Former “Project Runway” production assistant Miriam “Mimi” Haleyi took the witness stand Monday in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial and tearfully described how the disgraced movie mogul allegedly forced himself on her and yanked a tampon out of her.
Haleyi, 42, a Finland native currently living in London, told Manhattan Supreme Court jurors that Weinstein invited her to his Soho apartment on July 10, 2006, and forced oral sex on her.
Shortly after Haleyi accepted an invitation from Weinstein to go with him to Los Angeles for the premiere of “Clerks II,” he sent a driver to pick her up and bring her to his apartment, she testified.
“He greeted me, he invited me in. Asked me if I wanted anything to drink and I believe the television was on and we were just having a normal exchange and sat down on the sofa,” Haleyi said of Weinstein.
Then Weinstein made a move on her, she claimed.
“I got up from the sofa and I said, ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ I just kind of tried to reject him and push him away … and he kissed me and fondling me,” she testified.
Haleyi said she “tried to walk away from him” and tried “to get away,” but Weinstein “pulled” her toward him.
“He was coming toward me physically and I was backed into a bedroom that was on the corner of that open space area,” she said. “I walked backwards because he was pushing me with his body until I got to the bed and I fell backwards onto the bed and I tried to get up and he pushed me down.”
Haleyi continued, “I just said, ‘No, no. I don’t want this to happen. This is not going to happen, I am on my period.’”
Through tears, Haleyi recounted how every time she “tried to get up off the bed, he would push back down and hold me down.”
“He pushed me down. He held me down. He held my arms to stay like that. I said, ‘No, no.’”
At that point, Haleyi said, she “started to realize what was actually happening — I was being raped.”
“I couldn’t even get away from him at all — let alone out of the apartment. Ultimately, after a while I just checked out,” she said. “He held me down on the bed and he forced himself on me orally. I was on my period. I had a tampon in there. I was mortified … He forced himself on me orally, he put his mouth on my vagina.”
Haleyi added, “I kept trying to tell him, ‘No, don’t go there and don’t do that. I’m on my period. I have a tampon in.’ It was as if he didn’t believe me and he said something like, ‘Where is it, then?’ like that and he actually pulled my tampon out.”
She said she was “in so much shock” and “just checked out.”
Afterward, Haleyi said, she doesn’t “remember much,” “except when I left the apartment, I remember walking by the building looking to see if the driver was there.”
The driver was not downstairs.
Weinstein, 67, stared at Haleyi as she walked into the courtroom wearing a white blazer over a black dress.
Haleyi first met Weinstein at an afterparty for a film premiere in London when she was working as an assistant to late British movie and theater producer Michael White, who worked on films like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
She then ran into Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006 and asked him if he had work for her in New York. He told her to meet him at an office suite at the Majestic Hotel in Cannes.
There, an assistant met her downstairs and took her up to see the powerful producer.
“The assistant let me inside of the room — the suite — and left and so we [she and Weinstein] greeted each other normally,” Haleyi said. “And I can’t remember the exact conversation from there on, but all of a sudden it turned him to him asking if I did massages and if I could give him a massage and I declined.”
She said she left shortly after, feeling “humiliated.”
Weinstein later followed up with her to set her up as a production assistant on the set of “Project Runway” and Haleyi accepted the offer, working for $125 per day.
At the time, Haleyi was living in the East Village with a pal and did not have a work visa.
Sometime before the alleged sex attack, Weinstein pushed his way into Haleyi’s apartment after she declined an offer to go with him on a private jet to Paris for fashion shows, she testified.
He was “almost begging” her to go to Paris with him, she said, then Haleyi recalled that she said, “I know you have a terrible reputation with women,” and Weinstein “got offended by that” and ultimately “backed off.”
After the alleged attack, Haleyi said, she did go to Los Angeles but skipped the premiere of “Clerks II.”
She said she met up with Weinstein another time at the Tribeca Hotel — where he allegedly attacked her while calling her profanities.
“He had managed to convince me to meet him again just to do something like that to me again and I felt like an idiot for having believed whatever he was saying even though I don’t remember the conversations,” Haleyi said.
She claimed that Weinstein “led me onto the bed … I just laid there … he had intercourse with me.”
“He said something like, ‘You’re a whore and a bitch.’ He thought that would somehow turn me on,” Haleyi testified as Weinstein, who is not charged in the alleged second sexual encounter, shook his head in the courtroom.
During cross-examination by defense lawyer Damon Cheronis, he produced a June 27, 2008, email that Haleyi sent to Weinstein mentioning the New York Post.
“Hi Harvey, How are you? Great to see you in Cannes,” read the email, which goes on to say how she read an article in “today’s New York Post about the Addams Family being turned into a Broadway musical.”
“Just to remind you what a genius I am — didn’t i tell you that was a great idea like 3 years ago at the mercer bar..hmm? Lots of Love Miriam,” the email continued.
Weinstein is charged with two counts of predatory sexual assault, two counts of rape and one count of criminal sex act stemming from the allegations of three women — who include, Haleyi, hairstylist Jennifer Mann and actress Annabella Sciorra.
He faces up to life in prison if convicted on the most serious charge.
The former Hollywood heavyweight entered the courthouse shortly before 9:30 a.m., pushing his new Drive Medical Nitro Euro-style walker.
Last week, Sciorra, best known for her role in the hit HBO show “The Sopranos,” delivered emotional testimony alleging that Weinstein raped her more than 20 years ago inside her Manhattan apartment.
Sciorra’s allegation cannot be prosecuted as rape due to New York’s statute of limitations, but it is being used as part of both predatory sexual assault counts, which do not have a temporal element.
More than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual assault or harassment, though the fallen Tinseltown tycoon has claimed all of his sexual encounters were consensual.
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