By MICHAEL R. SISAK and JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A former model tearfully testified Thursday that Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her when she was 16 years old, calling it the most “horrifying thing I ever experienced” to that point.

Kaja (KEYE’-ah) Sokola, an aspiring actor at the time, told jurors at Weinstein’s #MeToo retrial that the onetime movie honcho put his hand inside her underwear and made her touch his genitals at a Manhattan apartment in 2002.

Sokola said she saw Weinstein’s eyes — “black and scary” — staring at her in a bathroom mirror as it happened.

Kaja Sokola arrives at Manhattan criminal court before Harvey Weinstein’s trial on Thursday, May 8, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Afterward, she said, he told her to keep quiet about what had happened, touting that he’d made the careers of A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow and Penélope Cruz and that he could help her Hollywood dreams come true.

“I’d never been in a situation like this,” Sokola testified, as riveted jurors scribbled notes. “I felt stupid and ashamed and like it’s my fault for putting myself in this position.”

Weinstein is not charged with any crime in connection with the alleged assault, which Sokola first detailed in a lawsuit a few years ago. The timing put it outside the statute of limitations for criminal charges.

Sokola is testifying because Weinstein is charged with forcibly performing oral sex on her at a Manhattan hotel four years later, around the time of her 20th birthday. Prosecutors say it happened after Weinstein arranged for Sokola to be an extra in the film “The Nanny Diaries.”

Harvey Weinstein appears in state court in Manhattan for his retrial on Thursday, May 8, 2025 in New York. (Steven Hirsch /New York Post via AP, Pool)

Sokola reported the allegation to authorities a few days into Weinstein’s first trial in 2020, but was not a part of that case. Prosecutors added her to the retrial, joining two women who testified in the first case, after his conviction was overturned last year.

Weinstein, now 73, looked down and away from Sokola as she recounted the earlier allegation, pressing his left thumb and index finger against his face like a shield.

Sokola testified that she first met the then-studio boss at a Manhattan restaurant in 2002, three or four days before the alleged assault. During the short chat, she said, Weinstein asked her if she wanted to be an actress.

A few days later, she said, he invited her to lunch — ostensibly to talk about acting — but instead took her to an apartment, where led her into a bedroom and then a bathroom, instructed her to take her top off and assaulted her.

“He told me to take my clothes off and I didn’t want to do that. I was panicking,” Sokola testified. “And then he said that if I want to be an actress, that’s what actors do in films, so I should get used to it. If a director says you have you take your clothes off, you have to take your clothes off. I was scared. I was scared of him.”

Sokola avoided looking at Weinstein as she walked to the witness stand — testifying for a second day after detailing on Wednesday her upbringing in Poland, entrée into modeling and her professional career as a psychotherapist and author who recently launched a film production company. She peered briefly at Weinstein when asked Thursday to point him out in court.

Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denies sexually assaulting anyone.

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His lawyers contend that his accusers consented to sexual encounters with him in hopes of getting movie and TV opportunities, and the defense has emphasized that the women stayed in contact with him for a while after the alleged assaults. The women, meanwhile, say the then-producer used the prospect of show business work to prey on them.

Sokola sued Weinstein after industry whispers about his behavior toward women became a chorus of public accusations in 2017, fueling the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct. Prosecutors have said Sokola eventually received $3.5 million in compensation.

Prosecutors have said they began investigating Sokola’s claims in 2020 but set the inquiry aside after Weinstein was convicted. They revived the investigation after New York’s highest court reversed his conviction.

Weinstein’s lawyers fought unsuccessfully to keep Sokola out of the retrial, accusing prosecutors of “smuggling an additional charge into the case” to try to bolster other accusers’ credibility.

One of the others, Miriam Haley, testified last week that Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006. The third accuser in the case, Jessica Mann, is expected to testify later.

The Associated Press generally does not name sexual assault accusers without their permission, which Haley, Mann and Sokola have given.

By SCOTT BAUER and TODD RICHMOND, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The father of a Wisconsin teenage girl who killed a teacher and fellow student in a school shooting was charged with felonies Thursday in connection with the case, police said.

The shooting occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison last December.

The shooter’s father, Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, of Madison, was taken into custody around 3:45 a.m. Thursday, police said.

Rupnow was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a child and two counts of providing a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 resulting in death. All three charges are felonies, punishable by up to six years in prison each. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in court on Friday.

Rupnow’s daughter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, opened fire on Dec. 16, 2024, at Abundant Life Christian School, killing a teacher and a 14-year-old student before killing herself. Two other students were critically injured.

Jeffrey Rupnow did not immediately respond to a message The Associated Press left on his Facebook page. No one immediately returned voicemails left at possible telephone listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow. Online court records indicate he represented himself in the couple’s 2022 divorce and do not list an attorney for him in that case.

Police had said they were investigating how Natalie Rupnow obtained two guns she had the day of the attack. Police have not discussed a clear motive in the attack. Former Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said shortly after the shooting that a “combination of factors” motivated the shooting, but he declined to specify what they were.

Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest parent of a school shooter to face charges associated with an attack.

Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.

The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon.

In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license.

Killed in the shooting were Abundant Life teacher Erin Michelle West, 42, and student Rubi Patricia Vergara, 14.

Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school that offers prekindergarten classes through high school. About 420 students attend the institution.

By The Associated Press

Hardly any other country marks the end of World War II with the same fanfare and fervor as Russia, for which the victory over Nazi Germany 80 years ago remains a source of immense pride and a defining moment of history.

Victory Day, celebrated on May 9, is Russia’s most important secular holiday, reflecting its wartime sacrifice. But it’s also used by the Kremlin to bolster patriotism and regain the superpower prestige it lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia for 25 of those 80 years, has turned Victory Day into a key pillar of his tenure and has tried to use it to justify his 3-year-old invasion of Ukraine.

He has also sought to underline the failure of Western efforts to isolate Moscow by inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders to the festivities, which this year have been overshadowed by reports of Ukrainian drone attacks targeting Moscow and severe disruptions at the capital’s airports, as well as cellphone internet outages on Wednesday.

A look at why Victory Day is so important for Russia and Putin:

The Soviet sacrifice of World War II

The Soviet Union lost a staggering 27 million people in what it calls the Great Patriotic War from 1941-45. That sacrifice left a deep scar in the national psyche.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and quickly overran the western part of the country. They got as close as 30 kilometers (under 19 miles) from Moscow by October of that year, but the Red Army rebounded and routed the invaders.

Soviet troops dealt crushing defeats to Germany in 1943 in Stalingrad and Kursk. and then drove the Nazi forces back across the western Soviet Union all the way to Berlin.

Putin has noted that every seventh Soviet citizen was killed, while the United Kingdom lost one out of every 127 and the United States one out of 320.

“The Soviet Union and the Red Army, no matter what anyone is trying to prove today, made the main and crucial contribution to the defeat of Nazism,” Putin wrote in 2020.

A Putin family story from World War II

Putin is deeply emotional to the history of World War II, saying “we will always remember the high price the Soviet people paid for the victory.”

He often invokes stories from his parents, Vladimir and Maria, in the war, and the death of his 2-year-old brother, Viktor, known as “Vitya,” during the 2 1/2-year Nazi siege of his home of Leningrad, now called St. Petersburg.

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”It was the place where my mother miraculously managed to survive,” Putin wrote. “My father, despite being exempt from active duty, volunteered to defend his hometown.”

He also recalled in a magazine article how his father talked about a scouting mission behind Nazi lines when his comrades were killed and he survived by hiding in a swamp and breathing through a reed while German soldiers walked a few steps away.

Putin’s father was badly wounded. After leaving the hospital, he walked home on crutches to see morgue workers taking his wife’s body away for burial.

“He came up to her and it seemed to him that she was breathing, and he said to the orderlies, ‘She’s still alive!’” Putin’s father recounted to his son.

The morgue workers replied, “She’ll die on the way, she won’t survive.” But Putin said his father pushed them away with crutches and forced them to carry her back to their apartment.

World War II’s role in Kremlin policies

Putin’s emphasis on World War II history reflects not only his desire to showcase Russia’s military might but also his effort to rally the country behind his agenda.

World War II is a rare event in the nation’s divisive history under Communist rule that is revered by all political groups, and the Kremlin has used that sentiment to encourage national pride and underline Russia’s position as a global power.

Victory Day parades are a massive show of its armed forces, with thousands of troops and scores of heavy equipment, including mobile launchers carrying nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, rolling across Red Square, and flyovers of dozens of warplanes. Military parades, fireworks and other festivities are held in cities across the country.

Authorities also encourage May 9 demonstrations featuring what is known as the “Immortal Regiment,” in which people carry photos of relatives who fought in World War II. Putin joined those rallies for several years, carrying a picture of his father.

Using World War II to justify the invasion of Ukraine

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Putin declared it was aimed at the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of its neighbor, falsely alleging that neo-Nazi groups were shaping Ukraine’s politics under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish. The claims were vehemently dismissed by Kyiv and its Western allies.

Putin tried to cast Ukraine’s veneration of some of its nationalist leaders who cooperated with the Nazis in World War II as a sign of Kyiv’s purported Nazi sympathies. He regularly made references to Ukrainian nationalist figures such as Stepan Bandera, who was killed by a Soviet spy in Munich in 1959, as an underlying justification for the Russian military action in Ukraine.

“The Kremlin has mixed those issues and used the victory over Nazi Germany as a foundation for building anti-Ukrainian narratives,” said political analyst Nikolai Petrov. “In Putin’s mind and in the Kremlin’s plans, the victory over Nazis rhymes with the victory over the Ukrainian neo-Nazism as they put it.”