Paul Haggis Trial: Accuser’s Friend Recalls “Dire” Tone Of Her Calls After Alleged Assault – Update
deadline.comUPDATED with afternoon session: A friend of Haleigh Breest’s who texted her in 2013 that filmmaker Paul Haggis had committed “borderline rape” against Breest dropped the “borderline” qualification in court on Thursday. “This sounded to me like a non-consensual sexual assault that happened to my friend,” Lyudmila Bouzinova told jurors in Manhattan in Breest’s sexual assault civil case against Haggis, describing her memory today of what Breest told her almost 10 years ago in a flurry of phone calls the morning after the alleged assault.
Breest says that Haggis forced her into unprotected oral and vaginal sex inside his apartment in Soho on January 31, 2013 after they were both at a movie-screening party.
She is suing him for unspecified damages. Haggis says the sex was consensual. Bouzinova, testifying by a live video link, said she no longer remembers details of the phone calls from Breest but said, “She explained that something bad that she did not want sexually happened to her in his apartment.” “I definitely remember the tone of the calls as dire,” she said.
Lawyers for Breest and Haggis both have used texts between the two friends in the hours and days afterward to try to sway jurors.
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