‘Indecent proposal' case wife to give video evidence
The woman at the centre of the UK High Court “Indecent Proposal” slander case is to be questioned by a QC via video link from Israel today.
Nathalie Attar, 35, who is seven months pregnant with her fourth child, became ill after an emotional morning in the witness box in London last Thursday.
She was taken to hospital on the 12th day of the action brought by millionaire businessman Brian Maccaba after fainting during the lunchtime recess.
The mother-of-three, who had been in the witness box for two-and-a-half days, returned to her home in Jerusalem.
The first part of her resumed cross-examination by Clive Freedman QC, for Mr Maccaba, will take place this morning, said the judge Mr Justice Gray.
Mr Maccaba, 46, is suing senior rabbi Dayan Yaakov Lichtenstein for allegedly spreading “poisonous” slurs that he was a “sexual predator” and a “serial adulterer” who chased after young married Jewish women.
Teacher Mrs Attar, an orthodox Jew, alleges that the father-of-six tried to destabilise her relationship with her husband and that he twice sexually harassed her – once with a kiss on the lips and on another occasion by touching her breast.
Mr Maccaba, of Hendon, north London, who is the chief executive and founder of the international technology company Cognotec, denies those allegations and also offering her teacher husband Alain a million dollars for her.
The businessman, who was born an Irish Roman Catholic and converted to Judaism in 1990, claims his relationship with Nathalie was “reciprocal” and that she had declared her love for him.
She says this is not true.
Mr Maccaba has told the jury that they had an intense “emotional”, but not physical, relationship between June 1998 and August 1999 and that he was not sexually attracted to her.
He says that the allegation of the offer to Mr Attar is “ridiculous”.
The alleged offer echoes the plot of the film Indecent Proposal where Robert Redford plays a wealthy bachelor who offers a poor, newly-married couple one million dollars if he can spend one night with the wife.
Rabbi Lichtenstein, the senior judge in the Beth Din, or rabbinical court, of the Federation of Synagogues, hotly disputes slandering Mr Maccaba within the orthodox community in early 2001 after hearing Mrs Attar’s allegations.
