Canadian filmmaker Paul Haggis told jurors Wednesday that he believed he had a consensual encounter with a woman who later accused him of rape, portraying himself as a 'flirt' who acted on what he thought was mutual attraction.
Screenwriter and film director Paul Haggis arrives at court for a sexual assault civil lawsuit, Nov. 2, 2022, in New York. Canadian filmmaker Paul Haggis told jurors Wednesday that he believed he had a consensual encounter with a woman who later accused him of rape, portraying himself as a “flirt” who acted on what he thought was mutual attraction.
“I said, ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’” she testified. She is seeking unspecified damages; there are no criminal charges in the case. 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 humor 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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