Country music superstar Garth Brooks has named the woman who, as Jane Roe, accused him of rape in a lawsuit last week.
In an amended complaint filed in federal court in Mississippi on Tuesday, Brooks’ lawyers publicized the accuser’s name and said that Brooks “is the victim of a shakedown” and that the woman “flouted” the authority of a judge in a related case.
The woman’s attorneys, Douglas Wigdor, Jeanne Christensen and Hayley Baker, said in a statement that they “will be moving for maximum sanctions” against Brooks immediately.
“Garth Brooks just revealed his true self. Out of spite and to punish, he publicly named a rape victim,” the woman’s attorneys said. “With no legal justification, Brooks outed her because he thinks the laws don’t apply to him.” (NBC News does not identify alleged rape victims against their wishes.)
Brooks’ lawyers seemed to justify naming his accuser by quoting one of her filings from last week as saying she was willing to proceed using her name if the court believed it was necessary in denying his motion to remain anonymous. The woman’s filing said that “although Ms. Roe believes that she should be permitted to remain anonymous … if the Court determines that the status of her name meaningfully impacts whether Plaintiff can proceed as a ‘Doe,’ Ms. Roe is willing to proceed and use her own name in this action.”
Last month, a John Doe sued a Jane Roe in federal court in Mississippi. The plaintiff, identified only as “a celebrity and public figure who resides in Tennessee,” said that in July, a lawyer for the woman, who the lawsuit said is a resident of Mississippi, sent the man (later identified as Brooks) a demand letter with what he described as false allegations of sexual misconduct and sexual assault and that she threatened to sue him unless he paid her millions of dollars. The man asked the court to preserve the parties’ anonymity by allowing them to use pseudonyms.
In response, the woman’s attorneys wrote in a separate filing last week that they intended to sue the man in California, saying, “Ms. Roe respectfully requests that she may commence her California action as she intended to do, and use Mr. Doe’s name, absent objection from this Honorable Court.”
Two days later, the woman filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court. She did not use her name, but she named Brooks. The woman described herself as a hair and makeup stylist who worked with Brooks’ wife, country singer Trisha Yearwood, beginning in 1999 and began working for Brooks in 2017. The woman’s lawsuit alleged that Brooks raped her in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2019 and that he exposed his genitals to her many other times, talked about sexual fantasies with her and sent her sexually explicit text messages.
In his initial filing in Mississippi, before his name was disclosed, Brooks said he should be able to proceed anonymously with his lawsuit to “avoid unnecessarily harming” his accuser’s reputation and because her allegations could cause “substantial, irreparable damage” to his “well-earned reputation as a decent and caring person.”
After the woman named him in her suit last week, Brooks said, in part: “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.”
“I trust the system, I do not fear the truth, and I am not the man they have painted me to be,” he added.
In his latest filing, Brooks is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and a jury trial, as well as an injunction prohibiting the woman “from continuing her extortionate behavior and from further publicizing her false allegations” against him.
