Music superstar says the alleged victim jumped the gun in identifying him before a court could rule on his request for anonymity.
Garth Brooks has responded in court to a sexual assault and battery lawsuit anonymously filed last week by his former hair and makeup artist.
In court documents filed Tuesday, Brooks identifies himself as the John Doe who initiated a case in Mississippi federal court Sept. 13 by asking a judge to preemptively declare sexual misconduct allegations from a woman — identified then as Jane Roe — to be untrue and award him damages for emotional distress and defamation.
The allegations first became public when Roe filed a civil lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court accusing the country superstar of raping her in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2019. Brooks, who denies all of Roe’s allegations, calls himself “the victim of a shakedown” that began four years ago.
In Tuesday’s amended complaint, Brooks also names the woman accusing him of sexual assault.
The intention of the anonymous complaint, in which Brooks is described as “a celebrity and public figure who resides in Tennessee,” was “to avoid the irreparable harm to reputation that he seeks to prevent (through) this action,” the filing states. In a separate filing, Brooks denounces Roe’s legal team for naming him in her California lawsuit before the Mississippi court could rule whether to allow Brooks to continue the case with a pseudonym.
