Jury selection has begun in a civil case centred on a rape allegation against Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis.
The lawsuit that went to trial in New York was filed by a publicist who said the Crash and Million Dollar Baby screenwriter lured her to his Manhattan apartment and raped her after a 2013 movie premiere.
Haggis maintains the encounter was consensual.
His lawyers have suggested the Church of Scientology engineered false accusations of sexual misdeeds to discredit him.
Haggis left the church in 2009 and later publicly denounced it.
The church said it had no involvement in the allegations against Haggis.
No criminal charges were filed in connection with the publicist’s accusation.
Her lawsuit could mean a financial penalty but not prison or probation for Haggis if she prevails.
She is seeking unspecified damages.
After the suit was filed in late 2017, three other women told her lawyers and the Associated Press Haggis had sexually assaulted them or tried to do so.
One said he had raped her.
In response, his lawyer said Haggis “didn’t rape anybody”.
The lawsuit was filed only by the publicist who made the 2013 rape allegation but Judge Sabrina Kraus ruled last month the other three women can also give evidence as part of the plaintiff’s effort to demonstrate Haggis’s “intent and lack of consent”.
Canadian-born Haggis wrote Million Dollar Baby and Crash, which won back-to-back Academy Awards for best picture in the mid-2000s.
He also directed and was a producer of Crash, which garnered him and Bobby Moresco the best original screenplay Oscar in 2006.
The next year, Haggis was nominated in the same category for Letters From Iwo Jima.
