Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis detained in Italy over sexual assault claims
- Filmmaker Paul Haggis was accused of sexually assaulting a young, non-Italian woman who has pressed charges
- A lawyer for Haggis denied the allegations: ‘He is totally innocent, and willing to fully cooperate with the authorities’
Film director Paul Haggis was detained on Sunday for investigation of allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman in southern Italy, Italian news media said, quoting local prosecutors.
The Canadian-born, Oscar-winning Haggis, 69, has been in Italy for a film festival that begins on Tuesday in Ostuni, a tourist town in Puglia, the region that forms the “heel” of the Italian peninsula.
The news agency LaPresse and several other Italian media carried a written statement from prosecutors in the nearby city of Brindisi that they were investigating allegations a “young foreign woman” was forced to have “non-consensual” sexual relations over two days.
Haggis’s lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, said that although she could not discuss the evidence under Italian law, “I am confident that all allegations will be dismissed against Mr Haggis. He is totally innocent, and willing to fully cooperate with the authorities so the truth comes out quickly”.
Prosecutors Antonio Negro and Livia Orlando, who are conducting the investigation, said in the statement that the woman was “forced to seek medical care” following the sexual relations.
After a couple of days “of non-consensual relations, the woman was accompanied by the man” to Brindisi airport on Sunday and “was left there at dawn despite (her) precarious physical and psychological conditions”.