Former Model Kaja Sokola Testifies Against Harvey Weinstein For Alleged Assault When She Was 19

Kaja Sokola, the newest accuser in Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial, teared up on the stand Thursday saying her “soul was removed” when the former studio mogul allegedly forced oral sex on her during a hotel room encounter in 2006. 

Sokola is one of three complaining witnesses in the retrial against Weinstein. Unlike the other two witnesses, Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann, Sokola did not testify at Weinstein’s last trial. His 2020 conviction was overturned in April 2024 when the court of appeals ruled that the trial judge improperly allowed testimony from other women about uncharged allegations against Weinstein.

Sokola’s name was first made public in connection to this case during opening statements for the new trial on April 23. However, she has previously been involved in civil litigation against Weinstein’s brother Bob Weinstein, Disney and Miramax in 2019 and later won a $3 million settlement related to another sexual assault, that is uncharged in this case, that allegedly took place in 2002 when she was 16.  

The former Polish model and actress testified that she met Weinstein for the first time in 2002. Her goal in meeting with him was to transition to an acting career, after working as a model in the U.S. and abroad. At one point, Sokola got a job as an extra on the Nanny Diaries through Weinstein. 

“I never really wanted anything else from Harvey Weinstein other than honestly to say if I had a chance to be an actress or not,” said Sokola, who testified she never had any romantic or sexual interest in him. 

The charged interaction with Weinstein is alleged to have taken place in 2006, after a lunch meeting with Weinstein and Sokola’s sister at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. Sokola, who was then 19 years old, said she had arranged the meeting because she wanted her sister to meet with Weinstein so she could prove to her that she had a possible career as an actor. After a brief lunch, Sokola said Weinstein asked her to come up to a hotel room to see a script and then forcibly held her down on the bed, removed her stockings and underwear and performed oral sex on her.

“I kept on saying ‘Please don’t. Please stop. I don’t want this. But he didn’t listen,” said Sokola, who testified that she was unable to move under his body weight. 

After the alleged incident Sokola testified that “He said to me ‘You see? That wasn’t so difficult.’” She dressed and followed him back to the elevator and then met with her sister who was waiting. 

Sokola’s sister, Ewa Sokola, was also on the stand Wednesday and testified to the lunch with Weinstein and to her sister’s departure with Weinstein. She said she noticed “extreme tension” in her sister, when she returned after going upstairs with Weinstein, but that the lunch was otherwise friendly and their day proceeded as planned. She did not hear about the alleged sexual incident involving her sister until it was reported in a 2022 Rolling Stone article. 

Asked why she did not tell her sister, Kaja Sokola said that she had “blamed herself” and did not want to share what happened after she had told Ewa that Weinstein was someone she trusted and who could help her career.

“I really cared about my sister’s and mother’s approval. I couldn’t tell them,” Sokola said on the stand Thursday. The two had entered her into a modeling contest when she was 14, she testified.

Earlier in the day Thursday, Sokola testified to the alleged sexual encounter with Weinstein that had occurred when she was 16 years old on her first visit to New York. After first meeting Weinstein at the restaurant Butter, where Weinstein asked if she was an actress, Sokola gave him her number. He called a few days later, picked her up in his car and she testified that she told him she was 16. 

Rather than take her to a restaurant for lunch, as planned, Sokola said the driver brought them to Weinstein’s apartment where she followed him to his bedroom and then the bathroom, where he touched her vagina and put her hand on his penis to masturbate. 

“He told me to take my clothes off and I didn’t want to do that. I was panicking. And then he said that if I want to be actress, that’s what actors do in films,” Sokola said, tearing up on the stand. “So I should get used to it.” 

“I was scared. I was scared of him,” she continued, saying she followed him because she was 16 and did not know what else to do. “I’d never been in an intimate situation with another person like that.” 

With this incident, as well as another alleged groping years later, Judge Curtis Farber read the jury a stipulation about how the incidents were uncharged criminal conduct and were only offered as evidence for consideration as background information about the relationship between the two parties, rather than a propensity or predisposition to commit crime. This comes as the prosecutors are navigating the Molineux rule, which generally prohibits using evidence of a defendant’s prior bad behavior to prove their propensity to commit the charges in question, and contributed to Weinstein’s overturned 2020 conviction. 

In addition to the criminal sexual charge related to Sokola, Weinstein is being being retried on a criminal sexual charge and a rape charge related to respective claims from former production assistant on Project Runway, Miriam Haley, who alleges he forced oral sex on her at his apartment in 2006, and from aspiring actress Jessica Mann, who alleges she was raped by Weinstein in 2013 in a Manhattan hotel.

Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all charges. He watched Sokola on the stand while sitting at the defense table, in a wheelchair, with his attorneys. 

Haley was on the stand last week and testified that she had tried to stop Weinstein while he had also forced her down on his bed and performed oral sex on her after she had accepted his invitation to a film premiere in L.A. 

Both Haley and Sokola remained in some contact with Weinstein after the charged incidents, with emails showing reach outs from them on potential entertainment projects. Sokola specifically reached out to Weinstein about a film project and to a member of his team about getting an agent as an actor. 

Years after the alleged incident, Sokola became a psychotherapist working in Poland and then moved to New York, where she is on a visa and currently seeking asylum after fleeing from her husband. She added that she continues to struggle with alcohol abuse that began when she was a teen.

In addition to the civil litigation related to the 2002 incident, she also participated in the settlement fund against Weinstein related to the 2006 incident and was awarded $475,000. However, this is the first time she’s testified in criminal proceedings, which she said she did for her son. 

“I have a small son and I’m a single mom. I’m raising him by myself. What happened to me when I was a kid myself, I never really looked at it the right way until I had my son. I want to show him power and strength and resilience, Sokola said. “I want to show also other people by testifying and sharing the most intimate parts of my life that no matter how deep you fall you can rise.”