A woman who previously worked as a production assistant for a TV show made by the Weinstein Company has become the latest to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault.

Calling him “extremely persistent and physically overpowering”, Mimi Haleyi on Tuesday accused the entertainment mogul of sexually assaulting her using force at his home in 2006.



“I told him no, no, no, but he insisted,” Haleyi said to a group of reporters in New York City. Her voice occasionally catching, she claimed Weinstein had “orally forced himself” on her after pinning her on to a bed and removing her tampon. “I was mortified. I was in disbelief and disgusted.”

Since the start of this month, Weinstein has faced numerous allegations of harassment and sexual abuse. He has apologized for causing pain by his behavior but has categorically denied all accusations of rape, non-consensual sex or sexual assault.

The allegations against Harvey Weinstein – a list Read more

Haleyi, who was flanked by the women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred on Tuesday as she described her encounter, worked in her 20s as a production assistant on a television show produced by the Weinstein Company. She had first met Weinstein in 2004, she recalled, at the European premiere of the film The Aviator.



Another time she encountered him, at the Cannes Film Festival, she had offered to work on any upcoming productions taking place in New York. But a meeting at his hotel room to discuss potential opportunities turned uncomfortable when he asked her for a massage, she claimed. She declined and left.

Haleyi claims Weinstein later came to her New York apartment and pleaded with her to come on a romantic-sounding trip to Paris. She declined again but later accepted an invitation to his SoHo home, wanting to “maintain a good relationship with him” as an important person in the entertainment business.

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer and backed me into a room which was not lit,” she claimed. “He held me down on the bed. I tried to get him off me and kept asking him to stop, but it was impossible.”

Haleyi joins a growing number of women who claim Weinstein’s sexual misconduct goes beyond harassing women to engage with him in sex or nude massages, and crosses into the territory of forcible sexual assault. Numerous women have claimed Weinstein used his physical size to overpower or intimidate women into performing or receiving sex acts.

In response to some of those allegations, the Los Angeles police department and law enforcement officials in London are investigating Weinstein for sexual abuse.

The New York attorney general has opened a civil rights investigation into the Weinstein Company, which fired Weinstein shortly after the first accusations of sexual misconduct became public.

Weinstein has said he denies many of the claims of harassment and “unequivocally” denies allegations of “non-consensual sex”.

In a statement, a representative from Weinstein has said: “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr Weinstein. With respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual.”

