Steve Granitz
A former publicist who has accused ex-Scientologist and director Paul Haggis of raping her in 2013, told a jury on Thursday morning about the moment she says the Crash writer cornered her in a guest bedroom of his Manhattan penthouse and tried to forcibly remove her clothes.
“He’s trying to pull my tights down and I’m trying to pull them up,” Haleigh Breest testified. “He looked like the devil—he looked totally different than I’d seen him before.”
Breest, 36, who took a sworn oath before the jury at 9:45 a.m., testified at-length about the chain of events that led her into Haggis’ orbit in January 2013—and later his luxury loft where she claimed the Canadian screenwriter forced oral sex on her and raped her following an after party event for the premiere film screening of director Steven Soderbergh’s 2013 thriller Side Effects.