Harvey Weinstein accuser sobs as she describes trying to fight him off: 'I'm being raped'

NEW YORK – Former production assistant Mimi Haleyi sobbed as she told jurors Monday at Harvey Weinstein's sex crimes trial that she tried to fight off the movie mogul and told him “no, no, no” while he sexually assaulted her.

“I did reject him, but he insisted," said Haleyi, one of the two women whose accusations are the basis of the five charges against Weinstein. "Every time I tried to get off the bed, he would push me back and hold me down.”

Haleyi said she thought, “I’m being raped” and considered different options: “If I scream rape, will someone hear me?” Then, she said, she “checked out.”

“I couldn’t get away from him at all. … I checked out and decided to endure it," she said. "That was the safest thing I could do.”

Haleyi testified that the powerful producer was "offended" by her rebuffs to his repeated advances. She said Weinstein showed up at her apartment and begged her to join him on a trip to Paris for a fashion show. She said he wouldn't take no for an answer.

“At one point, because I just didn’t know how to shut it down, so to speak ... so I said, ‘You know you have a terrible reputation with women, I’ve heard,’ ” Haleyi said.

The then-revered Hollywood honcho “got offended,” she said. "He stepped back and said, ‘What have you heard?’ ”

Haleyi said Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in his apartment in Soho in July 2006. She went there in a car he sent, she said, after he invited her for what she thought would be a meeting to discuss whether he had work for her on his productions.

Instead, he pushed her on a bed and sexually assaulted her despite her telling him no, she said.

Haleyi went public with her accusations more than two years ago when she appeared at a news conference in New York with her lawyer, Gloria Allred (who has been observing the trial), in October 2017, shortly after the deluge of accusations against Weinstein began in the wake of media exposés of his alleged sexual misconduct dating back decades.

Haleyi, who met Weinstein in 2004 at a London movie premiere and ran into him at Cannes in 2006, said she was aware of Weinstein's bad reputation with women and turned down various invitations from him, including a request for a massage, according to the opening statement by Manhattan District Attorney Meghan Hast.

On the night in question, Hast described the "110-pound" Haleyi as "no match for the 300-pound Weinstein."

Weeks later, Hast said, Haleyi went to a hotel room to meet Weinstein because "she saw no way out." She said Haleyi was sexually assaulted again, although Haleyi didn't mention this subsequent encounter in 2017.

On the witness stand, Haleyi said she didn’t call the police because she was working in the USA on a tourist visa and was scared of Weinstein’s power, telling jurors, “Obviously, Mr. Weinstein has a lot more power and resources and connections and so forth. I didn’t think I’d stand a chance.”

Even after that second encounter, Hast said, Haleyi didn’t cut Harvey Weinstein out of her life. She was “feigning everything was fine,” that they had “a normal, professional relationship," but "she found her voice in October 2017,” Hast said in her opening arguments.

On cross examination, defense lawyer Damon Cheronis brought up Haleyi’s continued interactions with Weinstein, displaying on a large screen a friendly email she sent him after they ran into each other in Cannes in 2008.

Haleyi conceded that she'd been in contact with Weinstein, "not often, but yes, occasionally,” and that she sent the email in 2008 after a newspaper article reminded her of a conversation they had weeks before the alleged assault.

Monday's developments followed two full days of witness testimony last week, when prosecutors called the first Weinstein accuser among the half-dozen expected to testify, "Sopranos" actress Annabella Sciorra, to the stand.

Sciorra wept as she testified Thursday that Weinstein raped her in her New York apartment in the winter of 1993-94, describing the encounter in graphic detail. After she confronted him about it weeks later, she said he told her in a "menacing" way not to tell anyone about it.

Friday, prosecutors called forensic psychiatrist Barbara Ziv to testify about "rape myths" and "rape trauma" to help explain why accusers might delay coming forward for years and why they might remain in contact with their assailants.

Friday afternoon, prosecutors called actress Rosie Perez to back up Sciorra's testimony that she told her friend Perez, and only Perez, about Weinstein's alleged attack a few months later.

Perez said Sciorra called her in 1993 to say something had happened to her: “I think it was rape," Perez quoted her saying through tears. Sciorra didn't say who until later when she told Perez it was Weinstein, Perez testified.

Also Friday, Sam Anson, an executive at Guidepost Solutions, a private investigations firm, took the stand to testify that the besieged movie producer contacted him in 2017 and gave him a "red flag list" of people, including accusers Rose McGowan and Sciorra, who he feared might extort him.

McGowan was one of Weinstein's earliest accusers. Her accusation that he raped her years ago led to the media accounts in 2017 that described decades of alleged sexual misconduct by Weinstein.

Weinstein, 67, is charged with five sex crimes, including rape and sexual assault, stemming from encounters with Haleyi and another woman, Jessica Mann, who said Weinstein raped her in 2013. She is likely to take the stand.

Three other accusers are expected to testify about what they said Weinstein did to them, although their accusations are not included in the charges, either because they're too old or the alleged incidents didn't occur in New York.

Dawn Dunning, Tarale Wulff and Lauren Young will be called by prosecutors to back their assertion that Weinstein engaged in a pattern of alleged bad acts.

He pleaded not guilty to all charges and denied all nonconsensual sex. He has been charged with similar sex crimes in Los Angeles; that case is on hold until the New York case is resolved.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harvey Weinstein trial: Mimi Haleyi says she tried to fight rape