The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who's being sued within the civil case, maintains that their 2013 encounter was consensual.
He was a well-known moviemaker. She was a publicist working a movie premiere the place he was a VIP visitor. He’d provided her a elevate dwelling after which invited her to his condo for a drink.
And now screenwriter-director Paul Haggis had abruptly tried to kiss her, backed her into his fridge, and had a query for her, accuser Haleigh Breest informed a jury Thursday.
“Are you afraid of me?” he requested, in response to her testimony.
And so started, Breest stated, 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 referred to as it rape as a result of she’s out for cash.
In a gentle, unsparing tone, Breest recounted what she stated was a terrifying, painful assault that left her shocked and “actually struggling to understand what had occurred.”
“I couldn’t perceive how any individual who appeared like a pleasant man would try this,” she stated.
As she spoke with out taking a look at him, Haggis, 69, watched largely expressionlessly, typically rubbing his bearded chin or taking notes. He might select to testify later within the trial.
Breest, now 36, stated she first met the Haggis — identified for writing Oscar finest photos winners Crash, which he additionally directed, and Million Greenback Child — in 2012 at a premiere afterparty. She had a aspect job with a company that coordinates such occasions.
Breest and Haggis went on to alternate occasional skilled emails and social gathering chitchat, she stated, over the months earlier than their paths crossed once more at one other premiere social gathering on Jan. 31, 2013.
After they interacted a bit throughout the occasion, a tipsy — however not stumbling drunk — Breest accepted the filmmaker’s provide of a experience, after which his invitation for a drink, she informed jurors. She stated she tried to shift the setting to someplace public, however he pushed for his condo in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, and he or she didn’t need to offend one in every of her employer’s red-carpet visitors.
“However simply so ,” she testified that she informed him en route, “I’m not sleeping in Soho tonight.”
But Haggis’ advances started as quickly as she put her baggage down in his loft’s open kitchen, Breest stated.
“You’ve been flirting with me for months,” he quickly stated, in response to her.
“I don’t even know you,” she stated she replied.
Breest stated she was in a position to dodge and deflect his makes an attempt to kiss her for a bit, and thought she’d succeeded in politely defusing the state of affairs when he began a pleasant tour of the condo. However as they checked out a visitor bed room, Haggis “grew to become aggressive in a short time,” pushed her onto the mattress and pulled off her tights and garments as she tried to maintain them on and informed him to cease, she stated.
Then, she stated, he pressured her to carry out oral intercourse and wished intercourse. She stated she requested to take a bathe as a refined approach to get out of the room, however he adopted her there.
Then, as she left the toilet to attempt to get her garments, she stated, he put his arms on her shoulders from behind, steered her again to the visitor bed room and made an additional sequence of undesirable sexual strikes that culminated in rape.
“I used to be like a trapped animal. There was nothing for me to do,” she stated.
Breest stated she handed out quickly afterward, awoke alone on the mattress the subsequent morning and left with out seeing Haggis once more.
The Related Press typically doesn’t establish individuals who say they've been sexually assaulted except they arrive ahead publicly, as Breest has carried out.