Content warning: the following article contains descriptions of sexual assault.
A “Jane Roe” came forward on Oct. 3 to Los Angeles Superior Court with a lawsuit accusing a “John Doe,” who was later identified as Garth Brooks, of sexual assault on multiple occasions. The unidentified woman was first employed as a makeup artist and hairstylist for the country star’s wife, Trisha Yearwood, in 1999 before working for Brooks in 2017.
Brooks initially filed an anonymous complaint to a Mississippi court back in September to stop Roe from publicly coming forward with her allegations, calling her claims “untrue,” according to CNN.
Roe’s suit claims that in 2019, Brooks exposed himself to her after he took a shower while she was at his home for business purposes, forcing her to touch his genitals as he described his sexual fantasies about her. A later incident alleged to have happened within the same year mentioned that Brooks raped her in a hotel room during a business trip to Los Angeles. The complaint goes on to say that since that supposed episode, Brooks continued to grope her and talk to her about his sexual fantasies more often. It even said that he went as far as to suggest multiple times that they have a “threesome” with Yearwood.
The complaint included a screenshot of sexually explicit text messages from Brooks to the makeup artist. Roe claimed that Brooks “deleted most of the text messages” in 2020 but some of the exchange is still intact. The screenshot has the beginning part of the text message redacted, but it ends with, “And that huge stick you carry! Roo-sevelt!!
“I’ll take that nickname,” Brooks allegedly replied. “Thank you. I love you.”
Brooks has since responded to the complaint with an amended lawsuit—which revealed Roe’s name—by his lawyers on Oct. 8, calling his accuser an extortionist intending to damage his reputation and causing him, as a Fox News report put it, “emotional distress.”
The amended suit details that around fifteen years after Roe started working for Brooks, “she relocated from Tennessee to Mississippi in May 2020.” It was after she moved, the complaint claims, that she started asking Brooks for financial help which Brooks complied with “out of loyalty.” She later allegedly demanded more financial assistance and when Brooks refused, she imposed “false and outrageous allegations of sexual misconduct she claimed occurred years ago,” Brooks said.
“Garth Brooks just revealed his true self,” Jane Roe’s lawyers reported to Fox News Digital in light of his amended complaint. “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.”
Brooks is seeking compensation as well as punitive damages for Roe’s accusations while Roe is looking to open a “jury trial” into the case as well as “punitive damages and attorney’s fees,” according to a report from The Tennessean.
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