Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Paul Haggis is released after sixteen days under house arrest on charges of sexual assault and aggravated lessons against a 28-year-old Englishwoman.
The abuses - according to the accusation - would have taken place in a b & b in Ostuni from 12 to 15 June.
The investigating judge of the Court of Brindisi, Vilma Gilli, accepted the petition for revocation of the arrest presented on 30 June last by the defender, the Bari criminal lawyer Michele Laforgia.
Haggis was under house arrest since June 19.
On 29 June, at the request of the Prosecutor's Office, the alleged victim was heard in a long probative incident.
The investigating judge: 'Absence of violence or coercion'
- The story of the 28-year-old Englishwoman, alleged victim of sexual violence by the Oscar winner Paul Haggis, made in the long probative incident of last June 29, "not only confirmed the absence of constricting violent behavior by the suspect in order to consuming sexual acts, but revealed a complex story that blurs the original judgment expressed in the ordinance "which had ordered house arrest for the director, namely" Haggis' inability to resist his own sexual instincts ".
The investigating judge of Brindisi Vilma Gilli writes it in the revocation of the precautionary measure.
The investigating judge explains that "the methods of meeting between the suspect and the offended person, the spontaneous stay" of the woman "at the suspect's residence even after the abuse,
Defense: 'Certain that total innocence will be established'
- "We are sure that in an equally short time it will be definitively established that Haggis has not committed any crime and is completely innocent of the serious accusations brought against him, as we have always said".
This was declared by the lawyer Michele Laforgia, the defender of Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis, arrested for sexual assault and today returned to freedom after 16 days.
"The dismissal of the judge for preliminary investigations - explains the lawyer - acknowledges not only the absence of any precautionary requirement, but also confirmed 'the absence of violent or constricting behavior' by Paul Haggis. It is a result important - continues Laforgia -,