Paul Haggis Testifies In Detail About Night Of Alleged Sexual Assault
03.11.2022 - 22:41
/ deadline.com
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.
Haggis has not yet faced cross-examination in the New York sexual assault civil case brought against him by Breest, who alleges that the Oscar-winning Crash filmmaker and former Church of Scientology member forced her into oral sex and intercourse after they were both at a movie-screening party. In his second day on the stand, Haggis continued with a detailed and very different interpretation from Breest’s account of what happened in his apartment.
Haggis testified that a handful of times, Breest pulled back from kissing Haggis in the kitchen and said, “No, I shouldn’t,” and that later, in the guest bedroom when he was peeling off her tights, she said, “No, no no, I don’t want you to see me. I’m fat.” Haggis described the protests in the kitchen as a “cartoony sort of Betty Boop-y, playful, smiling ‘No, I shouldn’t,’” and that they both initiated more kissing.
After another pause, he said he stepped back, and said he asked her: “How old are you? Are you a teenager? If you want to do something, do it. If you don’t want to do something, don’t do it,” repeating what said was the only good piece of advice he ever got from a Scientology official.
He denied he said it in anger or that he used the expletive in Breest’s recollection of that exchange: “Don’t act like a f*cking 18-year-old.”
When she broke off another kiss and stepped back, Haggis said he asked her, “You’re not scared of me, are you?” in contrast to Breest’s recollection of “You’re scared of me, aren’t you?”
Haggis said he offered to escort Breest to the lobby and put