A few days after Harvey Weinstein's trial started in 2020, the lawyers talked privately for the first time with a woman who used to be a model. She said he made her have oral sex.

But the jury never heard about Kaja Sokola’s claim.

On Wednesday, Sokola started to tell her story to a new group of people in court.

Sokola did not look at Weinstein when she walked past him to the witness stand in a New York court.

When she started talking about her life before the attack in 2006, Weinstein looked at her with his hand over his mouth.

Weinstein says he is not guilty. His lawyers say the women agreed to sex because they wanted jobs in movies and TV. The lawyers also say the women talked to him for some time after they say he hurt them.

Sokola is 39 years old and was born in Poland. She is a therapist and a writer. She said she just started a company that makes films. She sued Weinstein after many people started talking in 2017 about how he treated women. This helped begin the #MeToo movement against bad sexual actions. The court said Sokola later got $3.5 million.

Sokola said she didn't want to be a model, but she liked acting and writing. However, her mother and sister wanted her to join a modeling competition in Poland when she was 14. She won and got a job with a modeling company. Soon, she had to manage going to school and doing photo shoots.

She said the next two years helped her grow up quickly. In 2002, when she was 16, she went to New York alone to try to become a model.

Sokola will probably speak more on Thursday, but she hasn't been asked about Weinstein yet. The lawyers said she met him when she went to New York for modeling in 2002.

In her lawsuits, Sokola said that soon after she met Weinstein, he invited her to lunch to talk about her job. But then he hurt her sexually. The lawsuits said he also treated her badly and hurt her feelings for many years after that.

The criminal charge is about something that happened in May 2006. Sokola says that Weinstein made her have oral sex in a hotel in Manhattan at that time.

Prosecutors said it happened after Weinstein helped Sokola get a small part in the film “The Nanny Diaries.” He also met her older sister who was visiting. Sokola wanted to impress her sister.

Her sister, Dr. Ewa Sokola, who is a heart doctor, told the people in court on Wednesday that her sister was happy she knew him.

She said the three people met in a hotel. They talked about Italian movies and Weinstein's health. Then he and the model left together.

Kaja Sokola seemed stressed when she came back about 30 minutes later, like someone waiting for important news. But she did not talk about the alleged sexual assault, Dr. Sokola told the court.

She said she was very surprised to hear about the claim ten years later, when she read it in a magazine.

Weinstein's lawyers will ask Kaja Sokola questions soon. Last month, the defense lawyer asked why she waited a long time to tell her story. The other lawyers said the women were afraid to speak because Weinstein was rich and powerful.

Prosecutors said they started looking into Sokola's story after her lawyers called just before Weinstein's first trial. But prosecutors stopped looking after he was found guilty and the coronavirus pandemic was getting worse.

They started the Sokola investigation again after the court in New York said Weinstein was not guilty.

Weinstein's lawyers tried to stop the court from hearing Sokola's story again, but they could not. They said the government lawyers were trying to add a new problem to the case to make other people who said he did bad things seem more believable.

Another woman, Miriam Haley, said last week that Weinstein made her have oral sex with him in 2006. The third woman who says he hurt her, Jessica Mann, will probably speak later.

Usually, The Associated Press does not say the names of people who say someone sexually attacked them. They only say the names if the people give permission. Haley, Mann, and Sokola gave permission.