UPDATED with the extra particulars: Paul Haggis took the witness stand at the moment in his Manhattan trial for sexual assault, and the Oscar-winning Crash filmmaker and former Church of Scientology member’s first phrases when requested by his lawyer Priya Chaudhry the way it felt to be testifying have been: “I’m incredibly nervous, of course, and I’m very happy. Because for five years I’ve been unable to clear my name.”
Prosecution lawyer Ilann Maazel instantly objected, arguing that Haggis assertion was irrelevant, however was overruled by Judge Sabrina Kraus.
The eleventh day of testimony within the civil go well with introduced by Haleigh Breest started with Haggis’ ex-wife and fellow ex-Scientologist Deborah Rennard, who advised the courtroom he by no means was violent along with her and by no means compelled intercourse on her.
“I know of no reputation with him regarding women,” Rennard testified. “He had great relationships with women. I never heard of anything negative.”
Haggis wept on the stand as he talked about Rennard, his second spouse, who he admitted dishonest on repeatedly earlier than and after they married in 1997. They separated in 2010 and formally divorced in 2016, two years earlier than the lawsuit. “She’s been my best friend ever since,” he stated, eradicating his glasses to wipe away tears with a handkerchief. “So few people stand up for you in situations like this.”
The couple’s grownup son James Haggis was in courtroom at the moment, watching together with the defendant’s three daughters from the sooner marriage, and Rennard after she had completed testifying.
When the courtroom recessed for lunch, Haggis had not but addressed the rape allegations immediately. Breest is in search of unspecified unspecified damages from a declare that he compelled her into unprotected oral intercourse and intercourse in his condominium in Manhattan in 2013. Four different girls referred to as to testify by Breest’s workforce to date stated that Haggis assaulted or tried to assault them sexually in separate incidents between 1996 and 2015. Breest was working as a contract occasions publicist on the time of the alleged incident. She was 26, and Haggis was 59.
But his first 90 minutes of testimony — a lot of it autobiography — laid the groundwork for him to disclaim that he had ever dedicated rape or tried to pressure intercourse on anybody. In discussing his 31 years in Scientology — to which he stated he gave a “stupid amount” of cash within the tens of millions — Haggis stated he additionally paid for thus referred to as “auditing” classes that church clergy carried out utilizing a so referred to as “E-Meter,” a form of lie detector for the soul.
Haggis stated he underwent these non secular, confessional interrogations into “what have you done that the church would want to know about” willingly. They ranged from half-hour to 12 hours, and he collectively paid a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} for them. The check administrator took handwritten notes, and Haggis stated he later discovered that many classes have been videotaped unbeknownst to their topics.
The auditing revealed a church hierarchy “fixated” on sexual conduct in addition to any signal of disloyalty to the church, he stated.
“I grew up Catholic,” Haggis, a local of London, Ontario, Canda, stated. “So I confessed absolutely everything in auditing.”
Chaudhry requested if the intercourse he confessed to within the audits was consensual, non-consensual or “something else.”
“Consensual,” he stated.
“Did you ever reveal anything else regarding women?” she requested.
“There was nothing else to reveal regarding women other than sexual relationships,” Haggis stated.
Haggis stated that at one level he glimpsed the gathering of file folders containing the handwritten notes of his auditing classes. It was “a big pile as high as the ceiling,” together with “hundreds of folders with my name on them,” and sufficient folders in all to fill a room 15 toes throughout and 12 toes excessive.
Haggis, on the stand, was additionally the self-deprecating determine that many witnesses talked about earlier than him.
“Can you tell us some of the shows you have worked on?” Chaudhry requested.
“Just the good ones? Or?” he replied to laughs.
Ticking off work for reveals together with Love Boat, Three’s Company, One Day at a Time, Diff’lease Strokes and Facts of Life, he stated, “I made a very good living as a very bad writer for many many years,”
He stated his work on the status ‘90s way of life drama, Thirtysomething, marked a change in his outlook and his fortunes. He received his first Emmys, after which turned the present runner of a CBS drama, Family Law, primarily based loosely on the attorneys who dealt with his first divorce. Then he turned the present over to another person to focus on breaking into movie.
Threaded between his profession arc have been tales of a dysfunctional relationship together with his first spouse Diana Gettas. He stated that when, after they have been engaged, he “hit her in the cheek with my fist” when she attacked him with a chef’s knife. He stated that in any other case she did all of the hitting of their relationship. He stated he would ether endure the blows or lock himself within the toilet.
He stated he was nonetheless residing in Canada, working in building for his father and dreaming of Hollywood when he met a few “long-haired freaks” like himself, and one confirmed him a duplicate of “Dianetics,” the founding e-book of Scientology. He stated one led him right into a small workplace above a Woolworth’s 5 and dime retailer, the place he made the choice to hitch the church in hopes of discovering assist for his relationship together with his future spouse. “They said basically they could fix it,” he stated.
On her cross-examination, second spouse Rennard stated she didn’t know the substance of the allegations from Breest and the opposite accusers and didn’t know that he advised a few of these girls intimate particulars about his married intercourse life. She stated a letter she wrote in assist of him after the lawsuit was not influenced by the $20,000 in month-to-month alimony assist she was receiving from Haggis on the time.
She stated she was “trepidatious” about testifying, fearing Scientology — which she stop with Haggis — would possibly come after her. The Haggis authorized workforce has argued, thus far with out proof, that the Breest case may be a Scientology operation to destroy him for qutting and turning into a Scientology critic.
Maazel challenged Rennard on this level, saying. “You said you were “trepidatious … but you issued a public statement and sent it to press outlets around the world.”
Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.
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