“I used to be like a trapped animal,” Ms. Breest testified.
Decide Sabrina Kraus allowed Ms. Breest’s legal professionals to current testimony from 4 different ladies, certainly one of whom accused Mr. Haggis of raping her within the Nineties. The others alleged that Mr. Haggis made aggressive undesirable sexual advances. One lady mentioned he had groped her breasts as she tried to flee.
In his testimony, Mr. Haggis denied the rape and groping allegations and any inappropriate or aggressive habits towards the ladies. The protection argued that Ms. Breest was mendacity in regards to the encounter to extract cash from the filmmaker throughout a time of heightened public sensitivity round sexual assault allegations, pointing to a textual content wherein she instructed a pal, “I must get one thing out of this at the least.”
A lot of the trial targeted on the conflicting accounts of Jan. 31, 2013, when Ms. Breest was working as a contract publicist on the premiere of the film “Facet Results.” Mr. Haggis, a visitor on the occasion, supplied her a experience residence after which invited her over to his house for a drink, she testified. When she instructed going to a bar as an alternative, he insisted they go to his house and he or she agreed, recalling throughout the trial that she instructed him, “Simply so you realize, I’m not sleeping in SoHo tonight.”
Ms. Breest testified that at his house, Mr. Haggis forcibly kissed her and later took off her tights regardless of her protests. After he compelled her into oral intercourse and raped her, she mentioned, she fell asleep earlier than waking up early within the morning.
“I assumed I used to be getting a experience residence!” Ms. Breest texted her pal that day, to which the pal responded, “Naive !!!”
Mr. Haggis testified that he and Ms. Breest had been flirting at movie business occasions within the months earlier than the encounter, interactions that she defined had been simply her “being good.” He acknowledged that after he first kissed her in his house, she repeatedly mentioned, “No, I shouldn’t,” however he described her demeanor as “teasing” and “a little bit like Betty Boop.”