Miriam Haley, a former television production assistant, on Tuesday afternoon took the stand in a Manhattan courtroom for a second time to begin recounting how she said Harvey Weinstein overpowered and sexually assaulted her in his apartment nearly 20 years ago.
Ms. Haley said she initially met Mr. Weinstein, then a powerful Hollywood producer, at a film premiere in London in 2004. She has said she reconnected with him years later as she was looking for an opportunity as a production assistant in New York.
Defense lawyers carefully listened on Tuesday as Ms. Haley spoke, a transcript of what she said during Mr. Weinstein’s first trial five years ago on hand, waiting to pounce on any differences in her retelling.
Ms. Haley’s testimony was one of the most highly anticipated and closely watched moments of Mr. Weinstein’s retrial, which began this month.
In 2020, Mr. Weinstein was convicted in New York of rape and a criminal sexual act based on the complaints of two women, one of them Ms. Haley. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but his conviction was overturned last year and a new trial was ordered. In the interim, prosecutors added a new indictment.
On Tuesday, Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, watched as Ms. Haley testified. She was not the first witness to testify for a second time. Ms. Haley’s former roommate told jurors last week about how a “very shaken and distraught and frightened” Ms. Haley hovered around her bedroom door while telling her that Mr. Weinstein had “forcibly put his mouth on her vagina without her consent.”
“I said, ‘Miriam, that sounds like rape,’” the woman, Elizabeth Entin, told the jurors. “‘I think you should call a lawyer.’”
As Ms. Haley began her testimony, a prosecutor, Nicole Blumberg, asked her to identify Mr. Weinstein. In response, she pointed to Mr. Weinstein sitting at the defense table. As she pointed, Mr. Weinstein, facing her with his arm over the back of his wheelchair, looked down at his left lapel.
Ms. Haley began telling her story publicly before the initial trial five years ago. Her accusations surfaced at the dawn of the #MeToo movement, as dozens of women came forward to recount what they said was Mr. Weinstein’s pattern of using his power to coerce women in Hollywood into sexual encounters, propelling the movement and his downfall.
Mr. Weinstein was known throughout his decades-long reign as a producer who could make careers. He was behind award-winning movies like “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting,” as well as the reality show “Project Runway,” where Ms. Haley worked briefly as a production assistant.
Mr. Weinstein is also charged with raping Jessica Mann, an aspiring actress who said Mr. Weinstein attacked her in 2013, and Kaja Sokola, a model whom prosecutors say he assaulted in a Manhattan hotel in 2006.
The producer offered his victims scripts and the promise of fame, Shannon Lucey, an assistant district attorney, said in her opening statements — and he “used those dream opportunities as weapons.”
The specifics of the encounters between Ms. Haley and Mr. Weinstein have been laid out in her previous testimony and in prosecutors’ statements.
Ms. Haley, who was raised in Sweden, met Mr. Weinstein at a movie premiere in London in 2004. About two years later, as she was looking for a new position, she saw him at the Cannes Film Festival in France and asked him if there were any opportunities at the Weinstein Company, his production firm in New York.
While in France, Mr. Weinstein invited her to a hotel for what Ms. Haley believed was a business meeting, she has said. There he commented on her legs, she said, and asked her for a massage.
After Ms. Haley got her post working on “Project Runway,” which was produced by Mr. Weinstein’s company, his advances continued, she has said. She did not have authorization to work in the United States, which Mr. Weinstein knew and used against her, according to prosecutors.
Throughout the summer of 2006, as Ms. Haley worked for his company, Mr. Weinstein tried to “elevate” their relationship, Ms. Lucey said, even showing up unannounced on one occasion and aggressively making his way into her apartment to demand that she travel with him to Paris. Ms. Haley refused at the time, telling him, “I know your reputation.” Mr. Weinstein left that day “defensive” and upset, she said.
After these episodes, Ms. Haley still agreed to travel to a film premiere in Los Angeles. On the day in July 2006 that Mr. Weinstein bought her ticket, he invited her to his apartment in Lower Manhattan, she said.
There, after offering her a drink, he lunged at her, holding her down and pushing her until she fell backward onto a bed, she said. Ms. Haley recalled that she was on her period, which she told Mr. Weinstein, but he pulled the tampon from her body and put his mouth on her genitals.
In their opening statements to the jury, Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers said that the women whom prosecutors call victims had entered consensual relationships because he had the key to the doors of fame. Arthur L. Aidala, a defense lawyer, told the jurors that he would help them “watch the whole movie.”
