An ex-model has tearfully told a court that being sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein when she was 16 was the most “horrifying thing I ever experienced” to that point.
Warning: This article contains references to sexual assault
Kaja Sokola told the film producer’s retrial that he ordered her to remove her blouse, put his hand in her underwear, and made her touch his genitals.
She said he’d stared at her in the mirror with “black and scary” eyes and told her to stay quiet about the alleged assault in a Manhattan hotel in 2002.
Ms Sokola told the New York court that Weinstein had dropped names such as Penelope Cruz and Gwyneth Paltrow, and said he could help fulfil her Hollywood dream.
“I’d never been in a situation like this,” said Polish-born Ms Sokola. “I felt stupid and ashamed and like it’s my fault for putting myself in this position.”
Weinstein denies sexually assaulting anyone and is back in court for a retrial after his conviction was overturned last year.
Image: Weinstein denies the allegations. Pic: Reuters
The 73-year-old is not charged over the alleged sexual assault because it happened too long ago to bring criminal charges.
However, he is facing charges over an incident four years later when he’s said to have forced Ms Sokola to perform oral sex on him.
Prosecutors claim it happened after Weinstein arranged for her to be an extra in a film.
“My soul was removed from me,” she told the court of the alleged 2006 assault, describing how she tried to push Weinstein away but that he held her down.
Ms Sokola – who’s waived her right to anonymity – is the second of three women to testify and the only one who wasn’t part of the first trial in 2020.
Image: Miriam Haley testified previously in the retrial. Pic: AP
Miriam Haley last week told the court that Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006. The other accuser, Jessica Mann, is yet to appear.
Claims against the film mogul were a major driver for the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and abuse in 2017.
Weinstein’s lawyers allege the women consented to sexual activity in the hope of getting film and TV work and that they stayed in contact with him for a while afterwards.
A Strictly Come Dancing star has been arrested on suspicion of rape.
The unnamed man, who is in his 30s, was also detained over a separate allegation of “non-consensual intimate image abuse”.
The Met Police said an arrest was made in east London on Friday in a joint investigation with HertfordshireConstabulary, following a “third-party allegation of sexual and drug-related offences”.
It is understood the arrest is not related to the upcoming production of Strictly Come Dancing – the 23rd series, which is in the rehearsal stage and is due to launch in September.
“On Friday 22 August, officers arrested a man in his 30s in east London on suspicion of rape and non-consensual intimate image abuse,” a spokesperson for the Met said in a statement.
The investigation is in its early stages and inquiries are ongoing, the spokesperson added.
The man was released on bail on Saturday until a date in November, the force said, according to BBC News.
Hertfordshire Constabulary did not add anything further.
A spokesperson for the BBC said: “It would not be appropriate to comment on an ongoing police investigation.”
Taylor Swift has announced she is getting married to her NFL star boyfriend Travis Kelce.
The pop star and Kansas City Chiefs tight end shared the news in a joint post on Instagram, with the caption: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
The announcement was liked more than 1.7 million times just over 30 minutes after it was posted.
Image: Pic: Instagram / @taylorswift
Swiftand Kelcestarted their relationship in July 2023, after the three-time Super Bowl winner said on his podcast New Heights that he tried and failed to meet the singer at her Eras Tour concert in Kansas City.
Rumours grew that the couple were dating after Swift was spotted at a number of Chiefs games. On her seventh time in the stands, she brought her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, along.
Kelce told the Wall Street Journal in November 2023: “There were definitely people she knew that knew who I was, in her corner [who said]: ‘Yo! Did you know he was coming [to the Eras Tour]?’
“I had somebody playing Cupid… She told me exactly what was going on and how I got lucky enough to get her to reach out.”
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From January: Taylor cheers on Travis after Chiefs win
Earlier this month, Swift appeared on Kelce’s podcast, New Heights, and announced her 12th album, titled The Life Of A Showgirl.
Speaking to her now-fiance and his brother Jason Kelce, Swift said it was inspired by the Eras Tour – and also talked about Travis’s attempt at meeting her two years ago.
While she said his plan to give her his number on a friendship bracelet was a “wild, romantic gesture,” she joked he “didn’t do any proper logistical planning” and thought he would be allowed backstage.
“Because he knows the elevator lady, he thought he could talk to her about just getting down to my dressing room,” she added. “That’s how it works in 1973.”
Sky News culture and entertainment reporter Gemma Peplowsaid after her globe-trotting tour and a swathe of re-releases over recent years, the new album cemented Swift’s reputation “as the hardest-working star in pop”.
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Despite rumours he would retire after losing this year’s Super Bowl, Kelce will play for the Kansas City Chiefs again this season.
He told GQ magazine his on-field performances “slipped a little bit” as he started acting, and added: “I’m just saying that my work ethic is such that I have so much pride in how I do things that I never want the product to tail off, and I feel like these past two years haven’t been to my standard.”
A 16-year-old has been convicted in Germany for supporting a foiled plot to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Austria last year.
The teenager, named Mohammad A, who cannot be fully identified under Germany’sprivacy laws, was convicted of preparing a serious act of violence and supporting a terrorist act of violence abroad.
He was handed a suspended 18-month sentence on Tuesday. According to the court, he made a “comprehensive confession” at his trial, which was held behind closed doors because of his age.
German judges found that the defendant, a Syrian national then aged 14, supported the ideology of the Islamic State group at the time.
The court heard he was also in contact via social media with a young man in Austriawho planned to attack a Swiftconcert in Vienna, had sent him a video with bomb-building instructions, and organised contact with an IS member.
All three of Swift’s concerts at Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium were cancelled in August last year after a terror plot was uncovered by authorities.
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Swiftie on cancelled Vienna show
Concert organisers had expected up to 65,000 fans inside the stadium at each concert and as many as 30,000 onlookers outside.
Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of the directorate of state security and intelligence, added at the time that the suspect was “clearly radicalised in the direction of the Islamic State and thinks it is right to kill infidels”.
Swift later called the decision to cancel her shows in Austria “devastating,” and said: “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows.
“But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives.”