Paul Haggis Rape Trial Begins With Focus on Scientology and Abuse of Hollywood Power

A fourth alleged rape victim of Danny Masterson will be permitted to testify in the That ‘70s Show actor’s Los Angeles trial.

Leah Remini testified Monday that Paul Haggis, and not his accuser, is the real victim in his New York sexual assault civil trial. 

Paul Haggis sparred with a lawyer Friday over the meaning of a woman saying “no,” explaining again that when Haleigh Breest said “no” to him peeling off her tights she was not refusing sex.

Paul Haggis was back on the witness stand today and said the only sex he remembers having with Haleigh Breest at his apartment in 2013 was consensual and limited to oral sex initiated by her. 

Paul Haggis took the witness stand today in his Manhattan trial for sexual assault, and the Oscar-winning Crash filmmaker and former Church of Scientology member’s first words when asked by his lawyer Priya Chaudhry how it felt to be testifying were: “I’m incredibly nervous, of course, and I’m very happy. Because for five years I’ve been unable to clear my name.”

UPDATED with afternoon session: The oldest daughter of filmmaker Paul Haggis said Monday there is “circumstantial” evidence of a Church of Scientology plot against her father, who is facing a rape accusation in New York civil court, after he walked away from the religious organization and became a vocal Scientology critic. 

A former high-ranking official in the Church of Scientology said Friday that the organization never forgets its enemies “until they are destroyed,” and he said that filmmaker Paul Haggis, who quit Scientology, remains one of its biggest targets. 

The judge at the center of Harvey Weinstein’s Los Angeles sexual assault trial concluded its first week of hearing testimony by admonishing the jury not to watch the trailer for She Said, the upcoming Universal movie about the events surrounding the New York Times’ investigation of Weinstein that led to its bombshell 2027 exposé and the start of the #MeToo movement.

A psychologist who testified for Anthony Rapp in his failed case against fellow actor Kevin Spacey took the stand Friday, again for the plaintiff, in the New York sexual assault civil trial of filmmaker Paul Haggis. 

UPDATED with afternoon session: A friend of Haleigh Breest’s who texted her in 2013 that filmmaker Paul Haggis had committed “borderline rape” against Breest dropped the “borderline” qualification in court on Thursday. 

UPDATED with afternoon session: A Los Angeles police officer testified Thursday during Danny Masterson’s rape trial that while didn’t remember the specifics of an initial meeting with Jane Doe #1 in 2004 at the LAPD Hollywood station, he did take her claims about being attacked by Masterson in his Hollywood Hills home in April 2003 “to be a sexual assault.”

Determined to expunge almost any mention of Scientology from Danny Masterson’s rape trial, defense attorney Phillip Cohen told the jury from the beginning that consistency would be core of his client’s case. That vow was very much on display Thursday as the lawyer sought to spotlight the supposed inconsistencies in the testimony of Jane Doe #3.  

A fourth Jane Doe testifying in the sexual assault civil trial of filmmaker Paul Haggis said Thursday that she was the target of an “attempted rape” by Haggis outside of her apartment building at night after an event at the Toronto Film Festival in 2015. 

A model-actress, identified as Jane Doe #1, resumed her account of a 2013 encounter with Harvey Weinstein, telling jurors that she “wanted to die” as he sexually assaulted her in her hotel room bathroom.

Haleigh Breest finished testifying Tuesday in her sexual assault civil trial against filmmaker Paul Haggis, and jurors began watching the video deposition of another Haggis accuser who has said she went to his office in Los Angeles in 2008 to discuss a possible book adaption and wound up fleeing the building when he suddenly tried to kiss her.

“She had told me not to use the word rape,” a visibly shaken Jane Doe #3 told a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Tuesday in the Danny Masterson trial. “She explained to me that you can’t rape someone you are in a relationship with,” the witness went on to say of a late 2003 conversation with a Scientology executive at the church’s Celebrity Centre in Hollywood.

A Los Angeles prosecutor told jurors on Monday that multiple accusers will provide graphic and violent accounts of being sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, as the producer faced his second criminal trial.

A Canadian woman testifying in the sexual assault civil trial of filmmaker Paul Haggis said Monday that when she rejected Haggis’ sexual advances at a television industry festival in Canada in 2006, he pinned her against a wall in his hotel room, and later groped and shoved her as she prepared to leave the hotel in a taxi.

Haleigh Breest, the woman accusing Oscar-winning Crash director Paul Haggis of raping her in 2013, finished her direct testimony Friday with a last round of friendly questioning from one of her lawyers, Zoe Salzman — and then faced a more combative interrogation lasting almost three hours without a break.

The sexual assault civil trial of Oscar-winning Crash writer-producer Paul Haggis continued today in Manhattan, with accuser Haleigh Breest back on the witness stand.