Filmmaker Paul Haggis must pay $7.5 million in damages to a reporter in a rape case

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According to the court order, the jury also decided that additional punitive damages should be awarded

The Oscar-winning Canadian director Paul Haggis must pay at least $7.5 million in restitution to a woman who accused him of rape in one of the many #MeToo cases that have come to light.

According to the court order, the jury also decided that additional punitive damages should be awarded, but the amount to be awarded will be decided at a later date.

The 69-year-old has won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Screenplay for Crash, and has also written the screenplay for another Oscar-winning film, Million Dollar Baby.

He is accused of forcing journalist Haley Brist to have sex with him.

According to the victim’s complaints, the award-winning director met her in the early 2010s when she was working as a journalist at a film promotion company.

After a screening of a film in January 2013, he offered to drive her home, then invited her to his New York apartment for a drink.

Brist, 36, said Haggis then forced her to perform oral sex and raped her despite her pleas to stop.

For his part, Haggis, 69, claimed that the reporter flirted with him, and while at times she appeared to be “in (internal) conflict”, she began “kissing and oral sex in a completely consensual interaction”. He also said that he could not remember if they had sexual intercourse.

Jurors sided with Brist, who testified that she suffered psychological and professional consequences from her encounter with Haggis. She filed a lawsuit against him in late 2017. “I thought he was driving me home. I agreed to have a drink. What happened should never have happened. And I was in no way to blame, it was him and his actions that were to blame,” she countered to jurors.

He said he decided to sue the director because Haggis’ public condemnations of his behavior Harvey Weinstein they angered her: “This man raped me and presents himself as an advocate for women in the world,” she remembers thinking at the time.

Four other women have also testified that they were sexually harassed by Haggis, and in one case raped, in separate cases dating back to 1996. None of the four were prosecuted.

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