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Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was back in court today for the start of a retrial after a New York appeals court overturned his original 2020 conviction.
Weinstein is already in prison, serving 16 years for a 2022 rape conviction in California.
The retrial stems from allegations made by the two original accusers — Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann — as well as a third woman, Kaja Sokola, whose account was just heard in court for the first time today.
Yet another Weinstein accuser comes forward
Sokola is a former model from Poland who alleges that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in 2006.
According to Page Six, the alleged assault took place in Weinstein’s Manhattan hotel room, where he’d lured Sokola “with the promise of movie scripts.”
Sokola also alleges that Weinstein molested her at his apartment four years earlier when she was just 16. Prosecutors are not pursuing charges related to that claim, due to the statute of limitations.
Sokola’s allegations were added to the case after Weinstein’s previous conviction was overturned.
Assistant District Attorney Shannon Lucey told jurors that Weinstein used “dream opportunities as weapons” to prey on the plaintiffs.
“The defendant wanted their bodies, and the more they resisted, the more forceful he got,” she said.
