Italian actresses say country has become safe haven for men accused, found liable of sex assault

On mon, alice paul Haggis, who was found liable for assault in 2022, took component in a public venire at the Rome Independent Film Festival — the same day that two female actors sexually abused by a well-known Italian theatre director held a news conference across town to highlight a recent ruling ordering the man and the theatre he worked for to pay them $180,000 Cdn in damages.

Veronica Stecchetti, 28, and Federica Ombrato, 37, testified that the director kept them isolated in an empty theatre late at night, coerced them into sexualized acting and assaulted one of them, among other violations.

“It’s a historic decision,” said Elisa Ercoli, president of Differenza Donna, the feminist association whose lawyers represented the women. “It establishes the duty of organizations to prevent male violence against women in the performing arts.”

The women filed a lawsuit because the legal window for reporting the crime — 12 months — had expired.

Cinzia Spanò, head of the Italian feminist actors’ collective Amleta, said the ruling helps put an end to “a long chain of assaults and sexual violence” that has affected “dozens, if not hundreds” of actresses since the 1990s.

Yet the judge ordered that the names of all those involved in the case couldn't be made public. This includes the identity of the man, who some call "the Harvey Weinstein of Italy," and the theatre found liable — a move the women he abused say shields perpetrators and enablers.

The director in question has kept on working — staging plays in northern Italy as recently as this summer and serving on the jury of a literary prize. The director of the Parma theatre found liable in the case recently received a lifetime achievement award.

“This was very painful for me and the others,” Ombrato said.

Canadian American writer-director Haggis, 72, also continues to operate here despite the New York case and other accusations of sexual misconduct, including in Italy in 2022.

While Hollywood, Canada and other parts of Europe have confronted allegations against powerful men through the #MeToo movement, Italy has become a land where directors and actors facing multiple accusations, or who have been found guilty or civilly liable for sexual assault, continue to work freely — headlining festivals, teaching master classes, sitting on juries, collecting awards and receiving sympathetic media coverage.

Born in London, Ont., Haggis won an Academy award for the 2004 film Crash and wrote screenplays for Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

In 2017, Haggis was sued by publicist Haleigh Breest for a 2013 assault in his Manhattan apartment. After a lengthy legal battle, the jury found him liable, awarding Breest $7.5 million US in compensatory damages and an additional $2.5 million in punitive damages. 

During the trial, a Canadian publicist for the TV series Due South, who said Haggis raped her, was one of four female witnesses to provide testimony. Another witness said Haggis assaulted and tried to rape her during the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 and a third alleged something similar during the Banff World Television Festival in 2006.

Civil cases do not impose prison sentences, but the verdict found Haggis unequivocally responsible for raping Breest.

Haggis faced additional accusations in June 2022 that were later dismissed. A British woman that Haggis invited to attend the Allora Fest in Ostuni, in the southern Italian region of Puglia, accused him of raping her over two days. Haggis was detained and placed under house arrest for two weeks. 

Prosecutors requested the case be dropped due to inconsistencies in the woman's story. A judge in nearby Brindisi later ruled no sexual act took place without consent and dismissed the case. Haggis has denied the allegations.

While the Puglia case was still open, Haggis — who lives part-time in Rome — continued giving seminars sponsored by an actors’ collective. This summer, the AmiCorti Film Festival in central Italy gave Haggis a lifetime achievement award. And he's now the artistic director of the Rome Independent Film Festival (RIFF).

“Unfortunately, in Italy, Paul Haggis is celebrated as ‘a grand Oscar winner,’ with the accusations and the damages awarded for rape completely erased,” said Spanò.

RIFF, which is taking place this week, announced that one of its focuses this year is gender violence.

He later sent an email saying, “Hoping this will be appreciated,” with a link to an interview where Ferrari names gender violence as a festival focus this year. 

In the New York case, Haggis lost an appeal at the New York Supreme Court and in 2023, Breest had to sue Haggis in an attempt to obtain some damages awarded her by the court. When judges dismissed the Puglia case, they wrote it was unclear if the woman had lied or if she had been confused due to an anxiety disorder.

One juror, Mario Colamarino, head of the LGBTQ association Mario Mieli, wrote that he was unaware of the cases, which “profoundly saddened” him, and that he would “immediately seek clarification from the organizers of the RIFF Festival.” He did not get back after a follow-up email.

“People in the industry who would never work with say, someone found guilty of mafia collusion, have no problem being associated with a man found guilty of assaulting a woman,” said Spanò. “They consider it a woman’s issue, not a crime.”

Along with his role in the festival, Haggis has remained a fixture in Italian acting circles, teaching courses through a major actors’ collective in Rome called Artisti 7607.

Haggis led a course in October and was scheduled to lead another in November, but it was cancelled when Amleta made the umbrella group sponsoring the course aware of Haggis’s sexual assault history.

Haggis isn't the only foreign director or actor cast into the entertainment wilderness elsewhere over rape and sexual assault accusations to be welcomed by Italian institutions.

Kevin Spacey, who has faced multiple allegations across decades, though has been acquitted in court, has appeared in Italian cultural events, reading poetry about martyrdom by Italian Gabriele Tinti and receiving a festival award in the Adriatic beachside town of Riccione this summer. Festival director Marco Spagnoli told the Italian news wire ANSA, “People’s perception of him in Europe is still very different from that in the U.S.”

James Franco, accused in 2018 by five women — four of them his acting students — settled the case for $2.235 million US in 2021. He appeared at the Rome Film Festival last year to promote the Italian-directed film Hey Joe, which he starred in.

Belgian theatre director Jan Fabre received an 18-month suspended prison sentence in 2022 for violence, bullying and sexual harassment, yet still runs the Festival Fabre, part of the Milan Teatro Out Off Festival.

“In Italy, there’s not even a debate over whether we should allow these people to keep working in the industry,” Spanò said. “The men who have difficulty finding work in other countries because of these cases — here, they find space.”

Actor Veronica Stecchetti, who chose to make her name public at the Rome event this week, said she refused to remain in the shadows, “deprived of an identity,” despite the risks.

“Yes, it takes courage to sue for abuse, but it also takes awareness,” she said. “I felt humiliated by what [the director] was doing to me, but I didn’t understand it was violence.” 

That initial lack of awareness, she added, reflects Italy’s thin public discourse about power-based and coercive forms of abuse, as well as about consent. A proposed law that would redefine rape as any sexual act without a person’s “free and current” consent stalled in the Italian Senate this week.

Her former acting classmate Federica Ombrato said it took nearly three years to emerge from depression and return to acting, having to leave her family and friends in her hometown of Parma, where the abuse took place, for a fresh start.

“So many young women quit acting after abuse by men like him,” she said. “But I don’t want to give my career away as a gift to them.”

Rome correspondent

---

---