the issues. The Democratic Democratic Grand Time Weinstein was shown next to Hillary Clinton in a Find Neverland First in film in 2004, shaking her hand with Queen Elizabeth at the Buckingham Palace in 2014, and chatting with Jennifer Lawrence at the 2013 Ball Governors in Hollywood.
In fact, the panel of Sept-femmes-five years has seen more than two dozen images, Weinstein and other Gala events, passers-by on a large flat screen inside the courtroom of judge Curtis Farber. In the collection, two photos of Kaja Sokola, who Weinstein is accused of sexual assault in a Manhattan hotel room in 2006.
The first appropriate day of the new trial, after a full jury was seated on April 22, Weinstein passed the opening arguments on Wednesday sitting between his lawyers with his wandering gaze between the judge and the jury box.
The only witness to testify on April 24 was a former Weinstein assistant, Stefan Sterns, who remembered having seen one of the accusers of Weinstein, Miriam Haley, in a hall of the New York Hotel in 2006 and another opportunity to make a Haley call to his boss.
Stern’s testimony gave the jurors an overview of Weinstein at the top of his powers.
The former assistant said that he had traveled with the producer in 2006-2007 on private charter flights to Film Festivals in Sundance and Toronto, the Bafta Awards in London, and to business trips filled with Los Angeles meetings. Sterns said he was carrying three mobile phones and two blackberries on the road to manage Weinstein’s calls and emails. He was also always close to a locked and hull silver case that belonged to Weinstein, although he did not wear it himself. It was a whirlwind of hotel suites, projections and red carpets, and wherever they were going to just know the boss of Sterns like “Harvey”.
“It was the kind of boastful with whom we entered these film festivals,” Stern told the deputy prosecutor of the Manhattan district, Nicole Blumberg. They kept a lot of money at hand to “grease the wheels” with advice of $ 500 for the concierges of the hotel and the master of restaurants, Sterns testified.
Prosecutors say that Weinstein armed his fame, wealth and influence while they are looking to make guilty verdicts that they won in 2020 on the new trial, while obtaining an additional conviction for commission of a criminal sex in the first degree. Weinstein’s conviction in 2020 in New York and his 23-year prison sentence was expelled last year by a court of appeal which ruled that the testimonies of three so-called “non-loaded” of the accusers of Weinstein had unjustly fueled the jury against him.
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On Wednesday, during the opening arguments, the deputy prosecutor of Manhattan, Shannon Lucey, identified a third victim, Kaja Sokola, who had not previously presented himself and whose name was not disclosed in a new indictment against Weinstein transmitted last in September.
Sokola was a 16-year-old model and a beauty contest from Poland, newly arrived in New York in 2002, when an event promoter presented him in Weinstein in a restaurant in downtown Manhattan, said Lucey. The criminal accusation concerns an assault against Sokola, which occurred four years later in a Manhattan hotel room, said Lucey. But during their first meeting in 2002, Weinstein asked her if she wanted to be in films and invited Sokola to dinner a few days later, only for her driver to drop her into an apartment that would be her downtown loft, said Lucey.
There, he persuaded the teenager to remove her top, saying to her: “This is what happens in the industry” and directed her to a bathroom where he masturbated while groping it, said Lucey. Then he said to her “see? It was not that bad”, then “you have to work on your darkness,” Lucey told jurors.
Weinstein’s defense lawyer Arthur Aidala did not dispute this story directly in his declaration of opening to the jury, but he described Sokola as a “troubled” young woman. The accusation had already described its history of alcohol abuse and food disorders. Sokola is currently living in Manhattan and a child, said the prosecutor.
Aidala said that the three accusers of Weinstein in the new trial, including the return witnesses Haley and Jessica Mann, have embarked on consensual sex with her client and have maintained mutually beneficial relations that have maintained years with the famous producer.
“He gets auditions, he gets a job and in return, they are wrong with him,” said Aidala. When their careers hoped for in the industry did not take place, women turned against him, throwing themselves like his victims in the midst of a wave of revelations published in 2017 on Weinstein’s treatment of women who gave birth to the #MeToo movement, said Aidala.
They also took regulation money through an insurer. Aidala said there were “four million reasons” to question the accuser’s motivations to come forward, referring to what he described as total payment to women. Aidala said that some of the alleged victims of Weinstein went as quickly as they could to “money lawyers”. In this category, he appointed Gloria Allred, who represented Haley and was seated Wednesday at the back of the courtroom.
Aidala, who faced Allred in and out of the hearing rooms, recognized his presence on Wednesday with a wave and a few friendly words, but accused his client, Haley, of lying under oath in the trial in 2020 when she testified that she had no intention of continuing him.
Weinstein, whose health has deteriorated since the start of his legal problems, spends his time outside the courthouse under the care of the Bellevue hospital in Manhattan – a suspended from the notoriously hard and dysfunctional prison of Rikers Island prison granted by judge Farber during the jury selection.
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Despite the overthrow of his sexual crimes in New York 2020 in 2024, Weinstein remains in detention due to his separate conviction of rape and assault in Los Angeles, which he is attractive.
