Grammy award-winning country musician Garth Brooks has been accused of sexual assault, including rape, and battery in a lawsuit filed by a former employee.
The 27-page complaint filed today in the L.A. County Superior Court of California alleges that Brooks sexually assaulted a hair-and-makeup artist employed by him since 2017 and by his wife, Trisha Yearwood, since 1999. The defendant is identified only as “Jane Roe.”
The complaint obtained by Entertainment Weekly also alleges that Brooks took advantage of Roe’s financial hardship to pressure her into unwanted sexual contact and intercourse, repeatedly exposed her to his genitals and buttocks, forcibly groped and touched her, and subjected her to lewd text messages and comments, some made in front of Yearwood and the couple’s associates.
Representatives for Brooks and Yearwood did not respond to EW‘s request for comment.
The complaint details that Roe was first hired as a makeup artist and hairstylist by Yearwood in 1999. She began working for Brooks as well in 2017. In 2019, Roe claims that Brooks invited her to his house to style his hair and do his make-up, but he greeted Roe naked and with an erection, which he forced her to touch while making lewd, unwanted comments.
In May of that same year, Roe accompanied Brooks to Los Angeles for a Grammy tribute to Sam Moore. Roe claims that Brooks booked them only one bedroom with a single bed, and while at the hotel, he raped her, forcing her to resume her makeup and hairstyling duties shortly after the “painful and traumatic” assault ended.
Following a 2020 incident in which Brooks allegedly joked about “inventing a shampoo bottle that would double as a dildo” in front of Roe, his wife, and manager, Roe sent Brooks a text in which she stated she could no longer “work in an environment where explicit sexual comments” like those were made. She also wrote in a later text, “Frankly, I am a little frightened of you.”
The complaint lists six causes of action: assault, battery – civil sexual assault, sexual battery, violation of the Bane Act, violation of the Ralph Act, and infliction of gender violence.
In an unusual legal event that occurred in September in Mississippi, an anonymous celebrity plaintiff urged a federal court to declare an anonymous sexual assault accuser’s allegations untrue, before they even made their allegations, CNN reported. The plaintiff labeled himself the “victim” of an extortionist who was making false allegations that would “irreparably harm” his career for her own material gain.
Today’s complaint confirms that that plaintiff was Brooks. It states that “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.”
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The attorneys for the plaintiff, Douglas H. Wigdor, Jeanne M. Christensen, and Hayley Baker said in a joint statement, “We applaud our client’s courage in moving forward with her complaint against Garth Brooks. 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.”
They are “confident that Brooks will be held accountable for his actions and his efforts to silence our client through the filing of a preemptive complaint in Mississippi was nothing other than an act of desperation and attempted intimidation,” and “encourage others who may have been victimized to contact us as no survivor should suffer in silence.”