Country music star Garth Brooks publicly named the woman who accused him of sexual assault and battery in a legal filing on Tuesday, drawing a harsh rebuke from her lawyers.
The woman, a hairstylist who worked for Brooks and his wife, Trisha Yearwood, filed a lawsuit last week under the pseudonym Jane Roe in Los Angeles County Superior Court, accusing Brooks of sexually assaulting her in a hotel room in 2019.
The lawsuit included several more allegations against Brooks, including that he would purposefully expose his genitals while changing his clothes in front of her, force her to touch his genitals, send her explicit text messages and pressure her to engage in sexting with him.
Shortly before the woman filed her suit against him, Brooks sued her in federal court, claiming she was trying to extort and defame him. In Brooks’ suit, which was initially filed on Oct. 3 as John Doe v. Jane Roe, Brooks asked a judge to stop his accuser from further publicizing her charges against him.
“Defendant’s allegations are not true,” Brooks’ complaint said. “Defendant is well aware, however, 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.”
On Tuesday, he amended his complaint to include his real name — and hers.
“Garth Brooks just revealed his true self. Out of spite and to punish, he publicly named a rape victim,” the woman’s attorneys said in a statement to HuffPost. “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.”
HuffPost is not naming the woman. Like most news organizations, HuffPost does not name alleged victims of sexual assault unless they choose to come forward.
The woman’s attorneys filed a motion seeking an emergency sealing or redactions of her name, and urged the judge to sanction Brooks.
“Each hour and day that the Amended Complaint remains on the docket without redacting Defendant’s identity or placing it under seal, is causing Defendant severe emotional distress and harm,” her lawyers wrote.
In a letter to the court, one of her attorneys added that Brooks could have easily provided them with notice before divulging her identity to the public, but failed to.
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According to the woman’s lawsuit, in May 2019, she and Brooks traveled to Los Angeles together for a Grammys tribute to fellow musician Sam Moore. The stylist learned that Brooks had booked only one hotel suite for both of them, and after they arrived, Brooks, naked, cornered her in the doorway to the bedroom.
“As she began to panic, he grabbed her hands and pulled her into the next room and onto the bed where she could not escape his physical domination,” the stylist’s suit said.
The rape was “painful and traumatic,” her lawsuit continued, adding that at one point, Brooks “held her small body upside down by her feet and penetrated her.”
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In Brooks’ suit, his attorneys said the woman had been going through financial difficulties. When she asked Brooks for help, he initially gave her money out of “loyalty, friendship, and a desire to improve Defendant’s condition,” but she continued to ask for more, including salaried pay and medical benefits. When he denied her demands, she responded with the false allegations, Brooks’ attorneys said.
Attorneys representing Brooks did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s questions Wednesday on why they decided to name the woman.
Yearwood has not commented publicly on the lawsuits, but in an Instagram post on Tuesday, she signaled her support for her husband with a photo of the couple singing together captioned “Love One Another.”
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.