WARNING: This article may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
A former TV production assistant told a jury Wednesday that Harvey Weinstein held her down on a bed and forced oral sex on her after she told him: “No, no — it’s not going to happen.”
Dabbing her eyes, Miriam Haley recalled what ran through her mind during the alleged July 2006 assault: “The unthinkable was happening, I just thought any unthinkable thing could happen. I just didn’t know where it ended.”
Weinstein, sitting between his lawyers, shook his head as she spoke.
Haley, who has also gone by the name Mimi Haleyi, is the first of the ex-Hollywood honcho’s accusers to testify at his rape retrial. It’s happening because New York’s highest court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction.
The 73-year-old former studio boss has pleaded not guilty and denies sexually assaulting anyone.
Haley testified at the original trial and was candid last year about her mixed feelings about repeating the experience.
Weinstein’s attorneys haven’t yet had their chance to question her and potentially try to poke holes in her account. But the defence has sought vigorously — if often unsuccessfully — to rein in the scope of Haley’s testimony by objecting to prosecutors’ questions, such as multiple queries about whether she had any sexual interest in Weinstein. Haley said she did not.
The defence has argued that all of Weinstein’s accusers consented to sexual encounters with him in hopes of getting work in show business.
Weinstein facing new and old charges
Haley began her testimony Tuesday by describing how she got to know Weinstein, briefly worked as a production assistant on his company’s reality show Project Runway in June 2006 and had a series of interactions with him that were sometimes inappropriate and suggestive, but other times professional and polite.
Two months before she says he assaulted her at his Manhattan apartment, Haley said she went to Weinstein’s hotel room to speak about potential jobs in the movie and TV business.
He “quickly started talking about other things,” she told jurors on Tuesday.
He commented on her legs and suggested they give each other massages, Haley said. She refused his advances and says she burst into tears as soon as she left.
“I felt taken aback. I felt humiliated,” she testified. “It was just kind of like a sinking feeling that he wasn’t taking me seriously at all.”
Throughout their encounters, Haley said, 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.
Weinstein’s retrial includes charges based on allegations from Haley and another accuser from the original trial, Jessica Mann, who was once an aspiring actor. She 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. Her claim wasn’t part of the first trial.
Mann and Sokola also are expected to testify at some point.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who allege they have been sexually assaulted unless they give permission for their names to be used. Haley, Mann and Sokola have done so.
If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911. For support in your area, you can look for crisis lines and local services via the Ending Violence Association of Canada database.
