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Oscar-winning Canadian screenwriter and director Paul Haggis is under house arrest in southern Italy on charges of sexual harassment and grievous bodily harm, which Haggis denies, his lawyers said Monday.
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“Mr. Paul Haggis was arrested on Sunday on an emergency measure issued by Brindisi prosecutors and is now under house arrest in Ostuni. “He will be questioned by Thursday by a judge who will have to decide whether or not to confirm the detention,” Michele Lafortzia’s Italian lawyer told Reuters. Haggis was accused of forcing a young non-Italian woman to have sex against her will for two days in Ostuni, Italy, prosecutors in Brindisi said in a statement on Sunday. “Under Italian law, I can not discuss the facts. “Having said that, I am confident that all charges against Mr. Haggis will be dropped,” Haggis’s personal lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, said in a statement. Sorry, but this video failed to load. Both lawyers said Haggis had pleaded not guilty and would work with authorities.
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“A young foreign woman was forced to seek medical attention” after having sex, prosecutors said in a statement. They said that on Sunday after the non-consensual relations, the man accompanied the woman to the airport of Brindisi, where they left her despite her “precarious physical and psychological conditions”. An investigative source told Reuters that the unknown young woman will be questioned in the next 10 days in what is known in Italy as evidence, presenting evidence for a possible future trial. Haggis, 69, co-wrote “Million Dollar Baby” and co-wrote and directed “Crash,” for which he won an Oscar. In 2018, he denied the allegations of sexual abuse of four women, including two who accused him of rape. Haggis is in Ostuni for several masterclasses at the Allora Fest, a new film event started by Los Angeles-based Italian journalist Silvia Bizio and Spanish art critic Sol Costales Doulton from June 21 to June 26. . Allora Fest said it “learned the news with disappointment and shock”, adding that the festival’s directors “immediately removed any director’s participation from the event”.
