Canadian director Paul Haggis, who is under house arrest after being charged with raping a woman at a hotel while he was running a film festival in Italy, admitted to an Italian newspaper that he made two “mistakes” but floated several uncorroborated theories and assumptions as he denied raping anyone.
“My first mistake was to allow someone I hardly knew to come and see me. It was nonsense,” he told La Repubblica, admitting that the unnamed British woman who initially said her rape wounds needed medical treatment was a guest in his hotel in Ostuni, Puglia, and that they had what he calls consensual sex.
“The second mistake occurred on the last morning, when something happened that I found particularly unpleasant and I decided to end this situation. I accompanied that woman to the airport a few hours before her flight.”
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The woman was found at the airport in Brindisi in a state of confusion, according to police reports. She then reported the incident to police who arrested the screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby and Crash fame.
Prosecutors alleged that the woman, who is a dual Russian-British citizen, “suffered repeated non-consenting sexual assaults” including one so violent she was “forced to seek medical attention” before Haggis dumped her at the airport.
“I was raped for days,” the woman told the investigating prosecutor Antonio Negro. “We were supposed to work together, but instead he raped me from Sunday evening to Wednesday.”
Haggis’ lawyer previously suggested to The Daily Beast and other outlets that the woman had wanted to be the next Bond girl and had offered to sleep with Haggis for the role, despite the fact that the actor has nothing to do with the Bond series or any other movies in production at the moment. Haggis, who co-wrote two James Bond films, nevertheless agreed and had consensual sex, his lawyer said.
After the woman was examined by police, a judge ruled that she did not have injuries consistent with the type of rape she accused Haggis of, and he was released to house arrest. But they did not drop charges against him.
In the latest interview, which La Repubblica ran Tuesday as a verbatim Q&A at the director’s request, Haggis went on the offensive, making several claims based on his accuser’s perceived behavior. He suggested that the woman may have been put up to the charges. “I see no plausible reason why someone genuinely interested in a relationship doesn’t use her real name,” he told the paper, referring to an interview she gave to an Italian paper in which she asked not to be named. (Italian law also prohibits the publication of rape victims’ names.)
“Another thing: during her interrogation she was very prepared, as if she had rehearsed. Certainly not fragile or subjugated,” he added, dismissing the police report that found her crying at the airport after he left her there.
Haggis also suggested that his beef with the Church of Scientology may indeed be behind what he calls false accusations against him. “I have no proof but, after what I have learned from Scientology, I know they are capable of anything,” he told the paper. “If you speak out against them, they will use any means to destroy your reputation, career and family.”
The interviewer then asked the director if he had a “woman problem,” referring to four previous accusations of sexual assault, including his former publicist Haleigh Breest, who sued him in 2017.
“No one has ever gone to the police or a prosecutor to report me, in any country in the world,” he said, not mentioning that indeed the woman in Italy did go to police. “No, I certainly have no problems with women.”
Read it at La Repubblica
