NEW YORK — Filmmaker Paul Haggis told jurors Wednesday that he believed he had a consensual encounter with a woman who later accused him of rape, portraying…
Publicist Haleigh Breest alleges that he forced her to perform oral sex and then raped her in 2013 as she repeatedly told him no.Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Ottawa SUN, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You may unsubscribe any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails. Postmedia Network Inc.
Haggis agreed with some parts of his accuser’s account of how she ended up alone with him in his downtown Manhattan loft: He offered her a ride home from a movie premiere and invited her for a drink at his apartment. She responded by suggesting a bar instead. When he said he preferred the apartment, she accepted but told him she wasn’t spending the night.
Breest’s lawyers haven’t yet gotten their chance to cross-examine Haggis, who is known for writing the early-2000s best picture Oscar winners “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash.” Breest was a publicist who moonlighted at premieres that he sometimes attended. In testimony that veered from self-deprecating humour to a few tears as he recalled a failed marriage, Haggis did say he has “always been a big flirt” and acknowledged having “a number of affairs” while married to his second wife, actor Deborah Rennard, from 1997 until a 2010 separation and a divorce six years later.
But one of Haggis’ lawyers, Priya Chaudhry, has said the “circumstantial evidence of Scientology’s involvement here will be powerful.”
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