Paul Haggis Suggests Scientology Behind Rape Allegations as He Takes Witness Stand
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Paul Haggis expressed feeling “incredibly nervous” but “very happy” to take the witness stand Wednesday in the trial of a civil rape lawsuit against him.
“For five years, I’ve been unable to clear my name,” the Oscar-winning filmmaker told jurors in a lower Manhattan courtroom. “Now, I will.”
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The civil rape trial stretched into its second week as Haggis testified that he consensually had sex with former film publicist Haleigh Breest in 2013. Breest, who filed a lawsuit in 2017, is suing Haggis for claims the filmmaker forced her to perform oral sex on him and then raped her in his Soho apartment after a movie premiere nearly a decade ago.
“[Breest] never gave me any indication it was anything other than consensual,” he told jurors during the hours-long testimony.
Court was dismissed before Haggis got to the heart of his testimony about what he claims happened that night, but he started to recount the moment when he first Breest in the kitchen of his apartment.
“She acted a little surprised,” he said. “I went ‘Really?’ and said, ‘We’ve been flirting a lot…'”
Prior to that night, Breest and Haggis had interacted at film premieres hosted by the Cinema Society, where Breest worked as a freelance film publicist, and also briefly corresponded via email. He told jurors he thought Breest, who was 26 at the time, was “adorable” and interpreted her behavior as flirtatious — “leaning in, giving [her] full attention, laughing, smiling, giggling.” Haggis, who was 59 years old in 2013, emphasized their banter felt “different than professional.”
“I liked her. She seemed to like me. We talked a lot,” he said. “There seemed to be a mutual attraction.”
A significant portion of his testimony focused on Scientology. His lawyers have been trying to suggest Breest’s rape charge came in retaliation over Haggis’ decision to leave the religion and then loudly criticize the Church of Scientology, of which he was a member for decades. Attorneys for the plaintiff and defense each seemingly agreed last week there’s “no evidence” to suggest Breest has ties to the controversial church. Her attorneys have chalked up the argument to a conspiracy theory.
On Wednesday, defense attorney Priya Chaudhry returned to a 2011 New Yorker article titled “The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology,” which has been referenced several times during the trial. In the piece, Haggis predicted that “within two years, you’re going to read something about me in a scandal that looks like it has nothing to do with the church.”
He told jurors that he made that comment because while he was a member of the church, he studied written policy about its practices for dealing with enemies. “You don’t leave them wounded. You destroy them,” he said of Scientology’s tactics. “Their intensity of attacks on me increased [after the article was published].”
Chaudhry also pressed Haggis on his two ex-wives. During his first marriage, which was to Diane Christine Gettas and lasted from 1977 to 1994, he recalled a violent incident in which she came at him with a knife. In self-defense, he says, he hit her in the cheek and accidentally gave her a black eye.
“I felt awful. She had a black eye and went to work and told people I hit her,” he remembers. “She thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I was ashamed of myself.”
In his second marriage, to Deborah Rennard, he admitted he “was not the best husband in any way.”
“I cheated on her,” he tearfully told jurors. “We were supposed to be monogamous, and I wasn’t.” Once they got married in 1997, he recalled having “a number of affairs,” though he maintained the dozens of flings that took place outside his marriage were consensual.
Rennard and Haggis were legally divorced in 2016 after separating years earlier, though they remain close friends. She testified on Haggis’ behalf on Wednesday, alleging her ex-husband “had great relationships with women. I never heard of anything negative.” She also described his “sarcastic, self-deprecating sense of humor” and called their split “the most amicable divorce in the Guinness World Records book.”
So when she heard about Breest’s lawsuit, she remembers finding it “really hard to believe.”
“It has nothing to do with what I experienced in the 30 years I’ve known him,” his ex-wife said.
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