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Everything Mike Rinder Has Said About Rapist Paul Haggis—and Why It Matters
October marked the one-year anniversary of Mike Rinder’s disgraceful testimony on behalf of rapist Paul Haggis.
Rinder—the anti-Scientologist best known for abandoning his family, attacking and permanently disabling his former wife and admitting that he abides by “a totally criminal moral code”—went one step further than merely supporting his rapist friend: Rinder shamed Haggis’s victims, denouncing them as “not credible” and “suspect”—all before a unanimous jury awarded the young woman Haggis raped $12.8 million.
“I stand by my testimony that Paul has always been a kind, polite gentleman,” Rinder wrote.
The glowing portrait Rinder, a wife beater, tried desperately to paint of a violent rapist was utterly rejected in court, and yet Rinder persists in publicly supporting the rapist to this day.
But what exactly did Rinder say? And why does it matter?
While Haggis’s young victim recounted how Haggis ripped off her tights and forced her to perform oral sex on him—jamming himself into her mouth before violently raping her, at which point she passed out—Mike Rinder publicly described Paul Haggis this way:
- “He is truly a gentleman. A gentle man, with impeccable manners and a generous heart.”
- “Paul Haggis is a good man” who has “championed the rights of women.”
- Rinder ridiculed Haggis’s victims, referring to them as “‘anonymous’ accusers, hiding behind a lawyer” and hinted that someone with an ax to grind was “paying their bill.” “They are suspect. ... Very suspect,” Rinder wrote.
- He added: “Accusers who have NOT gone to law enforcement are not credible.”
After Haggis was found unanimously liable for rape, Rinder had many opportunities to walk back his advocacy for the rapist and apologize to the victims he vociferously and publicly shamed. Rinder not only did not take those opportunities, he defiantly carried on with his public support.
On March 24, 2023, Rinder doubled down on his praise of the rapist. “I stand by my testimony that Paul has always been a kind, polite gentleman,” Rinder wrote.
While Rinder attempts to position himself as a media source, in truth his history of wife beating, admitted moral depravity and advocacy for a rapist—as detailed above—reveals him to be noncredible and useless as a media source.
