Five years after she tearfully told a court that Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her, former "Project Runway" production assistant Miriam Haley took the stand again Tuesday to revisit the ordeal she alleges she endured at the hands of the disgraced movie mogul.
Haley was back testifying because New York’s highest court last year overturned Weinstein’s landmark 2020 conviction, which defined the #MeToo movement and helped turn Weinstein into a Hollywood pariah.
Haley had barely started testifying when Weinstein's lawyers began raising objections to her recounting the abuse she says she suffered as a child while she was being raised in Sweden.
Weinstein’s defense team had been expected to closely watch the testimony of Haley, who says Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in July 2006, because both she and actor Jessica Mann testified at the 2020 trial. Mann says Weinstein raped her in 2013 in a Manhattan hotel room.
Weinstein is charged with one count of engaging in a criminal sex act in connection with Haley’s allegations and one count of third-degree rape in Mann's case.
This time around, Weinstein is also charged with one count of engaging in a first-degree criminal sexual act, accused of assaulting a Polish former model named Kaja Sokola.
Sokola, who was not part of the 2020 trial, claims in a lawsuit that Weinstein performed oral sex on her without her consent at a Manhattan hotel in 2006, when she was 16.
Weinstein, 73, has denied assaulting the three women.
Haley, 48, said she first met Weinstein in 2004 at the after-party for the movie premiere of "The Aviator."
"I introduced myself, saying, 'I’m Mimi,'" she said.
Haley said that several years later, she reconnected with Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival in France. She said she was looking for an opportunity as a production assistant in New York and agreed to meet him at his hotel.
Once they were there, Haley said, Weinstein commented on her legs and "asked whether I could give him a massage." She testified she said no and later burst into tears.
"I felt taken aback, humiliated," Haley said.
Asked by Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg whether she had any interest in Weinstein “romantically or sexually," Haley replied: “No, I did not. I was there to try and find work.”
Still, despite being rebuffed, Weinstein did arrange for her to work on "Project Runway" even though she lacked a U.S. work visa, Haley said before court was adjourned for the day.
Haley is expected to be back on the stand Wednesday and reprise her 2020 testimony about the alleged assault.
During the 2020 trial, Haley testified that not long after she finished working for the show, she visited Weinstein at his lower Manhattan apartment, where, she said, he pinned her down on his bed and forced oral sex on her.
On the stand, Haley told jurors that in the midst of the alleged assault it occurred to her, “I’m being raped.”
Unsure what to do, Haley said, she weighed her options.
“If I scream ‘rape,’ will someone hear me?” she said. “I checked out and decided to endure it.”
Haley testified at the retrial a week after her former roommate and close friend Christine Pressman told jurors that Haley confided in her back in September 2006 that Weinstein had assaulted her.
“I was staying at Lorne Michaels’ house in East Hampton, and Miriam was there, as well," Pressman said, referring to the "Saturday Night Live" creator. "She was distraught, crying, very upset, obviously; she was very animated and had a lot of intensity. She said it’s Harvey Weinstein. She was in shock. She described what happened, and it was disgusting."
Asked what she advised her friend, Pressman said: "I told her to move past it and not to go to the police at all. I told her she should not to go to police or the authorities about being raped by Harvey Weinstein."
Another former roommate, Elizabeth Entin, said Haley also told her Weinstein assaulted her. But she said she gave Haley different guidance.
“He raped my friend, and I am not happy about that,” Entin said. “I told her to call a lawyer to navigate the system. I despise anyone who has raped my friend. She is not my only friend that has been raped."
In her opening remarks, Assistant District Attorney Shannon Lucey said Weinstein was a serial sexual predator who used his power as "a titan" in the movie industry to prey on young women, and she then described in graphic terms what he is alleged to have done to them.
“They stayed quiet for years,” Lucey said of the accusers, out of “their fear of what he might do to them.”
Weinstein’s lead attorney, Arthur Aidala, insisted in his opening statement that Weinstein’s sexual encounters with the accusers were “transactional" and “consensual.”
"The casting couch is not a crime scene," he said.
