Accuser details alleged New York assault

Harvey Weinstein accuser Mimi Haleyi testified Monday that weeks after arriving in New York to work for one of his shows, she found herself fighting in vain as the once-revered showbiz honcho pushed her onto a bed and sexually assaulted her, undeterred by her kicks and pleas of, “no, please don’t do this, I don’t want it.”

Haleyi was the first to testify of the two women whose allegations led to Weinstein’s New York City criminal case. She described how the film producer turned a friendly meeting at his Manhattan apartment in July 2006 into a terrifying ordeal that had her contemplating escape plans as he forcibly performed oral sex on her.

“I was kicking, I was pushing, I was trying to get away from his grip,” the former “Project Runway” production assistant testified. “He held me down and kept pushing me down to the bed. Every time I tried to get up he pushed me down.”

Yet just two weeks later, Haleyi said, she was accepting an invitation to Weinstein’s hotel room, where he pulled her into bed for sex.

Haleyi said she “just felt like an idiot” for letting Weinstein convince her to meet again, but thought seeing him could help her regain power as she tried to make sense of the alleged assault. Haleyi said she didn’t want to be intimate with Weinstein, but said she didn’t think Weinstein forced her to have sex.

Weinstein, 67, has insisted any sexual encounters were consensual.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault, unless they agree to be named as Haleyi has.