Paul Haggis Takes Witness Stand In Sexual Assault Trial: “For Five Years I’ve Been Unable To Clear My Name”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says it is reviewing the status of Paul Haggis’ membership after a civil trial that resulted in the director being ordered to pay $7.5 million in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages. “The Academy will address this matter according to our Standards of Conduct and the due process requirements under California nonprofit corporation law,” the organization said in a news release.

A New York jury today found filmmaker Paul Haggis liable on all three counts of rape and sexual abuse in his treatment of Haleigh Breest, who left a party in Manhattan with him in 2013 and then sued the Oscar winner in 2017 claiming he repeatedly forced sex on her in his apartment that night. 

Leah Remini is standing up for a fellow former Scientology member — which would ordinarily be commendable. But this time the friend is Paul Haggis — and the setting is his civil rape trial.

Paul Haggis had an “awkward one-night stand” in 2013 with an infatuated young woman, Haleigh Breest, who wanted more intimacy from the Oscar-winning filmmaker and, when there was none, made up a rape allegation for a #MeToo-adjacent 2017 lawsuit that has “utterly destroyed him,” a lawyer for Haggis told jurors Wednesday in the three-hour first closing argument of his New York sexual assault civil 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 will testify Wednesday in the New York sexual assault civil case brought against him by Haleigh Breest, a lawyer for Haggis said Tuesday. The lawyer, Seth Zuckerman, said that Haggis’ ex-wife, Deborah Rennard, is scheduled to go first, followed by Haggis. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.