Paul Haggis Released in Italy Amid Sexual-Abuse Situation

Update, Monday, July 4 at 11:45 p.m.: An Italian judge has purchased that director Paul Haggis be launched from home arrest even though prosecutors decide whether or not to proceed investigating a sexual-assault allegation towards him, the Associated Push reports. Haggis was arrested in the Puglia region of Italy on June 19 just after an unnamed British girls alleged that he had non-consensual sexual intercourse with her more than two times. Haggis, who has preserved his innocence, was put below law enforcement detention in a lodge just after his arrest. Prosecutors reportedly did not promptly remark on the potential standing of the investigation soon after the judge’s ruling. When requested if the scenario may well be dropped, Haggis’ lawyer reported, “Let’s see what the prosecutor’s place of work will do at this place.” According to the law firm, Haggis is continue to in Italy. The director formerly confronted 4 separate sexual-misconduct allegations in the U.S. in 2018, all of which he has denied.

First story released June 19, 2022 follows.

Director Paul Haggis was arrested in the southern Italian city of Ostuni on expenses of aggravated sexual violence and aggravated personalized accidents, in accordance to the New York Instances and Wide variety. Reports from Italian media and a assertion from the community prosecutor of the close by town of Brindisi have verified Haggis’s arrest. Per the experiences, Haggis allegedly forced an unnamed young woman, recognized as “foreign,” this means non-Italian, to undertake sexual intercourse about the program of two days in Ostuni, in which Haggis was scheduled to instruct quite a few grasp courses at the Allora movie festival. In accordance to an Italian police report, just after assaulting the target, Haggis dropped her off at the Papola Casale airport in Brindisi regardless of her “precarious physical and psychological situations.” The target, who was in a “confused point out,” was then aided by airport staff members and border police, who took her to the the workplaces of the Italian squadra mobile law enforcement unit and the A. Perrino healthcare facility in Brindisi, wherever Italy’s so-termed “Pink Protocol” for rape victims was carried out. Formal charges ended up subsequently submitted from Haggis.

Haggis’s lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, mentioned in a statement that she can’t discuss the proof beneath Italian law. “That said, I am assured that all allegations will be dismissed against Mr. Haggis. He is entirely innocent and keen to totally cooperate with the authorities so the reality arrives out promptly,” she ongoing. Haggis was beforehand sued in 2018 by publicist Haleigh Breest, who alleged that he violently raped her in 2013. 3 more ladies then came ahead with independent sexual-misconduct allegations in opposition to Haggis. Thanks to COVID-19, the trial is nonetheless pending. Haggis has denied all of the allegations.