Editor’s Note: This story contains discussions of rape or sexual assault that may be disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can find help and discreet resources on the National Sexual Assault Hotline website or by calling 1-800-656-4673.
(NewsNation) — Former model Kaja Sokola took the stand this week in the retrial of Harvey Weinstein, testifying for the first time that he assaulted her when she was 16 and 19.
Sokola shared allegations against the onetime Hollywood hitmaker with a Manhattan jury on Thursday. She’s the second of three accusers to testify — and the only one who wasn’t part of his first trial in 2020.
In 2022, Sokola spoke with NewsNation in her first and only TV interview about the alleged assaults.
“He said many times that this is between us,” Sokola said. “’Remember, I will do a lot of things for you, but this is between us. I’m a very powerful man.’ And if you ever will be a, you know, a powerful actress, you wanted to stay like this.”
Weinstein was 50 at the time of the first alleged assault in 2002 — and the “king of Hollywood,” as an acquaintance referred to him. Sokola, his youngest known accuser, had recently moved from Poland and met Weinstein at a New York City club.
She said Weinstein invited her to lunch but insisted on stopping at his apartment first.
“I didn’t know what to do, but you know. My intuition was telling me that there’s something wrong, but what can go so wrong? I mean, this guy is the age of my father. He’s completely unattractive and completely, like, I don’t know … And I was 16.”
Sokola said that once in his apartment, Weinstein made her “do things that I would never, ever do.”
“It’s like … a crab being thrown into a boiling water, you know, suddenly from an environment when you feel like there’s something wrong,” Sokola told NewsNation. “They’re taking me out of my place, of my safe place. And then the next second, you’re just in boiling water. You’re dying. I felt like part of me died that day.”
Weinstein faces a criminal sex act charge related to a different accusation from Sokola — forced oral sex in 2006.
Sokola sued Weinstein in 2017 amid an influx of public accusations, receiving $3.5 million in compensation, according to prosecutors.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denies sexually assaulting anyone.
NewsNation’s Rich McHugh and the Associated Press contributed to this report.