Garth Brooks has identified the woman who accused him of rape last week in a Los Angeles civil lawsuit, alleging in a separate lawsuit that the former employee has rendered him “the victim of a shakedown” that tarnished his “stellar public image.”
The country music superstar has continued to litigate his separate case in Mississippi, where he said the woman and other witnesses reside and where she allegedly committed the extortion at the heart of his legal action.
The country music superstar alleged Tuesday that after the woman threatened “to publish lies about him” and blackmail him into paying her millions of dollars, he filed his lawsuit anonymously last month in the Magnolia State to “preserve his reputation, establish the truth, and put a stop to her scheme.” He claimed that out of respect for his and the woman’s families, he titled the federal court action “John Doe vs. Jane Roe.”
But all that was “moot,” he alleged in new court documents filed Tuesday in Mississippi, when the woman “wrested the decision from the court” by having her lawyer brief CNN last week about the allegations while Brooks’ motion to proceed under pseudonyms was still pending. Sharing those details marked her “unilateral decision to usurp” the Mississippi court’s authority, he said.
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So, on Tuesday, Brooks also filed an amended complaint in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, naming the previously anonymous woman and accusing her of “ongoing attempted extortion,” defamation, false light invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress “through outrageous conduct.”
The Times typically does not name accusers in sexual assault cases unless they come forth publicly. The woman, who has not yet done so, identified herself in a civil lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court last week as “Jane Roe,” a hair and makeup stylist who worked for many years for Brooks and his wife, singer Trisha Yearwood. Roe accused Brooks of raping her in a Los Angeles hotel room in May 2019 and subjecting her to “other appalling sexual conduct” and harassment while she was his employee.
In his amended complaint, Brooks said the woman is now a Mississippi resident who worked for him as an independent contractor for about 15 years. The musician said he assisted her financially out of “loyalty, friendship, and a desire to improve [her] condition” when she moved to Tennessee in May 2020. But, he alleged, her demands for financial assistance increased and she asked him for salaried employment and medical benefits.
“When [Brooks] advised he could not agree to Defendant’s demands … she responded with false and outrageous allegations of sexual misconduct she claims occurred years ago,” said the complaint, which was reviewed Wednesday by The Times.
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The 62-year-old musician — full name Troyal Garth Brooks — also accused the woman’s lawyers of flouting the authority of a judge in the related case he filed under a pseudonym in Mississippi federal court last month. Brooks — identified in that lawsuit as a John Doe and “a celebrity and public figure who resides in Tennessee” — alleged that the woman approached him in July with “fabricated allegations” of sexual assault and threatened to sue him unless he made “a multimillion-dollar payment.” At the time, he asked a Mississippi judge to preserve anonymity for both of them and to declare the woman’s accusations false.
Brooks is now seeking a trial by jury and a declaratory judgment against the woman, compensatory and punitive damages, and an injunction prohibiting the woman from continuing “her extortionate behavior” and “further publicizing her false allegations” against Brooks.
The woman’s legal team responded to Brooks’ latest filing in a statement Wednesday to The Times.
“Garth Brooks just revealed his true self. 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,” attorneys Douglas H. Wigdor, Jeanne M. Christensen and Hayley Baker said.
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The attorneys told The Times they “intend to file a motion for sanctions to revert to Jane Roe” on Wednesday.
In the woman’s complaint last week, her team alleged that by filing a preemptive complaint in Mississippi court, Brooks “used the fact that Ms. Roe had dared to speak about the harm he forced on her as an opportunity to inflict even more harm and pain.”
The “Friends in Low Places” singer last week vehemently denied the allegations made in the woman’s lawsuit, saying in a statement to The Times that for two months he had 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.”
“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,” he said.
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The musician also said last week that he filed his Mississippi lawsuit “to speak out against extortion and defamation of character.”
Yearwood, who has been married to Brooks for nearly 19 years, on Monday made her first public remarks since the allegations against her husband went public.
“Love One Another,” the “Trisha’s Southern Kitchen” star wrote in her first Instagram post since the rape allegation. She included a picture of her and Brooks singing a duet during his Las Vegas residency, which he resumed the same day the woman filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
