Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis has been ordered to pay at least $7.5 million in damages to a woman who accused him of rape at his New York apartment.
Publicist Haleigh Breest, 36, said she accepted a lift home with Haggis after a 2013 screening of Steven Soderbergh film “Side Effects” and agreed to go to his Soho apartment for a drink.
But she told a civil trial Haggis then subjected her to unwanted advances, forced her into oral sex, and raped her.
Haggis, who wrote and directed Academy Award winner Crash, insisted the claims were untrue, arguing they had kissed and become intimate consensually.
However, the court heard from four other women who accused Haggis, 69, of unwanted advances, including one who said she was raped by the filmmaker.
Jurors have now ordered Haggis to pay $7.5 million (£6.3m) in damages to Ms Breest, with further punitive damages still to be decided.
Ms Breest, who said she suffered psychological damage and harm to her career, told the Manhattan court she decided to sue after hearing Haggis publicly condemn disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
“This man raped me and he is presenting himself as a champion of women to the world”, she said.
After the verdict, Ms Breest said: “I am grateful that I had the opportunity to seek justice and accountability in court — and that the jury chose to follow the facts — and believed me.”
In his defence, Haggis accused the women of lying and suggested the Church of Scientology – which he left and denounced in 2009 – may be behind the rape claims.His lawyer Priya Chaudhry claimed there were “the footprints, though maybe not the fingerprints, of Scientology’s involvement here”, but Ms Breest’s lawyers derided it “a shameful and unsupported conspiracy theory”.
Canadian-born Haggis, who wrote James Bond films Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, was silent as he left court. His lawyers claimed he had not faced a fair trial, while Ms Breest’s representative called the verdict a victory for the MeToo movement.
