NEW YORK _ A former production assistant broke into tears Monday as she told a Manhattan jury how film tycoon Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 2006 in his SoHo loft and once again in a Tribeca hotel.
Despite her desperate pleas and futile attempts to fight him off, Mimi Haleyi said Weinstein easily overpowered her, pinning her down against her will before he pulled out her tampon and performed oral sex on her.
"Every time I tried to get off the bed he would push me back and hold me down," Haleyi said. "He pushed me down, he held me down, and by my arms. I said, 'No, no.' And that point I started realizing what was actually happening; I'm being raped."
A week later, Haleyi said she endured a second episode, when she met Weinstein at his request at a hotel in Tribeca.
"I was trying to make sense of what had happened, why it had happened," Haleyi said. "I wasn't sure how to handle it."
But it didn't take long for her to realize that she was in for more of the same.
"He took my hand and pulled me toward the bed," Haleyi said. "I just went numb. I thought, 'Here we go again.'"
Weinstein, she testified, literally added insult to injury during the sexual intercourse.
"He said something like 'you're a whore and a bitch," Haleyi said. "He thought that, like, somehow turned me on."
Prosecutors said the Hollywood movie mogul raped and sexually assaulted multiple young women, including Haleyi, over the course of decades.
Haleyi, 42, was introduced to Weinstein in 2004 at the European premiere of the movie "The Aviator" and later worked on a TV show he produced in New York City.
Weinstein's attorneys tried to dismiss her account of events, sharing a text message they said suggests she wanted to keep seeing him and the sexual encounters were consensual.
If convicted, he faces life in prison.
