Canadian director Paul HaggisOscar winner for the movie “Crash,” it was condemned this Thursday for rape in New York after a civil trial, in which a jury said so responsible for three sexual offences against your plaintiff.
Haggis will have to pay compensation of $7.5 million to Haleigh Breest, publicist who accuses him of raping her in 2013, when she was 26 and he was 59, at the director’s Manhattan apartment after a film premiere, according to local media.
The trial took place over three weeks in the Manhattan Supreme CourtFive years later Breest pressed charges, and the jury did decided unanimously that even the director of ‘Million Dollar Baby’ andhe is guilty of abusing the woman.
The jury, consisting of two women and four men, found after their deliberations that Haggis had committed three offences: one of rape in the first degree, another for sexual abuse and a third for a criminal sexual act.
The consequences of that ruling are economicsince it is a civil and not a criminal trial, but in addition to the millionaire compensation for the victim, determined today, another compensation for damages has yet to be decided, which will probably be known on Monday.
The complainant offered harsh testimony, in which she assured feeling like a “trapped animal” when the director took her to his Soho apartment instead of a bar and tried to wriggle away from the man, who allegedly forced her to perform oral sex on him before raping her.
The defendant argued that the meeting was consensual and asserted so the Church of Scientology, With whom he broke up a few years before the reported events, following the denunciation of Breest and other women who testified against him, according to the New York Post.
