A jury ordered Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis Thursday to pay not less than $7.5-million to a girl who accused him of rape in one in every of a number of #MeToo-era circumstances which have put Hollywood notables’ behaviour on trial this fall. Jurors additionally plan to award extra punitive damages.
Veering from intercourse to red-carpet socializing to Scientology, the civil court docket trial pitted Haggis, identified for writing greatest image Oscar winners Million Greenback Child and Crash, towards Haleigh Breest, a publicist who met him whereas working at film premieres within the early 2010s.
After hugging her attorneys, Breest stated she was “very grateful” for the decision as she left court docket. In a press release launched later, she stated she was grateful “that the jury selected to comply with the info – and believed me.”
Haggis stated he was “very disillusioned within the outcomes.”
“I’m going to proceed to, with my group, combat to clear my title,” he stated as he left the courthouse along with his three grownup daughters. One had wept on a sister’s shoulder as the decision was delivered.
After a screening afterparty in January 2013, Haggis supplied Breest a raise dwelling and invited her to his New York residence for a drink.
Breest, 36, stated Haggis then subjected her to undesirable advances and finally compelled her to carry out oral intercourse and raped her regardless of her entreaties to cease. Haggis, 69, stated the publicist was flirtatious and, whereas typically seeming “conflicted,” initiated kisses and oral intercourse in a wholly consensual interplay. He stated he couldn’t recall whether or not they had intercourse.
After a day of deliberating, jurors sided with Breest, who stated she suffered psychological {and professional} penalties from her encounter with Haggis. She sued in late 2017.
Whereas awarding her $7.5-million to compensate for struggling, the jury concluded that punitive damages must also be awarded. Jurors return Monday for extra court docket proceedings to assist them determine that quantity.
The decision got here weeks after one other civil jury, within the federal courthouse subsequent door, determined that Kevin Spacey didn’t sexually abuse fellow actor and then-teenager Anthony Rapp in 1986. In the meantime, That ‘70s Present actor Danny Masterson and former film magnate Harvey Weinstein are on trial, individually, on legal rape prices in Los Angeles. Each deny the allegations, and Weinstein is interesting a conviction in New York.
All 4 circumstances adopted the #MeToo upwelling of denunciations, disclosures and calls for for accountability about sexual misconduct, triggered by October 2017 information studies on a long time of allegations about Weinstein.
Breest, particularly, stated she determined to sue Haggis as a result of his public condemnations of Weinstein infuriated her.
4 different girls additionally testified that they skilled forceful, unwelcome passes – and in a single case, rape – by Haggis in separate encounters going again to 1996. Not one of the 4 took authorized motion.
The Related Press typically doesn’t establish individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted until they arrive ahead publicly, as Breest has achieved.
Haggis denied the entire allegations. His defence, in the meantime, launched jurors to a number of girls – together with ex-wife and former long-time Dallas solid member Deborah Rennard – who stated the screenwriter-director took it in stride after they rebuffed his romantic or sexual overtures.
Throughout three weeks of testimony, the trial scrutinized textual content messages that Breest despatched to associates about what occurred with Haggis, e-mails between them earlier than and after the evening in query, and a few variations between their testimony and what they stated in early court docket papers.
The 2 sides debated whether or not Haggis was bodily able to finishing up the alleged assault eight weeks after a spinal surgical procedure. Psychology consultants supplied duelling views about what one known as widespread misconceptions about rape victims’ behaviour, comparable to assumptions that victims would don’t have any subsequent contact with their attackers.
And jurors heard in depth testimony in regards to the Church of Scientology, the faith based by science fiction and fantasy creator L. Ron Hubbard within the Nineteen Fifties. Haggis was an adherent for many years earlier than publicly renouncing, and denouncing, Scientology in 2009.
By means of testimony from Haggis and different ex-members, his defence argued that the church got down to discredit him and may need had one thing to do with the lawsuit.
No witnesses stated they knew that Haggis’ accusers or Breest’s attorneys had Scientology ties, and his attorneys acknowledged that Breest herself doesn’t. Nonetheless, Haggis lawyer Priya Chaudhry sought to influence jurors that there have been “the footprints, although perhaps not the fingerprints, of Scientology’s involvement right here.”
The church stated in a press release that it has no involvement within the matter, arguing that Haggis is making an attempt to disgrace his accusers with an “absurd and patently false” declare. Breest’s attorneys, Ilann Maazal and Zoe Salzman, have known as it “a shameful and unsupported conspiracy principle.”
The Canadian-born Haggis penned episodes of such well-known collection as Diff’hire Strokes and Thirtysomething within the Nineteen Eighties. He broke into films with a splash with Million Greenback Child and Crash, which he additionally directed and co-produced. Every movie received the Academy Award for greatest image, for 2004 and 2005 respectively, and Haggis additionally received a screenwriting Oscar for Crash.
His different credit embrace the screenplays for the James Bond films On line casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
