More women accuse Haggis of sex assault
LOS ANGELES — A civil lawsuit charging London, Ont.-native Paul Haggis with raping a publicist has prompted three additional women to come forward with sexual-misconduct accusations against the Oscar-winning filmmaker, including another publicist who says he forced her to perform oral sex, then raped her.
One of the other women speaking out told the Associated Press that Haggis tried to sexually assault her. “I need to be inside you,” she recalled him saying, before she managed to run away.
Another of the new accusers said Haggis held down her arms, forcibly kissed her on a street corner, then followed her into a taxi. She said she later escaped.
Asked about the new accusations, Christine Lepera, attorney for the 64-yearold screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby and Crash, said: “He didn’t rape anybody.”
Haggis has denied the original rape allegation in a counter-complaint to the lawsuit, and said the accuser and her lawyer had demanded a $9 million US payment to avoid legal action, which he characterized as extortion.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit, filed Dec. 15 in Manhattan, is identified in court papers as Haleigh Breest. The other three women subsequently came forward to Breest’s New York attorneys. They spoke to the AP on the condition that they not be identified for fear of retribution. The AP generally does not identify victims of sexual assault.
On Friday afternoon, Breest’s attorneys filed an amended complaint that includes details of the allegations lodged by the three new accusers.
In separate interviews with the AP, the three provided detailed accounts of encounters they say occurred between 1996 and 2015. The women were early in their careers in the entertainment business when, they say, the Hollywood heavyweight lured them to private or semi-private places under the guise of discussing productions or a subject of a professional nature.
They all said Haggis first tried to kiss them. In two of the cases, they said, when they fought back, Haggis escalated his aggression. The new rape accuser said she was a 28-year-old publicist working on a television show being produced by Haggis in 1996 when he called to ask to review photos from the show that night in her office. “I thought it was odd, but I agreed. He was the ultimate boss. I didn’t feel inclined to say no,” she said.
When Haggis arrived, she said, everyone else had left the office for the night and he insisted they speak in a back office. She said Haggis began kissing her as soon as they walked into the room.
“I just pulled away. He was just glaring at me and came at me again. I was really resisting. He said to me: ‘Do you really want to continue working?’ ” the woman said. “And then he really forced himself on me. I was just numb. I didn’t know what to do.”
She said he made her perform oral sex, then pushed her to the floor and raped her. When she returned to work the next day, she was so scared of Haggis that she asked a friend to come to work with her, she said.
Her account was corroborated by another friend, who said that in the weeks after the attack, the woman lost weight and appeared to be depressed. When she asked what happened, the woman said Haggis had raped her a few weeks earlier, the friend said. The friend spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because she still works in the entertainment industry and feared retaliation.
The accuser said she considered calling the police but feared that no one would believe her and worried that Haggis could end her career.
The woman said she felt inspired to come forward after seeing Haggis’s photo and a news story about Breest’s lawsuit, amid the growing #MeToo movement of women speaking out about sexual misconduct by powerful men in Hollywood, politics, the media and other industries.
Breest accuses Haggis of raping her after he lured her back to his apartment in Manhattan following a film première in 2013.
In an interview with The Guardian in October, Haggis spoke about allegations against Harvey Weinstein. “Although everyone thinks it is vile behaviour, you have got to focus on those who may have colluded and protected him. For me, they are as guilty as he is and in some cases more so, if I can say that.”