Rape accuser testifies against filmmaker Haggis
NEW YORK (AP) >> He was a famous moviemaker. She was a publicist working a film premiere where he was a VIP guest. He’d offered her a lift home and then invited her to his apartment for a drink.
Once there screenwriterdirector Paul Haggis abruptly tried to kiss her, backed her into his refrigerator, and had a question for her, accuser Haleigh Breest told a jury Thursday.
“Are you scared of me?” he asked, according to her testimony.
And so began, Breest said, a sexual assault that ended with the Oscar winner raping her. She’s suing him in a civil case that’s now on trial.
Haggis maintains the 2013 encounter was consensual, and his lawyer has argued that Breest called it rape because she’s out for money. She’s seeking unspecified damages.
In a steady, unsparing tone, Breest recounted what she said was a terrifying, painful attack that left her shocked and “really struggling to comprehend what had happened.”
“I couldn’t understand how somebody who seemed like a nice guy would do that,” she said.
As she spoke without looking at him, Haggis, 69, watched largely expressionlessly, sometimes rubbing his bearded chin or taking notes.
The Associated Press generally doesn’t identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Breest has done.
Breest, now 36, said she first met the “Crash” and “Million Dollar Baby” screenwriter in 2012 at a premiere afterparty where she was working.
Breest and Haggis exchanged occasional professional emails and party chitchat, she said, over the months before their paths crossed again at another premiere party she worked on Jan. 31, 2013.
A tipsy — but not stumbling drunk — Breest accepted the filmmaker’s offer of a ride, and then his invitation for a drink, she told jurors. She said she suggested someplace public instead, but he pushed for his apartment in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, and she didn’t want to offend one of her employer’s red-carpet guests.
“But just so you know,” she testified that she told him, “I’m not sleeping in SoHo tonight.”
Yet Haggis’ advances began as soon as she put her bags down in his loft’s open kitchen, Breest said.
“You’ve been flirting with me for months,” he soon said, according to her.
“I don’t even know you,” she said she replied.
Breest said she dodged him and thought she’d politely defused the situation when he started showing her the apartment. But when they reached a guest bedroom, Haggis “became aggressive very quickly,” pushed her onto the bed and pulled off her tights and clothes as she tried to keep them on and told him to stop, she said.