Oliver Stone suggests #MeToo is behind Paul Haggis assault allegations

Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, 75, suggests #MeToo is behind sexual assault allegations aimed at Paul Haggis

  • Scarface writer Oliver Stone weighed in on Paul Haggis’s assault allegations
  • Stone said #MeToo has made it difficult for men and women to be alone together
  • Haggis faces sexual assault charges after a woman accused him of a three-day long assault nightmare in southern Italy 

Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone has said sexual assault allegations against colleague Paul Haggis are possibly a result of the #MeToo movement.

The Scarface writer, 75, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica that he believed the movement against sexual violence towards women and girls means that it is difficult for a man and a women to talk privately.

It comes after Haggis, the director of 2006 Oscar-winning film Crash, was arrested and held in southern Italy after a 28-year-old woman accused him of repeatedly assaulted her over two days at a bed and breakfast.

The Scarface writer, 75, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica that he believed the movement against sexual violence towards women and girls means that it is difficult for a man and a women to talk privately

Stone told the daily: ‘This news couldn’t have happened at a worst possible time.

‘The truth is that in the MeToo era sensitivities around this have risen — meaning any accusation, anything.

‘Now it’s difficult for a man and woman to talk in a private, intimate space.

‘You never know what will happen next. It’s always better if there are three of you.’

Haggis told a judge that his alleged victim visited him in Ostuni in the Puglia region, where he was attending at a film festival, and had consensual sex with him.

The woman said she was forcibly penetrated by Haggis twice and forced to submit to oral sex once during a three-day ordeal before he left her at a local airport

The woman said she was forcibly penetrated by Haggis twice and forced to submit to oral sex once during a three-day ordeal before he left her at a local airport.

The judge said the alleged victim had expressed a ‘clear and explicit unwillingness to have sex’.

Haggis was said to have an ‘absolute incapacity to control his instincts’ by the court.

Haggis and the woman will be questioned in coming days.

Stone also bizarrely compared the situation that Haggis is in with the plight of Amanda Knox during the interview.

In a segue, he said that he hoped that Haggis would not suffer the fate of Amanda Knox, 34, who was served four years in prison for the murder of Meredith Kercher, 21, in Italy in 2009, before being released and acquitted on appeal.

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