Paul Haggis on Thursday testified that the publicist accusing him of rape initiated kissing that night, giggled while they were taking their clothes off, told him “I’m good at this” before performing oral sex and was “smiling and friendly” when they encountered each other more than a week later.
Haggis also denied the allegations of the supporting witnesses in the civil lawsuit, in which former freelance events publicist Haleigh Breest is seeking unspecified damages.
“I’m scared,” the “Crash” director told the jury in his second day of testimony. “I don’t know why women, why anyone, would lie about things like this.”
At one point, Haggis asked for a brief break, saying he felt “humiliated” testifying about the allegation while his daughters were watching in court. One of his daughters then put her arm around him as they left the courtroom.
Haggis admitted that Breest was apprehensive at first as the two began making out in apartment, where they went after meeting up at a film premiere. He testified earlier Thursday (see below) that she resisted only in a “playful” manner, initiating the kissing again after he backed off and checked in with her.
But he said Breest began to become more “confident” as the encounter progressed, and once again initiated kissing when he expressed some “ambivalence” about where it was going. He said she giggled as they were disrobing on the guest room bed, and that as she moved him in a position to receive oral sex, said, “I’m good at this.”
“The way she said it was kind of adorable,” he said.
Breest testified that Haggis eventually forced her to have intercourse, and her legal team brought in a DNA analyst who testified last month that she found his seminal fluid on the tights Breest wore that night. Despite that, Haggis said he had “no knowledge … no memory” of vaginal penetration.
“I didn’t know if it occurred or not,” he testified.
Haggis said he fell asleep and, after waking up to go to the bathroom, went to his own bedroom. When he awoke he said he was disappointed to find that Breest had left, and did not leave behind any kind of note or a phone number.
He said he emailed her some photos of the event from the night before, hoping she might reply with her number – which she did not. When they first saw each other again 10 days later, Haggis said she was “smiling and friendly,” though their interaction was “awkward” as one might expect after a one-night stand.
A few days later, Haggis said he decided she was too “emotionally immature” to pursue. After that, he said he noticed Breest would be absent from her usual post at events any time he brought a girlfriend along, but when he didn’t have a woman on his arm, she was friendly and behaved normally.
Haggis said he never told anyone about that night, and when asked how often he thought about it in the four years between that night and the lawsuit, he responded: “Honest to God, never.”
Earlier Thursday:
Paul Haggis took the stand for a second day Thursday, telling the New York jury that Haleigh Breest, the former events publicist who is suing him for sexual assault, seemed to be “having a really good time” and initiated kissing during the 2013 encounter at his Manhattan apartment.
The “Crash” and “Million Dollar Baby” filmmaker has maintained since the allegations first surfaced that he and Breest had consensual sex that night, and that Scientology is somehow behind the civil case. Breest “never gave me any indication it was anything other than consensual” until the 2017 lawsuit, Haggis said Thursday.
Haggis acknowledged that a few times, Breest pulled away from the kissing that started in his kitchen, saying “No, I shouldn’t.” Later, as he was removing her tights on a bed in the guest bedroom, Haggis testified that she told him “No, no no, I don’t want you to see me. I’m fat.”
He said her protests in the kitchen were of the “cartoony, Betty Boop-y, playful, smiling” variety, and that she, too, initiated more kissing at that point.
Haggis also offered a different version of the menacing things Breest said he told her that night. The publicist has said Haggis told her “Don’t act like a fucking 18-year-old” and “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
Haggis said when she started her “playful” protests, he stepped back and said: “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.”
Then she broke off another kiss, he said, and this time she stepped back. That’s when he says he asked her: “You’re not scared of me, are you?”
He said he offered to send her home in a cab, and though she seemed conflicted, she stayed. He says she continued to smile and engage with him as he gave her a tour of his Soho apartment.
Once they were in the guest room, Haggis said, they both went to the bed and started removing clothes. Haggis said he turned down the lights after she objected to his removing her tights, then laughed as she helped him remove the tights and performed oral sex on him.
Haggis said she was gone when he woke up in the morning.
Breest testified last month that Haggis pressured her to come to his apartment, where things spiraled quickly out of her control until she was ultimately raped – and that she has no connection to Scientology.
Haggis first took the stand Wednesday and, for the first time since the accusations began to fly, spoke publicly about them, saying he was “happy” to do so: “For five years, I’ve been unable to clear my name, and now I will.”
On Thursday, still under the friendly questioning of his own lawyers, Haggis described the beginning of the night in February 2013 much the same as Breest did last month. He said she accepted his offer of a ride home from the film premiere before the two went up to his Soho apartment for a nightcap.
But whereas Breest testified that she told him she did not plan to spend the night and that his advances came early and at some shock, Haggis said Thursday that she was “flirtatious” and “having a really good time, it seemed to me,” according to The Daily News.
Haggis was expected to continue his testimony Friday, and still has not faced cross-examination.