A Mississippi woman who says she previously worked as a stylist for Garth Brooks has filed a lawsuit claiming the country music star raped her in 2019.
The woman, who uses the anonymous pseudonym “Jane Roe” in the lawsuit filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges Brooks raped her in a Los Angeles hotel while she was working for him. Brooks vehemently denies the allegations.
Her lawsuit details that she had worked for Brooks’ wife, country singer Trisha Yearwood, since 1999, and started working for Brooks as well in 2017. She says the assault happened when she traveled from Nashville to Los Angeles with Brooks, who was performing with Sam Moore at a Grammy Awards tribute to Moore in October 2019. The woman alleges that in a hotel suite booked for the two of them, he appeared naked in the doorway to the bedroom and raped her.
The suit also says that when she was at Brooks’ home in 2019, he had appeared naked in front of her, grabbed her hands, and put them on his genitals. It goes on to allege that Brooks exposed himself to her many other times, talked about sexual fantasies with her, and sent her explicit text messages.
She said she was forced to continue working for the music star due to financial hardship, saying Brooks knew about this and took advantage of it. But Brooks says the allegations are fabricated.
“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,” Brooks said in a statement following the lawsuit filing. “It has been like having a loaded gun waved in my face.”
Brooks, who is the No. 1 selling solo artist in U.S. history, filed a preemptive lawsuit in federal court in Mississippi last month. Both he and the woman were anonymous in the filing. The plaintiff in that filing, where Brooks is identified as John Doe, says the allegations are “wholly untrue,” and he first learned of them in July when she threatened to publicly sue him unless he paid a settlement of more than a million dollars.
In the preemptive suit, Brooks asked a judge to stop the woman from “intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and false light invasion of privacy.”
“I trust the system, I do not fear the truth, and I am not the man they have painted me to be,” Brooks’ statement concluded.
