Ex-model testifying in Weinstein sex trial questioned about private journal
Judge Curtis Farber dismissed the jury for a lunch break as Kaja Sokola began to get emotional.
A former teenage fashion model giving evidence in Harvey Weinstein’s retrial on sexual assault charges has been confronted in the witness box with a private journal in which defence lawyers say she wrote about people who sexually abused her.
Kaja Sokola told the Manhattan jury on her third day in the witness box that the journal named at least two people who had sexually assaulted her. Neither one, she acknowledged, was the disgraced former Hollywood mogul.
“It proves that I have not spoken about this for many years,” she said tearfully as Weinstein’s lawyer and then the judge attempted to cut her off.
The Polish model, now a 39-year-old psychotherapist, also confirmed under questioning that the Pulp Fiction producer was mentioned in the journal as having wronged her, but for different reasons.
Under an entry for “Harvey W” she wrote that he was “promising me help” but “nothing came out of it”.
Earlier, Ms Sokola had protested that the journal, which she wrote in Polish in 2015, should not be discussed in open court as she had written it as part of a substance abuse treatment programme.
She explained that one of the steps of treatment was to list all the people and things she resented.
“This is very inappropriate,” she pleaded as one of Weinstein’s attorneys began to cite portions of the text to the jury.
“Please don’t read that. This is my personal things. I’m not on trial here.”
Judge Curtis Farber assured Ms Sokola, as the jury took its lunch break, that he would only permit limited questioning around the document. He also said he had concerns about the journal’s completeness and authenticity, wondering how defence lawyers had obtained what appeared to be private medical records.
“This might backfire tremendously” for the defence, Judge Farber said, as prosecutors also strongly opposed inclusion of the journal as evidence in the trial. “That’s the risk they’re willing to take.”
Ms Sokola told the court last week that Weinstein exploited her dreams of an acting career to subject her to unwanted sexual advances, starting days after they met in 2002, while she was a 16-year-old on a modelling trip to New York.
Some of the allegations are beyond the legal time limit for criminal charges, but Weinstein faces a criminal sex act charge over Ms Sokola’s claim that he forced oral sex on her in 2006.
Prosecutors added the charge to the case last year after an appeals court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction. The guilty verdict pertained to allegations from two other women who have also given evidence or are expected to testify at the retrial.
Weinstein, 73, has pleaded not guilty and denies sexually assaulting anyone.
His lawyers, in their cross-examination of Ms Sokola which began on Friday, have sought to raise doubts about her allegations, portraying her as an aspiring actor who tried to leverage her consensual relations with the former studio boss.
