New York

Former Model Testifies That Weinstein Molested Her When She Was 16

Published

7 months ago

May 8, 2025

Former Model Testifies That Weinstein Molested Her When She Was 16

The model had arrived in New York City just days before in 2002. She had left her family behind in Poland and come across the world with hopes of becoming a star.

Then, she met Harvey Weinstein.

The model, Kaja Sokola, was 16, and Mr. Weinstein was a 50-year-old producer when they met at a club and he got her phone number, Ms. Sokola told a Manhattan jury Thursday.

He invited her to lunch to talk about her aspirations in movies, she recalled. Instead, he took her to his apartment in SoHo, where he forced her to masturbate him in a bathroom as he touched her.

On Thursday, more than 20 years later, Ms. Sokola recounted that day in court for the first time, at times breaking into sobs. Mr. Weinstein sat at the defense table, listening with his head resting on his hand.

After that encounter, Mr. Weinstein assaulted her several more times in the early 2000s, Ms. Sokola said. The incident that she described occurring she was a minor is too old to be the subject of criminal charges. But four years later, Ms. Sokola said, she was in New York for work and at a midday meeting with Mr. Weinstein and her older sister when he brought her to a hotel room and sexually assaulted her.

That incident is part of a criminal case against Mr. Weinstein being heard in a retrial that began last month. Mr. Weinstein is charged with committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree against Ms. Sokola, one of three women whom prosecutors say he attacked.

In 2020, Mr. Weinstein, 73, was convicted of sex crimes in New York and sentenced to 23 years in prison. But the state’s highest court last year overturned the decision. The judges found that prosecutors should not have been allowed to call as witnesses women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them, but whose accusations were not the basis for any charges.

Mr. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to the new set of charges and his lawyers insist that his interactions with the women were consensual. He has been convicted of similar charges in California and sentenced to 16 years in prison there. He is appealing that case.

Mr. Weinstein has faced years of legal trouble after accusations against him set off the global #MeToo movement. The man behind “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love,” he was known for making the careers of Hollywood stars. He also wielded his power to harass and sexually assault women, many of whom were young and trying to make it in the industry, according to dozens of women who came forward.

Prosecutors argue that Mr. Weinstein used his influence to exert “enormous control” and sexually assault not only Ms. Sokola but also Jessica Mann, an aspiring actress who said Mr. Weinstein attacked her in 2013, and Miriam Haley, a former television production assistant who said he assaulted her in 2006. Ms. Haley took the stand against Mr. Weinstein last week.

Like Ms. Haley, Ms. Sokola had met Mr. Weinstein as she was looking for work in New York and thought the producer could open doors.

In the spring of 2006, just before Ms. Sokola’s 20th birthday, Mr. Weinstein met her and her sister around lunchtime, she said. He had just helped her get a role as an extra in the movie “The Nanny Diaries,” which she thought might signify a “change of pattern” for Mr. Weinstein. She thought that perhaps he truly saw her potential, she said. And if Mr. Weinstein believed in her, then her mother and sister, who had looked down on her acting aspirations, might take her seriously, she told the jury.

After about half an hour of conversation, Mr. Weinstein asked Ms. Sokola to accompany him to a hotel room so she could look at a script, she said. There, she said, he forced her into oral sex.

Ms. Sokola’s older sister, Ewa Sokola, testified on Wednesday that her sister returned to the table after about half an hour, “acting tense.” She added that her demeanor was like that of someone anxiously awaiting the results of a school exam.

“I asked her about what happened, and she said everything was fine,” Ewa Sokola said.

Kaja Sokola did not mention an assault and the pair went about their day normally, her sister said. On cross-examination by Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, Michael Cibella, Ewa Sokola said that she did not know about her sister’s allegations against Mr. Weinstein until she saw a Rolling Stone article about them in 2022. She was “shocked,” she said.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Related Topics:Featured Harvey Kaja Manhattan (NYC)Sokola Weinstein

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New York

Driver Who Killed Mother and Daughters Sentenced to 3 to 9 Years

Published

2 days ago

November 19, 2025

Press Room

Driver Who Killed Mother and Daughters Sentenced to 3 to 9 Years

A driver who crashed into a woman and her two young daughters while they were crossing a street in Brooklyn in March, killing all three, was sentenced to as many as nine years in prison on Wednesday.

The driver, Miriam Yarimi, has admitted striking the woman, Natasha Saada, 34, and her daughters, Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5, after speeding through a red light. She had slammed into another vehicle on the border of the Gravesend and Midwood neighborhoods and careened into a crosswalk where the family was walking.

Ms. Yarimi, 33, accepted a judge’s offer last month to admit to three counts of second-degree manslaughter in Brooklyn Supreme Court in return for a lighter sentence. She was sentenced on Wednesday by the judge, Justice Danny Chun, to three to nine years behind bars.

The case against Ms. Yarimi, a wig maker with a robust social media presence, became a flashpoint among transportation activists. Ms. Yarimi, who drove a blue Audi A3 sedan with the license plate WIGM8KER, had a long history of driving infractions, according to New York City records, with more than $12,000 in traffic violation fines tied to her vehicle at the time of the crash.

The deaths of Ms. Saada and her daughters set off a wave of outrage in the city over unchecked reckless driving and prompted calls from transportation groups for lawmakers to pass penalties on so-called super speeders.

Ms. Yarimi “cared about only herself when she raced in the streets of Brooklyn and wiped away nearly an entire family,” Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, said in a statement after the sentencing. “She should not have been driving a car that day.”

Mr. Gonzalez had recommended the maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison.

On Wednesday, Ms. Yarimi appeared inside the Brooklyn courtroom wearing a gray shirt and leggings, with her hands handcuffed behind her back. During the brief proceedings, she addressed the court, reading from a piece of paper.

“I’ll have to deal with this for the rest of my life and I think that’s a punishment in itself,” she said, her eyes full of tears. “I think about the victims every day. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about what I’ve done.”

On the afternoon of March 29, a Saturday, Ms. Yarimi was driving with a suspended license, according to prosecutors. Around 1 p.m., she turned onto Ocean Parkway, where surveillance video shows her using her cellphone and running a red light, before continuing north, they said.

At the intersection with Quentin Road, Ms. Saada was stepping into the crosswalk with her two daughters and 4-year-old son. Nearby, a Toyota Camry was waiting to turn onto the parkway.

Ms. Yarimi sped through a red light and into the intersection. She barreled into the back of the Toyota and then shot forward, plowing into the Saada family. Her car flipped over and came to a rest about 130 feet from the carnage.

Ms. Saada and her daughters were killed, while her son was taken to a hospital where he had a kidney removed and was treated for skull fractures and brain bleeding. The Toyota’s five passengers — an Uber driver, a mother and her three children — also suffered minor injuries.

Ms. Yarimi’s car had been traveling 68 miles per hour in a 25 m.p.h. zone and showed no sign that brakes had been applied, prosecutors said. Ms. Yarimi sustained minor injures from the crash and was later taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

The episode caused immediate fury, drawing reactions from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams, who attended the Saadas’s funeral.

According to NYCServ, the city’s database for unpaid tickets, Ms. Yarimi’s Audi had $1,345 in unpaid fines at the time of the crash. On another website that tracks traffic violations using city data, the car received 107 parking and camera violations between June 2023 and the end of March 2025. Those violations, which included running red lights and speeding through school zones, amounted to more than $12,000 in fines.

In the months that followed, transportation safety groups and activists decried Ms. Yarimi’s traffic record and urged lawmakers in Albany to pass legislation to address the city’s chronic speeders.

Mr. Gonzalez on Wednesday said that Ms. Yarimi’s sentence showed “that reckless driving will be vigorously prosecuted.”

But outside the courthouse, the Saada family’s civil lawyer, Herschel Kulefsky, complained that the family had not been allowed to speak in court. “ They are quite disappointed, or outraged would probably be a better word,” he said, calling the sentence “the bare minimum.”

“I think this doesn’t send any message at all, other than a lenient message,” Mr. Kulefsky added.

New York

Video: What Bodegas Mean for New York

Published

4 days ago

November 17, 2025

Press Room

new video loaded: What Bodegas Mean for New York

Bodegas have been an essential part of New York City life for decades. Anna Kodé, a reporter at the New York Times, breaks down the history, challenges and triumphs of the bodega and the people who run them.

By Anna Kodé, Gabriel Blanco, Karen Hanley and Laura Salaberry

November 17, 2025