Latest Paul Haggis Defense Witnesses Keep Scientology Front And Center In New York Trial – Update

deadline.com:

UPDATED with afternoon session: The oldest daughter of filmmaker Paul Haggis said Monday there is “circumstantial” evidence of a Church of Scientology plot against her father, who is facing a rape accusation in New York civil court, after he walked away from the religious organization and became a vocal Scientology critic.

But Alissa Haggis, who quit the church as a teenager and came out as gay years before her father left Scientology, testified on cross-examination that she doesn’t know of any such plot. “There’s no way I could know that directly,” she said, repeating a refrain of the Haggis defense.

A former high-ranking Scientology official, Mike Rinder, testified on Friday that “nobody would have any knowledge of that” because Scientology uses subterfuge so effectively to attack and undermine its critics.

Another ex-Scientologist and Haggis friend, Shawna Lee Brakefield, said she feared the lawsuit was the church retaliating against him. “Because the first thing I thought of was that the church was behind it,” Brakefield, a documentary filmmaker, said in a 2019 deposition played for jurors today, the ninth day of testimony. “I don’t know for sure,” she added. “But yes the thought crossed my mind.” When Haleigh Breest filed suit in 2017 against Haggis accusing him of rape four years earlier, Brakefield said she flashed back to an incident from 2009 or 2010 right after Haggis quit the church.