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Country music megastar facing lawsuit and rape allegations from makeup artist
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Country music megastar facing lawsuit and rape allegations from makeup artist

A woman claims in a lawsuit that Garth Brooks raped her while she worked as a hairstylist and makeup artist for the country star.

The woman, who chooses to remain anonymous, is named as Jane Roe in the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in California, according to reports from People and multiple media outlets.

She claims Brooks, 62, raped her in 2019 at a Los Angeles hotel. She says Brooks only booked one hotel room after they took his private jet to a tribute concert.

On another occasion the same year, she said the singer stood naked in front of her and put her hands on his genitals. She says it wasn’t the only time he exposed himself.

Brooks also sent her texts containing explicit material, she says.

The woman says that before she was hired by Brooks in 2017, she had worked for country star Trisha Yearwood, Brooks’ wife, since 1999. Yearwood, 60, married Brooks in 2005.

In the lawsuit, she says Brooks took advantage of her financial problems, knowing she needed the work.

“Brooks took what he saw as an opportunity to subject a female employee to a side of Brooks that he keeps hidden from the public,” the complaint said. “This side of Brooks believes he is entitled to sexual gratification whenever he wants it, and using a female employee to get it is fair game.”

She says that in 2019, Brooks got out of the shower and exposed himself to her, asking her to “perform oral sex on him.”

The woman says she has no longer worked for Brooks as of 2021.

In September, Brooks tried to stop the lawsuit by filing his own anonymous lawsuit in Mississippi — as John Doe — denying the woman’s claims. He said she threatened that she would go public with the allegations if he did not pay him a large sum of money.

“Over the past two months, I have been endlessly harassed with threats, lies and tragic stories about what my future would be if I did not write a multi-million dollar check,” Brooks said in a statement to People and other outlets. “It was like waving a loaded gun in my face.”

“Hush money, no matter how much or how little it is, is still hush money,” he said. “In my mind, this means I’m admitting to behavior I’m not capable of doing: ugly acts that no human should ever do to another. We filed suit against this individual almost a month ago to speak out against extortion and defamation of character. We submitted it anonymously, in the interest of the families on both sides.”

“I trust the system,” he said in another part of the statement. “I’m not afraid of the truth, and I’m not the man they made me out to be.”

On Thursday evening, Brooks shared a photo on Instagram from his concert in Las Vegas, where he has a residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

“If there was ever a night I really needed this, TONIGHT was that night!” he told his 1.9 million followers in the post. “Thank you for my life!!”

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Amy Kuperinsky can be reached at [email protected] and followed up @AmyKup.