Harvey Weinstein Pushed, Grabbed and Then Attacked, Witness Testifies in NYC Trial

It was the summer of 2006, the night before they were scheduled to go to a premiere in Los Angeles, when Harvey Weinstein invited Miriam Haley to his apartment in SoHo.Ms.Haley had spent three weeks as a production assistant on one of Mr.

Weinstein’s television shows and felt she could not refuse, she told jurors in Manhattan on Wednesday.But as she sat on a couch next to him, he lunged, she said.He overwhelmed her with kisses and groping.

When she refused his advances and stood, he followed, she recalled, and kept “grabbing me and pushing me with his body.” She was backed into a bedroom and fell onto a bed, where every time she tried to get up, he forced her back down.“My brain was calculating what the best course of action was for me in that moment,” Ms.Haley told the jury, at times speaking through tears.

“I decided the smartest thing to do — safest, rather — is to check out, endure it and have it over with and leave.”It was the second day of testimony for Ms.Haley, who was being questioned by a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

She is the first to testify of the three women whose accusations are at the center of Mr.Weinstein’s retrial in New York.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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