“Three days of violence against a young woman” – Corriere.it

Brindisi, the prosecutor’s accusation against the Oscar-winning director who was a guest at the Ostuni festival. The girl dropped off at the airport. Him: I’m innocent

He, an Oscar winner, was to be one of the protagonists of “Allora Fest”, the Ostuni international film festival scheduled from Tuesday to Sunday. But since yesterday morning Canadian director and screenwriter Paul Haggis he is under house arrest in a hotel in the Apulian town“Seriously suspected – says the Prosecutor of Brindisi – of the crimes of aggravated sexual violence and aggravated personal injuries»Against a 30-year-old English woman, whom the man allegedly raped for three days in a bed & breakfast in the area. Haggis, who in 2006 won the statuette with the film «Crash-Physical Contact», with Matt Dillon and Sandra Bullock, had already been in Puglia for some time just in view of the kermesse.

The disputed facts date back at the beginning of the week, between Sunday and Wednesday. the presumed victimwho had known him some time before, would have joined him since Salento, where he was with some friends. She would have spent three days with him during which she would have suffered, claims the Prosecutor, “repeated sexual assaults“Non-consenting” reports, underline the prosecutors.

Last Wednesday Haggis would then have accompanied the woman in front to the airport Papola Casale di Brindisi, leaving it there «at the first light of dawn, despite the precarious physical and psychological conditionsThe magistrates point out, after she – on the basis of an initial reconstruction on which the investigations continue – also left a love note in the room. At the airport the 30-year-old, «in evident condition confusionalHas been noted by some employees of Aeroporti di Puglia and the Border Police who lent her the first cure and accompanied her in Preccint and then to the hospital Perrino di Brindisi where the “pink protocol” reserved for victims of violence was activated. At that point the woman formalized the complaint in a long time tale reported, by excerpts, in the arrest decree notified to the director.

In the same provision, the Public Prosecutor requests the application of the measure precautionary after the validation hearing, not yet scheduled, and also a probative incident to crystallize the woman’s statements. While waiting to be able to provide his version of the facts in the interrogation that will be fixed in the next few days, Haggis at the Police Headquarters, assisted by the lawyer Michele Laforgia, said only a few words, asking “to do investigations as soon as possible because he declares himself totally innocent“. His family immediately left America to join him.

Already in the past the director had had to defend himself from accuse similar. A civil lawsuit is still pending in the US after a complaint from his former press officer Haleigh Breest. Since 2018 othersand four women they said they were victims of sexual harassment and assault. Now the prosecution in Italy, which risks costing him also his pre-trial detention. At the Ostuni Film Festival, Haggis would have had the task of among other things to interview well-known faces of Hollywood arriving in the Apulian town. The organizers confirmed the revieweliminating any participation of the director.

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