Garth Brooks names sexual assault accuser in new lawsuit
Country star Garth Brooks has publicly identified the Jane Roe accuser who filed a sexual assault lawsuit against him last week. This occurred in a new filing by the Oklahoma musician.
Last week, Brooks was accused of sexual assault and battery in a civil lawsuit filed in Los Angeles by an anonymous hair and makeup artist. Brooks vehemently denies the allegations.
Significantly, the accuser has chosen to remain anonymous and is named under the pseudonym Jane Roe in the suit. She claims that on a work trip to Los Angeles in 2019, Brooks raped her. She also alleges that he repeatedly groped her and made sexually explicit comments when she was doing his hair and makeup throughout that year.
Now, per Billboard, attorneys for Brooks have publicly revealed the woman’s name in new court filings, which has prompted a strong response from her lawyers. This disclosure came in an updated version of the lawsuit Brooks filed last month, apparently seeking to block Jane Roe from going public with her accusations. After publicising her claims, Brooks refiled the case on October 1st, and listed the claimant’s real name.
“Defendant’s allegations are not true,” Brooks states in the amended lawsuit, maintaining the case is allegedly about “attempted extortion” and defamation.
Douglas H Wigdor, the accuser’s attorney, has responded, stating they will take immediate action to reseal her name and seek legal penalties against Brooks. They have lso asked the media not to publish her name. Wigdor is known as a “leading #MeToo lawyer”, specialising in sexual misconduct cases involving powerful men, including accusers of Harvey Weinstein.
“Garth Brooks just revealed his true self,” he wrote. “Out of spite and to punish, he publicly named a rape victim. With no legal justification, Brooks outed her because he thinks the laws don’t apply to him. On behalf of our client, we will be moving for maximum sanctions against him immediately.”
What are the allegations against Garth Brooks?
According to her complaint lodged in California, the accuser has worked in the music industry for over three decades, doing hair and makeup for celebrities appearing in publications such as Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Significantly, she has previously worked for Brooks’ wife, Trisha Yearwood.
In the lawsuit, she claims that Brooks forcefully raped her in a Los Angeles hotel room in May, 2019. Following the alleged assault, she was forced to see her OB-GYN because of the injuries, which left her with severe back and neck pain, and emotional trauma, as the complaint states. Allegedly, the assault and harassment didn’t end there, with her claiming he would make explicit comments towards her and repeatedly grope her breasts, which included while she was styling him for events.
She claims that this happened with such frequency “that it was inevitable that other employees of Brooks’s likely saw or heard instances of the unwanted physical groping of her breasts while she was styling his hair and doing his make-up”.
Wigdor also maintains that Brooks took advantage of the makeup artist while she was financially struggling by offering her increasingly regular paid work but then engaging in a pattern of sexual assault and harassment.
What has Garth Brooks said in response to the allegations?
As we know, Brooks responded to the allegations with a lawsuit, which has now been updated. In a lawsuit he filed in September in Mississippi, he lodged his counterclaim that the allegations were a means of extorting money from him.
“For the last two months, I have been hassled to no end with threats, lies, and tragic tales of what my future would be if I did not write a check for many millions of dollars. It has been like having a loaded gun waved in my face,” the musician said. “Hush money, no matter how much or how little, is still hush money. In my mind, that means I am admitting to behavior I am incapable of – ugly acts no human should ever do to another.”
Attorneys for Roe said that the lawsuit Brooks filed against her in Mississippi, where he asked a federal court “to declare a sexual assault accuser’s allegations untrue and stop her from further publicising them”, was a ploy to block her from coming forward.
For help, advice or more information regarding sexual harassment, assault and rape in the UK, visit the Rape Crisis charity website. In the US, visit RAINN.
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