A jury orders Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis to pay at least $7.5 million to a woman who accused him of rape.
on Thursday to pay at least $7.5 million to a woman who accused him of rape in one of several #MeToo-era cases that have put Hollywood notables’ behavior on trial this fall.
Breest, 36, said Haggis then subjected her to unwanted advances and ultimately compelled her to perform oral sex and raped her despite her entreaties to stop. Haggis, 69, said the publicist was flirtatious and, while sometimes seeming “conflicted,” initiated kisses and oral sex in an entirely consensual interaction. He said he couldn’t recall whether they had intercourse.
The verdict came weeks after another civil jury, in the federal courthouse next door, decided that Kevin Spacey didn’t sexually abuse fellow actor and then-teenager Anthony Rapp in 1986. Meanwhile, “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson and former movie magnate Harvey Weinstein are on trial, separately, on criminal rape charges in Los Angeles. Both deny the allegations, and Weinstein is appealing a conviction in New York.
Four other women also testified that they experienced forceful, unwelcome passes — and in one case, rape — by Haggis in separate encounters going back to 1996. None of the four took legal action. During three weeks of testimony, the trial scrutinized text messages that Breest sent to friends about what happened with Haggis, emails between them before and after the night in question, and some differences between their testimony and what they said in early court papers.
Through testimony from Haggis and other ex-members, his defense argued that the church set out to discredit him and might have had something to do with the lawsuit.
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