R&B star Chris Brown sued in US for rape; woman alleges being drugged, attacked

Singer Chris Brown is being sued for rape in California, with his alleged victim claiming he drugged her and attacked her on a yacht at rap mogul Diddy's Florida home.

The woman, identified in court papers only as Jane Doe, is demanding $20 million in damages from the R&B star.

According to the civil suit, which was filed on Thursday and seen by AFP, Brown invited the woman — described as a choreographer, dancer, model and musical artist — to the yacht shortly after she arrived in Miami on December 30, 2020.

She says the drink he offered her there made her feel "disoriented (and) physically unstable."

The filing says Brown led her into a bedroom where, despite her protests, he raped her.

"The traumatic events that Plaintiff Jane Doe experienced shock the conscience and should horrify all of us," says the suit, filed in Los Angeles.

"The time has come to send a message to Defendant Chris Brown that enough is enough. 

"Accordingly, Plaintiff Jane Doe brings this complaint seeking justice for herself (and also with the hope it may serve as an example for others) who may now or have in the past found themselves at the mercy of Defendant Chris Brown."

Lawyers Ariel Mitchell and George Vrabeck told TMZ their client did not report the alleged attack to the police because she was embarrassed.

AFP asked the firm if a criminal complaint would be forthcoming in the wake of the civil case, but 

was no immediate reply.

Grammy Award-winning Brown took to Instagram after news of the suit broke.

"I HOPE YALL SEE THIS PATTERN OF [blue cap emoji]," he wrote. The blue cap emoji is used to denote untruths.

"Whenever im releasing music or projects 'THEY' try to pull some real bullshit."

Brown did not specify who "they" were.

In 2009, Brown was convicted of beating fellow singer Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time, who missed the Grammy Awards because of her injuries.

He also was previously accused of raping a woman in a luxury Paris hotel. He denied the claim, and was not charged.

Agence France-Presse

Mastercard to investigate allegations against Pornhub

Mastercard Inc said on Sunday it was investigating allegations against Pornhub.com following a newspaper column which said many videos posted on the adult website depicted child abuse.

The New York Times column, written by Nicholas Kristof, described videos on Pornhub that the author said were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls.

“The issue is not pornography but rape. Let’s agree that promoting assaults on children or on anyone without consent is unconscionable,” Kristof wrote in the column published on Friday.

Pornhub denied the allegations.

“Any assertion that we allow CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue,” it said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

Mastercard told Reuters in a statement that it was investigating the allegations with Pornhub’s parent MindGeek’s bank. “If the claims are substantiated, we will take immediate action,” Mastercard said.

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman called on Mastercard and Visa Inc to temporarily withhold payments to Pornhub following the newspaper column.

Ackman also asked American Express Co to take action, though the company’s cards aren’t accepted on the site.

Visa said it is aware of the allegations and is “actively engaging with the relevant financial institutions to investigate,” while also engaging directly with MindGeek.

“If the site is identified as not complying with applicable laws or the financial institutions’ acceptable use policies and underwriting standards they will no longer be able to accept Visa payments,” the company said in a statement.

American Express said it has a longstanding global policy that prohibits acceptance of its cards on digital adult content websites.

Ackman suggested it should be made illegal for porn sites to post videos before they are reviewed by a monitor, and until the ages and consent of participants have been validated.

In its response, Pornhub said it has a vast team of human moderators who manually review “every single upload,” as well as automated detection technologies. It did not say how many people were part of its review team.

Kristof’s column also drew reactions from politicians including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said his government was working with police and security officials to address the issues it raised.

In the United States, Senator Josh Hawley said he will introduce legislation to create a federal right to sue for every person “coerced or trafficked or exploited by sites like Pornhub.”

-reuters-

Lawyer: Ronaldo rape accuser ’emotionally fragile’

LAS VEGAS — A lawyer for a Nevada woman alleging that soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo raped her in Las Vegas in 2009 said Tuesday her client was “emotionally fragile” and agreed to an out-of-court financial settlement nine years ago because she never wanted her name made public.

Kathryn Mayorga is out of the U.S. and is not speaking with media about the lawsuit she filed last week seeking monetary damages from Ronaldo, attorney Larissa Drohobyczer told The Associated Press. Drohobyczer didn’t say where Mayorga was. She lives in the Las Vegas-area city of Henderson.

AP does not typically identify alleged victims of sexual assault, but Drohobyczer said Mayorga gave permission on Tuesday for her name to be used.

“She’s not going to be interviewed,” the attorney said. “At this time she’s emotionally fragile.”

The civil lawsuit filed in state court in Las Vegas alleges Ronaldo raped Mayorga, who was then 24, in his penthouse suite at a Las Vegas hotel and hired a team of what the document called “fixers” to shape the monetary settlement, obstruct a police criminal investigation and trick Mayorga into taking $375,000 to keep quiet.

An attorney for Ronaldo, Christian Schertz in Berlin, did not immediately respond to emails from AP. It was not immediately clear if the player had an attorney representing him in the matter in the U.S. After the German magazine Der Spiegel reported about the lawsuit last week, Schertz threatened to sue, saying the article violated Ronaldo’s personal rights “in an exceptionally serious way.”

In an Instagram video posted hours after the suit was filed, Ronaldo appears to deny the allegations.

“Fake. Fake news,” said the five-time world player of the year. “You want to promote by my name. It’s normal. They want to be famous, to say my name. But it is part of the job. I am a happy man and all good.”

Drohobyczer, who said she did not represent Mayorga in 2009 negotiations with Ronaldo’s representatives, acknowledged Mayorga accepted the settlement money.

No court document was filed, and Drohobyczer declined to identify the lawyers who handled the case at that time for Mayorga and for Ronaldo.

An attorney who may have represented Mayorga in 2009 did not respond Tuesday to messages from AP.

Drohobyczer said Mayorga, now 34, became worried that her name would become public after a 2017 media report apparently referred to the June 2009 incident at the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Mayorga was not a source for the article, Drohobyczer said.

Her client also was influenced in recent months by the #MeToo movement of women making public allegations of prior sexual assault, the attorney said.

Mayorga met Ronaldo at a nightclub, according to the lawsuit, and went with him and other people to his suite, where the alleged attack took place in a bedroom.

“She came to us and we had concerns with what happened in 2009 … with the police investigation and the circumstances around the settlement and how the negotiations were conducted,” Drohobyczer told AP.

“We don’t believe she had the capacity to enter an agreement at that time due to her emotional state,” Drohobyczer said. She characterized Mayorga in 2009 as emotionally damaged, fearful, depressed and humiliated after the alleged attack and pressure from Ronaldo’s representatives.

“We asked police to reopen the investigation and they did,” Drohobyczer said.

Officer Aden OcampoGomez, a Las Vegas police spokesman, said that because the investigation is open, the department would not make public a police report that Mayorga filed the day of the alleged attack. The lawsuit said Mayorga also went to a hospital, where a sexual assault medical examination was conducted.

However, Mayorga refused to tell police the location of the alleged attack or to identify a suspect other than to say he was a European soccer player, OcampoGomez said.

Ronaldo, 33, is a Portuguese citizen. He went from Manchester United to Real Madrid in 2009 for a then-record sum of 94 million euros, or about $130 million. He now plays for the Italian club Juventus.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages of at least $200,000. It makes 11 accusations against Ronaldo or those working for him, including conspiracy, defamation, abusing a vulnerable person, battery, infliction of emotional distress, coercion and fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, breach of contract, abuse of process and negligence for allowing details of the confidential settlement to become public.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Weinstein accuser paid teen who said she raped him – report

WASHINGTON, United States – Italian actress Asia Argento, who became a leading figure in the #MeToo movement after accusing powerhouse producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, paid hush money to a man who claimed she sexually assaulted him when he was 17, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The $380,000 payment was made to Jimmy Bennett, an actor and rock musician, who claimed Argento assaulted him in a California hotel room in 2013, according to the Times, which cited documents sent to the paper by an unidentified party.


Bennett was two months past his 17th birthday at the time of the alleged encounter, while Argento was 37. The legal age of consent in California is 18. The pair are now 22 and 42 respectively.

The newspaper said it had tried repeatedly without success to get a comment on the matter from Argento and her representatives.

The terms of the deal including a payment schedule were finalized in April this year, according to the documents seen by the Times.

Among the documents it received was a selfie of the pair lying in bed dated May 9, 2013, that Bennett was supposed to hand over to Argento along with its copyright under the agreement.

The Times cited three people familiar with the case as saying the documents were authentic.

The pair acted together in the 2004 film “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, in which Argento plays Bennett’s troubled mother.

Victim or predator?
Argento’s lawyer Carrie Goldberg described the money as “helping Mr Bennett,” lamenting that the actress had to deal with people “who preyed on both your strengths and your weaknesses.”

Bennett’s lawyers had characterized the hotel encounter as a “sexual battery” that traumatized the former child actor, threatening his mental health and income.

His notice of intent to sue sought $3.5 million in damages for “intentional infliction of emotional distress, lost wages, assault and battery,” the paper said.


Argento became a powerful voice for the #MeToo movement after accusing Weinstein of raping her when she was 21 in his hotel room in 1997 during the Cannes film festival.

Bennett’s legal action was launched a month after Argento’s accusations against Weinstein were made public, the Times said, adding that his lawyer claimed his client recalled the hotel encounter after seeing Argento present herself as a victim of sexual assault.

Argento made an emotional speech at this year’s Cannes festival, telling the audience: “Things have changed. We are not going to allow you to get away with it.”

Her late boyfriend, celebrated television food critic Anthony Bourdain, was also an outspoken voice in the movement decrying sexual misconduct by power players in the entertainment industry and beyond. /cbb

source: entertainment.inquirer.net