New York (EFE) .- The initial allegations of the new criminal trial for sexual abuse and third degree violation against the architect Harvey Weinstein took place on Wednesday with the Prosecutor’s Office and the defense outlining with forcefulness its arguments and anticipating an arduous legal battle in the six weeks that the process will cover.
The Prosecutor’s Office began describing the one who was Hollywood’s tycoon as a sexual predator that “just wanted” the “bodies” of his victims.
“The defendant just wanted his bodies and the more they resisted, the more violent he turned,” said Shannon Lucey, one of the attached prosecutors, looking at the jury, composed of seven women and five men.
Weinstein was sentenced in 2020 to 23 years in prison, also in New York, for the complaints of two women who would have allegedly attacked in 2006 and 2013, but that conviction was revoked last year by the New York Court of Appeals due to a procedural error and the repetition of the trial that began today was set.
A woman accuses Harvey Weinstein of abusing her when she was minor
This new process includes the demands of the two complainants of the first New York trial -the Jessica Mann production assistant and the aspiring actress Miriam Haley-, in addition to Kaja Sokola, another victim who says he has been attacked in an apartment in Manhattan in 2006 when he was only 16 years old.
As reported today by the Prosecutor’s Office, Sokola was then a model that Poland left in 2006 to “make their way to the world of acting”, after her parents sent her to live alone to the Big Apple, where she met Weinstein.
Sokola, who would be the youngest woman to suffer from alleged sexual abuse by the famous producer, began to carve a career after a representation agency signed her, and the Weinstein company then contacted her to talk about her “acting potential,” said Prosecutor Lucey.
Subsequently, according to Lucey, Sokola was taken in a vehicle to a meeting with Weinstein for what she thought it was a matter of business inside an apartment, where he “asked her to take off her shirt” and she agreed thinking that it was “something common.
Then, there was the alleged sexual assault where, among other acts, Weinstein practiced oral sex by force, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Sokola, now a film producer, continues to live in New York and has also suffered, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, an eating disorder, substance abuse and other mental health problems since then.
The defense qualifies the victims as “rights with rights”
In turn, the defense of opted to define the victims of Weinstein as “rights with rights” and assured that they “flirted” with him upon knowing their power in the industry.
“They were right friends (…) A casting made on a sofa is not the scene of a crime,” said his main lawyer, Arthur Aidala, suggesting that Weinstein had sexual relations consented to the three women who denounce him in this case.
- Aidala, a controversial and extravagant high -profile lawyer who usually lavished in American media and has his own podcast, acknowledged that “the only immoral” was that Weinstein cheated his “precious wife” and that the three plaintiffs – one of them assures that he was a victim of abuse when he was 16 – “flirted” with the arch. pass”.
“Friends, after listening to all the tests, your case will fall apart (…) are trying to make sense of something that simply does not have it,” Aidala continued singing and gesturing vehemently while referring to the initial allegations that the Prosecutor’s Office had previously presented.
Miriam Haley’s pain story
The case of film producer Miriam Haley, another of the three women who denounces Harvey Weinstein in this new criminal trial, who, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, “suffered before the physical abuse of her father.”
«He had a difficult childhood and a lot of pain. Her stepfather physically mistreated her and also her sister, ”said prosecutor Lucey.
Lucey showed a photo of Haley, while Weinstein looked at the screen where he projected and talked to his lawyers carrying several folios in his hand, and went on to unravel how the experience of the now producer was with with whom one of Hollywood’s most visible faces was.
In one of her first matches there for 2006, Weinstein cited her in a hotel where she asked her to make a massage and the woman left disgusted, but it was on July 10 of that year when the tycoon called her to meet in another apartment and “the accused’s attitude changed dramatically,” according to Lucey.
He began to “kiss her and hand her,” despite Haley’s frequent attempts to reject him, and ended up pushing her against a bed and climbing on top of her, said the attached prosecutor.
“Weinstein was three times bigger than Haley, who believed he could not escape without consequences, but finally managed to flee,” said Lucey.
The fall of the powerful man
The producer of films like ‘Pulp Fiction’ returned to the court, as usual in his last appearances, in a wheelchair. Dress in a suit, with glasses to see and well shaved, today he greeted his team of lawyers with a serious gesture and did not evidence other health problems.
Weinstein, who has been admitted to a Hospital in Manhattan for four days and not in a city prison due to his health problems, is deprived of liberty because he was also found guilty in 2022 of another rape in Los Angeles and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
More than 80 women have denounced sexual abuse by the co -founder of the successful Miramax producer over the last decades, which promoted the #MeToo movement on international scale.
The Manhattan Criminal Court Chamber, where the first day of this new trial was held, was filled until the capacity of 90 places available with an audience composed of journalists -mostly women -members of the Court itself and anonymous people.
