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Weinstein Accuser Says, ‘The Second Time, I Blamed Myself’

Weinstein, 67, forcibly performed oral sex on Haleyi in his Crosby Street apartment, prosecutors allege.

Weinstein Accuser Says, ‘The Second Time, I Blamed Myself’
Harvey Weinstein, founder of Weinstein Co., attends the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S. (Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- A woman whose testimony could help send Harvey Weinstein to prison for life fought back tears as she told a jury at his sexual assault trial that she returned to see him even after he attacked her because she was “trying to regain some power” from him.

“I was still trying to make sense of what happened and felt trapped about not being able to do anything about it,” Miriam “Mimi” Haleyi told a jury of seven men and five women on Monday in New York state court.

“At that point I just thought, ‘Here we go again,’” Haleyi, 42, said of the alleged assaults in Manhattan in 2006. “I just felt like an idiot,” she said, sobbing.

Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hast asked Haleyi, who was a young production assistant on Weinstein’s “Project Runway” at the time, what she was thinking during the second alleged attack.

“I was feeling very, just ... I felt numb,” Haleyi said quietly.

Weinstein Accuser Says, ‘The Second Time, I Blamed Myself’

Haleyi accepted an invitation to meet Weinstein at the Tribeca Grand Hotel in Manhattan on July 26, 2006, a little more than two weeks after the initial alleged attack. Weinstein is charged in the first alleged assault, not the second. But Haleyi testified to a sense of helplessness she felt as he lured her back.

Weinstein, 67, forcibly performed oral sex on Haleyi in his Crosby Street apartment, prosecutors allege. She is one of two women he is charged with attacking. A third, the actor Annabella Sciorra, testified on Thursday that Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s, too long ago to be included in the charges. Prosecutors elicited Sciorra’s testimony to convince jurors the producer engaged in a long-running pattern of predatory sexual behavior. He could spend the rest of his life behind bars if convicted.

Weinstein maintains that any sexual encounters were consensual.

As a serial predator, prosecutors say, Weinstein subjected Haleyi to a series of tests to see how far she’d go for the boost he could give her career. He invited her to his hotel suite, suggested she go to Paris with him and continued to increase the pressure, Haleyi testified. Soon enough, she said, he asked for a massage.

Haleyi said she told him, “No, sorry, I’m not a masseuse.”

On Monday, Haleyi told jurors that after Weinstein arranged for her to work on “Project Runway,” he started pushing harder. On the eve of a trip to Los Angeles that he arranged for her in July 2006, he invited Haleyi, then 29, to his apartment.

Haleyi said she thought she’d drop by briefly to say hello. Weinstein’s driver dropped her off, and she was escorted to an elevator, which opened onto the producer’s expansive loft, she testified. Weinstein invited her to join him on the sofa and then “lunged” at her, she said.

“I tried to get away from him,” she told the court. “He insisted. He kept walking into me. I walked backward. And he kind of led me -- it’s hard to explain -- he was coming toward me, and I was backed into a bedroom that was off the open space area.” She described the bedroom as decorated with children’s drawings.

In court, Haleyi raised her arms and bent them backward to show the jury how she says Weinstein pinned her down by her wrists and threw his weight on top of her. She testified that she told him she was menstruating and didn’t want to have sex, hoping that would stop him.

“I had explained during this entire time that I didn’t want to have any sex,” she said.

Weinstein Accuser Says, ‘The Second Time, I Blamed Myself’

Weinstein ripped out her tampon and performed oral sex on her, Haleyi testified. She told jurors she was “mortified” and that she began to do a mental calculus about her fast-receding choices.

“When I realized what was actually happening -- I was being raped -- I started weighing my options in my head,” she said. “If I escalate things, if I scream rape? Will he start doing something if I have a chance to get away? Could I be able to get to the elevator, to the only elevator? Will he catch me?”

During two and a half hours of cross-examination, Weinstein’s lawyer Damon Cheronis noted that when Haleyi went public with her accusations in 2017 and later testified before a grand jury, she didn’t talk about the second incident, at the Tribeca Grand.

“You testified he didn’t force you to have sex at the Tribeca Grand?” Cheronis asked.

“It’s because I didn’t resist,” Haleyi said.

Cheronis showed her several emails she sent Weinstein before and after the assault, through 2009, in which she appeared to set a friendly tone, including a June 2008 email she signed “lots of love, Miriam.”

“That’s what you signed, ‘lots of love?’” Cheronis asked.

“Yes,” Haleyi said. “I wanted a job.”

Cheronis pointed out that Haleyi never mentioned her continuing communications with Weinstein when she spoke out publicly against him, and that she pitched him on a TV show and let him pay for her flight to London in early August 2006, shortly after the second alleged assault.

“The truth is you have a consensual relationship with Harvey Weinstein?” Cheronis asked.

“No,” Haleyi responded. “It was not consensual.”

Prosecutors may have anticipated this line of cross-examination last week when they presented the testimony of Barbara Ziv, a forensic psychiatrist. She told the jury why a woman might continue a professional relationship after a sexual assault.

“The women think, ‘OK, I’ll put it behind me and not think about it. I don’t want this to ruin my reputation,’” Ziv testified.

On Monday, Haleyi told the jury that when she went to see Weinstein at the Tribeca Grand after the first alleged assault, she thought she was meeting him in the hotel’s lobby. But a member of his staff escorted her to a room, where Weinstein grabbed her, dragged her onto a bed and raped her, Haleyi testified.

Haleyi grew quiet when Hast asked for her reaction to the second alleged assault.

“The first incident was deeply embarrassing, but I didn’t blame myself,” Haleyi said. “The second time, well, I blamed myself.”

The case is People v. Weinstein, 450293/2018, New York State Supreme Court (Manhattan).

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To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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