The director and screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby et Casino Royale69, arrived in court in the morning.
The civil trial in New York of Oscar-winning Canadian filmmaker Paul Haggis, accused by an advertising agent of rape in 2013, alleged facts which he denies, opened on Wednesday. The director of Crash (Collision) and screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby et Casino Royale, 69, arrived in court in the morning, noted an AFP photographer. He has been accused since December 2017 by an advertising agent working in the cinema, Haleigh Breest, of having raped her in January 2013, when she was 26 years old.
In the process, in the midst of a #metoo wave of freedom of speech on sexual violence and sexism against women, the filmmaker had been targeted by accusations of sexual assault by three other women. But he only appears in New York for the facts denounced by Haleigh Breest. More recently, last June, Haggis was arrested in southern Italy, again on suspicion of sexually assaulting a young woman, facts he has again denied.
According to several American media, the filmmaker’s lawyers suggested on Wednesday before the popular jury of the New York court that Haleigh Breest’s complaint had been guided by the Church of Scientology, with which Paul Haggis had broken up and which he has since criticized. . A thesis swept away by the plaintiff’s lawyers.
In her complaint, Haleigh Breest said that on the evening of January 31, 2013, after a film screening in Manhattan, the director had insisted that she come and have a drink at his house, when she said she preferred to go out to a bar. Once in her apartment, Paul Haggis had made many advances to her before forcing her to perform oral sex and then raping her again.
Known for being one of the creators of the series Walker Texas RangerPaul Haggis received the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay in 2006 for Crash (Collision). He was also the screenwriter of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, Memoirs of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, as well as episodes of the James Bond saga, ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘Quantum of Solace’.