Weinstein's #MeToo rape retrial opens with added allegations from a former model

NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein ’s #MeToo retrial opened Wednesday, giving a new jury a fresh look at familiar rape and sexual assault allegations — plus a newly added claim from a former model.

For the first time, prosecutors publicly identified Kaja Sokola and detailed her account of what unfolded between her and the Oscar-winning movie producer in the early 2000s. He is criminally charged with forcing oral sex on her in 2006, but she also accused him in a civil lawsuit of groping her against her will four years earlier, when she was 16.

Like the two other accusers in the case, Sokola alleges a complex series of encounters and reactions — being sexually assaulted, yet staying in touch, wary of Weinstein but wanting to remain on good terms with a power broker who dangled the possibility of an acting career.

“Why did the defendant hold this level of power and control in the eyes of these three women? … It’s because Harvey Weinstein defined the field,” prosecutor Shannon Lucey told jurors in an opening statement. “He knew how tempting promises of success were. He produced, he choreographed, he therefore directed, their ultimate silence for years.”

Weinstein has pleaded not guilty, and defense lawyer Arthur Aidala countered by portraying the accusers as willing partners in a showbiz quid pro quo.

“The casting couch is not a crime scene,” Aidala told the majority-female jury. He compared prosecutors’ allegations to the preview of a movie that “falls flat on its face.”

The 73-year-old Weinstein, seated in the wheelchair he now uses because of health problems, didn't look at Lucey or the jury during her presentation. But Weinstein watched intently as Aidala outlined his defense.

The retrial is happening because New York's top court last year threw out Weinstein's conviction, which in 2020 was a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct. The high court found that the previous trial judge allowed prejudicial testimony about allegations separate from the charges.

Weinstein’s retrial is playing out at a different cultural moment than the first. #MeToo, which exploded in 2017 with allegations against Weinstein, has evolved and ebbed.

When Weinstein’s first trial began, chants of “rapist” could be heard from protesters outside. This time, there was none of that.

Sokola’s lawyer, Lindsay Goldbrum, has called Weinstein’s retrial a “signal to other survivors that the system is catching up — and that it’s worth speaking out even when the odds seem insurmountable.”

While this jury won't hear about the allegations that got the first conviction thrown out, the panel is expected to hear from Sokola. After the high court sent the case back for retrial, prosecutors added a criminal sex act charge based on her allegations.

The Polish-born Sokola met Weinstein in 2002 after traveling alone to New York for a modeling trip at age 16, according to prosecutors. She alleges he invited her to lunch to discuss potential acting jobs but detoured to his apartment and demanded she take off her shirt if she wanted to make it in the movie business. Then, Sokola alleges, Weinstein fondled her while making her touch his genitals.

Over the next few years, Sokola stayed in contact with Weinstein, even after telling him off for allegedly groping her in a car around 2004, Lucey told jurors. She said Weinstein arranged for Sokola to be an extra in the 2007 rom-com “The Nanny Diaries,” and she invited him to lunch to impress her visiting sister.

After the lunch, he asked Sokola to check out some scripts in his Manhattan hotel room, ordered her to undress, held her down on a bed, and performed oral sex on her while she tearfully implored him not to do so, Lucey said.

In the weeks after, Sokola was photographed with Weinstein and a third person at an event, and his company wrote her an acting-school recommendation, the prosecutor said. Lucey told jurors that power imbalances often “cause victims to behave in ways that laypersons possibly might not expect."

After other allegations emerged against Weinstein in 2017, Sokola sued. Prosecutors said she received $3.5 million in compensation.

Aidala said the accusers were “trying to take advantage of Mr. Weinstein when he was at the top,” then benefited from making allegations amid his downfall.

Outside court, Sokola's attorney decried Weinstein's defense as full of “victim blaming” and “rape myths.”

In addition to the charge related to Sokola, Weinstein is being retried on a criminal sex act charge for allegedly forcibly performing oral sex on then-production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006, and a third-degree rape charge for allegedly assaulting then-aspiring actor Jessica Mann in 2013.

Weinstein’s 2020 acquittals on predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape charges still stand.

After the attorneys’ statements, testimony started Wednesday with details of Weinstein’s high-flying workdays around 2006. Witness Stefan Sterns — who was then one of Weinstein's assistants — expounded on the producer's reputation as a Hollywood kingmaker, recalled dropping him off to meet Haley in a hotel lobby and remembered seeing her name on a call log.

The Associated Press generally does not identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named, as Haley, Mann and Sokola have done.

Attorney Gloria Allred speaks to reporters outside Manhattan criminal court during a break in Harvey Weinstein's retrial, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Attorney Gloria Allred speaks to reporters outside Manhattan criminal court during a break in Harvey Weinstein's retrial, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Tarale Wulff enters court following a break during Harvey Weinstein's retrial at Manhattan criminal court, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Attorney Imran Ansari leaves court for a break during Harvey Weinstein's retrial at Manhattan criminal court, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Attorney Gloria Allred leaves court for a break during Harvey Weinstein's retrial at Manhattan criminal court, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Attorney Gloria Allred returns to court following a break during Harvey Weinstein's retrial at Manhattan criminal court, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Harvey Weinstein appears in state court in Manhattan in his retrial on Wednesday, April 23, 2025 in New York. (Steven Hirsch /New York Post via AP, Pool)

Harvey Weinstein appears in state court in Manhattan in his retrial on Wednesday, April 23, 2025 in New York. (Steven Hirsch /New York Post via AP, Pool)

Tarale Wulff arrives for Harvey Weinstein's retrial at the Manhattan criminal court, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Tarale Wulff, second from left, Dawn Dunning, third from left, and attorney Lindsay Goldbrum, second from right, arrive for Harvey Weinstein's retrial at Manhattan criminal court, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Harvey Weinstein appears in state court in Manhattan as jury selection continues in his retrial on Wednesday, April 23, 2025 in New York. (Sarah Yenesel/Pool Photo via AP)

Harvey Weinstein appears in state court in Manhattan in his retrial on Wednesday, April 23, 2025 in New York. (Steven Hirsch /New York Post via AP, Pool)

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, center, walks through Manhattan criminal court, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, the day of Harvey Weinstein's retrial in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, center, walks through Manhattan criminal court on the day of Harvey Weinstein's retrial, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Attorney Arthur Aidala, lead attorney for Harvey Weinstein, center, arrives at Manhattan criminal court for Weinstein's retrial, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Attorney Arthur Aidala, lead attorney for Harvey Weinstein, center, arrives at Manhattan criminal court for Weinstein's retrial, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Harvey Weinstein appears in state court in Manhattan as jury selection continues in his retrial on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 in New York. (Steven Hirsch /New York Post via AP, Pool)

PARIS (AP) — Kim Kardashian's childhood friend and then stylist told a Paris court on Tuesday that she heard the celebrity beg for her life when she was bound with zip ties and held at gunpoint during a 2016 heist in her hotel room during Fashion Week in the French capital.

Simone Harouche, who was sharing their two-floor hotel suite, said that she heard Kardashian yelling "‘I have babies and I need to live.’ That is what she kept on saying, ‘Take everything. I need to live.’”

“I was scared that she was raped or violated. I thought the worst," Harouche said.

Kardashian is expected to speak later Tuesday about the trauma that reshaped her life and redefined the risks of celebrity in the age of social media. Her appearance is expected to be the most emotionally charged moment of a trial that began last month.

One of the most recognizable figures on the planet, Kardashian is set to take the stand against 10 men accused of orchestrating the 2016 robbery that left her locked in a marble bathroom while masked assailants made off with more than $6 million in jewels.

Harouche told the court that the trauma of the robbery “forever” changed the life of her friend that she's known since age 12, taking away her freedom.

“She now has a completely different lifestyle," she said. “In terms of security, she can't go alone, she doesn't go alone to places anymore. To lose your sense of freedom ... it's horrible.”

Kardashian’s testimony is expected to revisit, in painful detail, how intruders zip-tied her hands, demanded her ring, and left her believing that she might never see her children again.

David De Pas, the lead judge presiding over the jury trial, asked Harouche whether Kardashian turned herself into a target by posting images of herself with “jewels of great value."

“No,” Harouche responded. “Just because a woman wears jewelry, that doesn't make her a target. That's like saying that because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped.”

Twelve suspects were originally charged. One has died. Another has been excused from proceedings because of serious illness. Most are in their 60s and 70s — dubbed “les papys braqueurs,” or “the grandpa robbers,” by the French media — but investigators insist they were no harmless retirees. Authorities have described them as a seasoned and coordinated criminal group.

Two of the defendants have admitted being at the scene. The others deny any involvement — some even claim they didn’t know who Kardashian was. But police say the group tracked her movements through her own social media posts, which flaunted her jewelry, pinpointed her location and exposed her vulnerability.

The heist transformed Kardashian into a cautionary tale of hyper-visibility in the digital age.

In the aftermath, she withdrew from public life. She developed severe anxiety and later described symptoms of agoraphobia.

“I hated to go out,” she said in a 2021 interview. “I didn’t want anybody to know where I was … I just had such anxiety.”

Harouche, who locked herself in a bathroom as the robbery was taking place in Kardashian's suite upstairs, said that she sought counseling for post-traumatic stress afterward and largely stopped working as a stylist for the stars, switching instead to interior design.

“I didn't want to travel with them anymore,” she said. “That experience was very stressful for me. It made me fearful of being around celebrities.”

Kardashian's lawyers confirmed that she would appear in court.

“She has tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system,” they wrote, adding that she hopes the trial proceeds “in an orderly fashion … and with respect for all parties.”

Her lawyers say she is “particularly grateful” to French authorities — and ready to confront those who attacked her with dignity.

FILE - Kim Kardashian arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on March 2, 2025, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)