UPDATE (9:15 p.m. ET): This article has been updated with a statement from Garth Brooks.
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.”
Brooks’ team sent a statement to Billboard late Thursday, with the country star saying the threat of a lawsuit over the past few months has felt like “having a loaded gun waved in my face.”
“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. 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. We filed suit against this person nearly a month ago to speak out against extortion and defamation of character. We filed it anonymously for the sake of families on both sides.
“I want to play music tonight,” his statement concluded. “I want to continue our good deeds going forward. It breaks my heart these wonderful things are in question now. I trust the system, I do not fear the truth, and I am not the man they have painted me to be.”
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.”
Though Brooks has not yet responded to Thursday’s lawsuit, documents filed in the earlier mystery case in Mississippi tell what appears to be his side of the story.
After a former professional associate “encountered financial difficulties” and asked for financial assistance in 2020, the lawsuit says that the unnamed celebrity plaintiff “complied out of loyalty” and offered help. But when he eventually refused her increasing demands, including for salaried employment and medical benefits, the lawsuit says the woman responded with “false and outrageous allegations of sexual misconduct.”
Later, the unnamed woman allegedly “offered to refrain from publicly filing her false and defamatory lawsuit against plaintiff in exchange for a multi-million dollar payment” — a demand that the lawsuit called “extortion.”
“Defendant’s allegations are not true,” the unnamed celebrity wrote in last month’s lawsuit. “Defendant is well aware, however, of the substantial, irreparable damage such false allegations would do to Plaintiff’s well-earned reputation as a decent and caring person, along with the unavoidable damage to his family and the irreparable damage to his career and livelihood that would result if she made good on her
threat to ‘publicly file’ her fabricated lawsuit.”
