CANADIAN FILMMAKER ACCUSED OF RAPE
Oscar winner Paul Haggis faces allegations of sexual assault from several women,
LOS ANGELES— A civil lawsuit charging London, Ont.-native Paul Haggis with raping a publicist has prompted three additional women to come forward with their own sexual misconduct accusations against the Oscarwinning 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 his clutches.
When asked about the new accusations, Christine Lepera, lawyer for the 64-year-old 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 $9 million (U.S.) 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 lawyers. They spoke to The Associat- ed Press on the condition that they not be identified for fear of retribution. The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they were the victims of sexual assault. In separate interviews, the three new accusers 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.
Breest accuses Haggis of raping her after he lured her back to his apartment in Manhattan following a film premiere in 2013.
She had accepted his offer of a ride home. Instead, she said, he brought her to his apartment in SoHo and invited her inside for a drink. Fearing she would insult him if she declined the offer, Breest went into his apartment and had a glass of wine.
Quickly, Haggis became “sexually aggressive,” she said in her lawsuit, and began kissing her.
Haggis then forced her into a bedroom and onto a bed and tried to tear off her tights, she said. She called out “no,” but he wouldn’t stop, she said.
He forced her to perform oral sex on him, he fondled her, asked if she liked anal sex, then raped her, according to the lawsuit.
The new accuser who said Haggis forcibly kissed her, then followed her into her taxi, said the encounter oc- curred in 2015 in Canada. She said she was in her late 20s at the time and knew Haggis from film events.
She said that when the taxi arrived at her apartment, Haggis threw money at the driver, chased her and kissed her again before she was able to get into her residence and shut the door. She said he waved his hands at her once she was inside and sent her harassing text messages for the next 24 hours, until she blocked him.
After years of working in television, Haggis broke out in the mid-2000s when he became the first screenwriter to write back-to-back best picture winners, Million Dollar Baby and Crash, which he also directed. He also gained attention for his defection from Scientology in 2009, and public criticism of the religion in a 2011 New Yorker article, a book and an HBO documentary. All the women interviewed denied any connection to Scientology.
Haggis has presented himself as an advocate of the underdog in his films, addressing racism, euthanasia and war.