‘The unthinkable was happening;' Weinstein accuser details alleged 2006 sex assault
'The unthinkable was happening,' Miriam Haley testified, dabbing her eyes as she recalled the alleged July 2006 assault.
Weinstein, sitting between his lawyers, shook his head as she spoke. The 73-year-old former Hollywood honcho has pleaded not guilty and denies sexually assaulting anyone.
Haley, who has also gone by the name Mimi Haleyi, is the first of Weinstein's accusers to testify at his rape retrial. It's happening because New York's highest court overturned his 2020 conviction.
Haley testified at the original trial, sometimes breaking into sobs. Her demeanor Wednesday was calm, if briefly tearful, as she answered prosecutors' graphic questions about the alleged assault.
While much of her account mirrored her earlier testimony, there were some additional details.
She recalled Weinstein asking, 'Don't you think we're much closer now?' after either the alleged assault or a subsequent occasion when she says she had unwanted, but not forced, sex with him.
She also recalled telling him after the second encounter, 'You know you can't keep doing this.'
Weinstein's attorneys haven't yet had their chance to question Haley and potentially try to poke holes in her account. The defense has argued that all of Weinstein's accusers consented to sexual encounters with him in hopes of getting work in show business.
Haley describes alleged assault
Born in Finland and raised in Sweden, Haley, 48, is a former entertainment producer now working in advertising. She met Weinstein through a mutual connection.
Haley was briefly a production assistant on the Weinstein-produced reality show 'Project Runway' and had a series of interactions with him that were sometimes inappropriate and suggestive, but other times professional and polite, she told jurors over two days of testimony so far.
She insisted she was only looking for professional opportunity — not sex or romance — with the then-powerful producer of such Oscar winners as 'Shakespeare in Love' and 'Gangs of New York.'
Haley said she accepted an invitation to visit Weinstein's Manhattan apartment one early evening because it would have been odd to decline — she was due to fly on his company's dime to Los Angeles the next day to see a premiere of the company's film 'Clerks II.'
After she and Weinstein briefly chatted on his living room sofa, he lunged to kiss her, she testified. She said she leaped up and rebuffed him, but he grabbed her and forcibly backed her into a bedroom.
Then, Haley said, he pinned her down on a bed and performed oral sex on her, ignoring her pleas that she didn't want it.
Afterward, she felt shocked, disgusted and humiliated. She and two of her friends testified that she soon told them that Weinstein had sexually assaulted her.
But Haley said she didn't call police because she feared getting in immigration trouble for having worked on 'Project Runway' while on a tourist visa.
Haley said she agreed to meet Weinstein at a Manhattan hotel a few weeks after the alleged assault, expecting to talk in the lobby and hoping 'to navigate the whole situation in a way that would make me feel better about myself and would have the most upside to me.'
She was directed instead to his room, where he promptly steered her onto the bed, she testified. She said she didn't want sex but didn't physically resist because she felt stupid for agreeing to meet him.
Still, 'I made it clear at all occasions when he made advances that I didn't want to go there,' she said.
Haley stayed in contact with Weinstein
Haley didn't cut off contact with Weinstein. Over the next few months and years, she sometimes called Weinstein and sent cordial emails to him and his assistant, from whom she also asked for a plane ticket to London, according to testimony and documents.
In the messages, she talked show business, asked for work and signed off with such phrases as 'lots of love,' an expression she told jurors she used liberally. In a February 2007 letter that wasn't seen at the first trial, she told Weinstein she'd 'love you forever… and ever…' if he invested in an online TV show idea of hers.
Haley testified that she addressed Weinstein warmly to try to win his professional backing, nothing else, and that she 'suppressed a lot of things' in order to cope.
At the first trial, Weinstein's lawyers emphasized Haley's continued exchanges with him. This time, prosecutors delved into those contacts more extensively, perhaps seeking to blunt them as an attack line for the defense.
Weinstein's retrial includes charges related to Haley and another accuser from the original trial, Jessica Mann. Mann alleges that Weinstein raped her in 2013.
He's also being tried, for the first time, on an allegation of forcing oral sex on former model Kaja Sokola in 2006.
Mann and Sokola also are expected to testify.
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