Filmmaker Haggis testifies in rape lawsuit against him

Screenwriter and film director Paul Haggis arrives at court for a sexual assault civil lawsuit, Wednesday, November 2, 2022, in New York (Julia Nikhinson/AP/PA)

Filmmaker Paul Haggis entered the witness box on Wednesday in the trial of a rape lawsuit against him, but he did not immediately discuss the sexual assault claims of five women who have testified.

Instead, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and director began what could be days of testimony by focusing on his years-long clash with the Church of Scientology.

Mr Haggis’s lawyers have been trying to suggest that the lawsuit might be the product of a Scientology plot against him, though they haven’t provided direct proof of a connection between the star-studded church and his accusers, only one of whom is suing. Her lawyers, and the church, call the argument a bogus conspiracy theory.

For five years I’ve been unable to clear my name, and now I will

Haggis said he was nervous but “very happy” to testify.

“For five years I’ve been unable to clear my name, and now I will,” he told jurors.

The plaintiff, publicist Haleigh Breest, earlier gave the jury an extensive account of the alleged 2013 rape. Ms Breest, 36, sued in 2017 for unspecified damages; there are no criminal charges in the case.

Mr Haggis, 69, contends that the encounter was consensual.

A sometimes tearful Mr Haggis acknowledged having “a number of affairs” while married to his second wife, actor Deborah Rennard, from 1997 until a 2010 separation and a divorce six years later.

Mr Haggis, known for writing the early-2000s best picture Oscar winners Million Dollar Baby and Crash, has not yet given the jury his account of what happened after he and Ms Breest went to his Manhattan apartment following a movie premiere.

He also has not detailed his interactions with the four other women who testified that he sexually assaulted them on separate occasions between 1996 and 2015.

His testimony so far has largely focused on his decades-long membership and highly publicised split in around 2009 with Scientology, a system of beliefs, teachings and rituals focused on spiritual growth. It was founded by science fiction and fantasy author L Ron Hubbard in the 1950s.

Mr Haggis’s lawyers have floated the notion that the church somehow generated the lawsuit to take down a famous dissenter, though they have agreed there is no evidence that Ms Breest has any ties to the religion. Nor have any witnesses testified that they know of a link between Scientology and Ms Breest’s lawyers or between the faith and Haggis’s other accusers.

But one of Mr Haggis’s lawyers, Priya Chaudhry, has said the “circumstantial evidence of Scientology’s involvement here will be powerful”.

The defence has had ex-Scientologists, including one of his daughters, relate what they portrayed as church efforts to bring up damaging information about him or his family after he left the organisation and called it “a cult” in a 2011 New Yorker article.

“I was part of what ultimately was a very corrupt organisation,” he told jurors on Wednesday.

The church has said Mr Haggis is trying to shame his accusers with an “absurd and patently false” theory.

“The church has nothing to do with the claims against Mr Haggis, nor does it have any relation to the attorneys behind the case,” the organisation said in a statement as the trial opened.

Ms Breest has waived her right to anonymity.

The trial continues.