A former teen model on the stand to testify against Harvey Weinstein protested Tuesday as the disgraced movie mogul’s attorneys began to read from her personal diary in the Manhattan courtroom where his sexual assault retrial is into its second week.
Facing cross-examination in her third day of testimony, Kaja Sokola was confronted by defense lawyers with passages from the journal, written in 2015 in Polish. Kaja protested, saying it was for a substance abuse treatment program during which she was instructed to list all the people for whom she held resentment.
“This is very inappropriate,” Sokola said as one of Weinstein’s attorneys began to cite the text. “Please don’t read that. This is my personal things. I’m not on trial here.”
The judge heard Sokola out, telling her he would only permit limited questioning around the diary – then said he had concerns about how Weinstein’s lawyers had obtained it. “This might backfire” for the defense, Judge Curtis Farber said, the AP reported. “That’s the risk they’re willing to take.”
Under questioning, she told the jury that the journal named at least two people who had sexually abused her, but neither was Weinstein. She also confirmed that she had named him, but in an entry titled “Harvey W” under which she wrote: “promising me to help … nothing came out of it.”
Weinstein lawyer Michael Cibella pointed out the discrepancy between Sokola’s entries and her testimony.
“The trauma that Harvey Weinstein inflicted on you was that he made promises that he didn’t keep, even as you accused two other men of sexually assaulting you,” Cibella said.
“That’s your interpretation and I’ll leave that with you,” Sokola said. “Harvey made promises he didn’t keep – and he sexually assaulted me.”
New York prosecutors are trying Weinstein again after the state’s Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 conviction last year, ruling that improper testimony and rulings tainted his trial.
Now 73, Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denies that he raped or sexually assaulted anyone. He is also appealing a 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles, where a 16-year prison sentence still stands, which has allowed New York authorities to hold him while they re-set their own case.
