Photo: SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images
Garth Brooks has been accused of sexual assault and battery by his former hairstylist and makeup artist. The woman, identified as “Jane Roe” in a lawsuit filed on October 3, alleges that throughout the course of their working relationship, the country singer forced her to touch his genitals, groped her breasts, and, on one occassion, raped her in a hotel room. “This side of Brooks believes he is entitled to sexual gratification when he wants it,” states the complaint, “and using a female employee to get it is fair game.”
Brooks has denied the allegations and said that Roe’s lawsuit amounts to extortion. “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,” he said in a statement. “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.”
In her complaint, Roe says she started working for Brooks in 2017 after being previously hired by his wife, singer Trisha Yearwood, almost a decade earlier. The alleged abuse began in 2019, according to the legal filing. She describes how on one occasion, Brooks emerged from the shower in his home, “grabbed her hands and forced them onto his erect penis.” Then, Brooks said he “wanted her to perform oral sex on him,” according to the complaint, which Roe refused to do.
On a work trip to Los Angeles in May 2019, Roe says that Brooks booked them a one-bedroom suite. “After they arrived, suddenly Brooks appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, completely naked,” the complaint says. “Ms. Roe immediately had a sick feeling in her stomach, knowing she was trapped in the room alone with Brooks, with no one to help and far away from Nashville.” The legal filing goes on to accuse Brooks, who is almost 300 pounds, of pulling Roe onto a bed and raping her. The alleged assault was so forceful that “she felt as if he was breaking her in two,” according to the complaint. When it was over, Roe says their dynamic returned to “business as usual” and she had to style Brooks for an event.
After the alleged rape, “Brooks increased the frequency of saying his sexual fantasies about her aloud, along with his physical gropings of her breasts while she was doing his hair and makeup,” according to the legal filing. Roe also claims he attempted to rape her again in October 2019, but that she “managed to escape the situation.”
The lawsuit details how Brooks allegedly went on to send Roe sexually explicit text messages, regularly speak to her about his sexual fantasies, and repeatedly talk about having “a threesome” with Yearwood. Roe needed the job and tried to get Brooks to keep their relationship professional, according to the legal complaint, but she stopped working for the singer in 2021.
Roe’s lawsuit alleges that Brooks found out she was going public with the allegations and, in mid-September, filed a preemptive complaint denying them while calling her a “lying extortionist who intended on destroying his professional reputation.” Under the name “John Doe,” Brooks’s filing says that Roe is aware 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.” It goes on to claim that Roe’s attorney first sent Brooks a “confidential” demand letter accusing him of sexual misconduct after he declined her request for “salaried employment and medical benefits.” Brooks said in the statement, “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.”
For their part, Roe’s lawyers told CNN that “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.”
So far, the lawsuit doesn’t seem to have affected Brooks’s career. The same day Roe filed her complaint, the two-time Grammy winner posted to Instagram after performing to a sold-out crowd at his Las Vegas residency. “If there was ever a night that I really needed this, TONIGHT was that night!” he wrote. “Thank you for my life!!!!! Love, g.”
Roe and her legal team are not backing down, however. “I cannot get into settlement discussions, but the suggestion made by Brooks that he was unwilling to pay millions is simply not true,” attorney Douglas H. Wigdor said in a statement to the Cut. “It seems as though Sean Combs and Garth Brooks are using the same public relations team by attacking legitimate victims. We are very confident in our case, and over time the public will see his true character rather than his highly curated persona.”
