Country music star Garth Brooks is facing a lawsuit over allegations that he sexually assaulted an unnamed woman while she worked for him as a hairstylist and makeup artist.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday (Oct. 3) in Los Angeles court, attorneys for the anonymous Jane Roe accuser claim Brooks raped her during a May 2019 stay in a Los Angeles hotel room and also exposed her to “other appalling sexual conduct” during that same year.
The lawsuit claims that the singer took advantage of the accuser’s mounting financial troubles to subject her to “a side of Brooks that he conceals from the public.”
“This side of Brooks believes he is entitled to sexual gratification when he wants it, and using a female employee to get it is fair game,” Roe’s attorneys write.
Notably, the accuser also alleges that Brooks was behind a mysterious lawsuit filed last month, obtained by Billboard, in which an anonymous “celebrity” plaintiff sued in Mississippi federal court over an an unnamed accuser’s sexual abuse allegations. Calling the accusations false and an “ongoing attempted extortion,” the earlier case asked a judge to stop her from further publicizing them.
“The abusive Mississippi action by Brooks is a blatant attempt to further control and bully his sexual assault victims by utilizing his multimillionaire resources to game the legal system,” Roe’s lawyers write in Thursday’s complaint. “Brooks is desperate to prevent his millions of fans from learning about the horrific things he has said and done to a junior female employee who did nothing to deserve such treatment.”
A representative for Brooks did not immediately return a request for comment.
In her lawsuit, the plaintiff claims she began working in 1999 for Brooks’ wife, Trisha Yearwood, but started to work for Brooks in 2017. When she experienced financial difficulties in 2019, she says Brooks offered to help her by giving her more work.
The first alleged incident occurred earlier in 2019, when Brooks allegedly emerged from the shower naked and forced the accuser to touch his erect penis and said he had fantasized about her performing oral sex on him. She says she denied his advances but continued to work for him.
Months later, in May, Roe claims that when she and Brooks stayed together in a Los Angeles hotel, he booked only a single room for both of them. She claims that during their stay, he violently raped her in the room.
During the months that followed, the plaintiff claims Brooks repeatedly acted inappropriately toward her in other ways, including sending sexually explicit text messages, physically groping her breasts, and making sexually charged remarks toward her.
“We applaud our client’s courage in moving forward with her complaint against Garth Brooks,” said the accuser’s attorneys, from the prominent plaintiff’s firm Wigdor LLP. “The complaint filed today demonstrates that sexual predators exist not only in corporate America, Hollywood and in the rap and rock and roll industries but also in the world of country music.”