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A former hairstylist and makeup artist is suing Garth Brooks for sexual assault and battery. The anonymous woman, “Jane Roe,” claims the country megastar once raped her on a 2019 trip, among other allegations, in a new lawsuit obtained by CNN. Brooks denied her claims in a statement to Vulture, accusing Roe of asking for “hush money” and threatening him before filing the lawsuit. “I trust the system, I do not fear the truth, and I am not the man they have painted me to be,” he said. Brooks had previously tried to block Roe’s claims while attempting to remain anonymous himself, filing a lawsuit in September to stop her from filing her suit. Now, Brooks has updated that lawsuit to name his accuser. Here’s what to know.
What is Brooks being accused of?
Roe says in her California lawsuit that she began working with Brooks’s wife, country star Trisha Yearwood, in 1999. She then started doing Brooks’s hair and makeup in 2017. (Brooks confirmed in his filing that she worked for him until she moved to Mississippi in May 2020.) Roe alleges that Brooks would change in front of her and expose himself to her repeatedly, even once forcing her to touch his genitals after he walked out of the shower naked. She also claims Brooks often spoke about sex around her, sent her explicit texts, and even repeatedly suggested “having a threesome” with Yearwood. Once, Roe said, she traveled to Los Angeles alone with Brooks — which she claimed was unusual — and arrived to find he had not booked her a separate hotel room or bed. There, she claims, Brooks raped her, saying in the lawsuit she felt “trapped in the room alone with Brooks.”
So what is Brooks’s lawsuit about?
CNN first reported that a celebrity — now confirmed to be Brooks — had anonymously filed a lawsuit against a Jane Roe in September, asking a Mississippi court to stop her from filing her own suit. In his lawsuit, Brooks claimed Roe was using “untrue, lewd allegations” to make millions off him. He asked to remain anonymous because Roe’s allegations would damage his “well-earned reputation as a decent and caring person.” The court did not act, allowing Roe to file her lawsuit. In a response to that lawsuit, Roe reportedly said that she was filing hers only after attempting to settle and that she “intended to hold him accountable for his conduct and sexual violence.” Her lawyers told CNN that Brooks’s lawsuit “was nothing other than an act of desperation and attempted intimidation.”
Brooks made a new filing on October 9, naming his accuser, the New York Times reported. Brooks said he named her only after she named him in her lawsuit. He is asking for damages, along with an injunction to stop Roe from continuing to publicize her allegations. “Defendant will suffer no hardship from an injunction of her wrongful conduct, while Plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm if no injunction is issued,” lawyers for Brooks claimed. In response, Roe’s lawyers decried Brooks’s move to name their client. “Garth Brooks just revealed his true self,” they told “Page Six.” “Out of spite and to punish, he publicly named a rape victim.” They said they would be seeking “maximum sanctions” against Brooks.
What has Brooks said about the allegations?
Along with filing his lawsuit, Brooks denied Roe’s claims in a statement following her suit. He also accused her of threatening him by attempting to settle before filing her lawsuit. “Hush money, no matter how much or how little, is still hush money,” he said. “In my mind, that means I am admitting to behavior I am incapable of — ugly acts no human should ever do to another.”
Brooks has continued performing at his Las Vegas residency since the lawsuit, even playing a show the night it was filed, October 3. “If there was ever a night that I really needed this, TONIGHT was that night! Thank you for my life!!!!!” he wrote on Instagram after that show.
Brooks is also still doing his weekly “Inside Studio G” livestreams. On October 7, he told fans he wouldn’t be addressing the allegations. “This thing is on, it’s gonna happen, and people are telling me it could be up to two years. Okay?” he said, per Us Weekly. “So, my suggestion is, well, take a deep breath, we all just kind of settle in and let’s hold hands and take the trip together, because it is something that you cannot talk about. That’s all we can say about it.”
Brooks maintained a public profile in the weeks before Roe’s lawsuit, doing multiple interviews. He spoke to USA Today about his plans to end his Las Vegas residency next March, saying he expected to be Yearwood’s “plus one” afterward. “My wife is sweet enough to be there for me every time I need her,” he added. “I need to return that and we need to hear her more than two songs a night. I told her I’d front her. I’ll stay backstage and do whatever she needs.” He additionally praised Yearwood in a joint October 1 interview with People pegged to their work with Habitat for Humanity. “My favorite thing about getting to be Ms. Yearwood’s partner is the good times, but also going through the bad times together because that makes you one and it tests your mettle,” he said. Yearwood, who added that she and Brooks are “best friends” in that interview, has remained supportive of her husband.
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