| Makeup artist files civil suit against Snoop Dogg over alleged rape in 2003
LOS ANGELES - A celebrity makeup artist has filed a $25 million lawsuit against Snoop Dogg, alleging he and several men in his entourage drugged and raped her two years ago.
The woman also claims in the lawsuit, filed Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, that one of Snoop Dogg's associates beat her following a taping of ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" show, which the rapper-actor guest hosted in January 2003.
In addition to Snoop Dogg and three associates, the suit names The Walt Disney Co. and its parent company, ABC Inc. The woman identifies herself in the documents, but The Associated Press is withholding her name because she is an alleged rape victim.
The woman applied Snoop Dogg's makeup before four shows, according to the lawsuit, which said she was drugged with spiked champagne after his final appearance.
The woman's attorney, Perry Wander, said she waited two years to sue because she had tried to negotiate a settlement with attorneys for the media companies. Disney and ABC should be held responsible because they "failed to provide a safe working environment for my client," Wander said. The suit seeks $25 million in punitive and other damages.
A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department said she didn't know whether the woman had filed a police report. Both the lawsuit and a statement from Snoop Dogg's publicist suggest the woman went to police about six months after the alleged incident.
Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, filed a lawsuit Dec. 11 alleging that the woman had been trying to extort $5 million in exchange for keeping silent.
"It is truly unfortunate that (she) has chosen to follow the increasingly common path of misusing the legal system as a means of extracting financial gain from entertainers," Snoop Dogg's publicist, Meredith O'Sullivan, said in a statement Monday.
Kevin Brockman, a spokesman for ABC, said the allegations have "simply no merit."
- AP
The Smoking Gun has all the Paperwork:
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Snoop Accused Of Sex Assault
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Woman claims rapper, posse attacked her at "Jimmy Kimmel" taping
JANUARY 30--Weeks after Snoop Dogg filed a preemptive lawsuit claiming he was the target of an extortion scheme hatched by a woman claiming to have been sexually assaulted by the rapper and his posse, the alleged victim, an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, has responded with her own blistering legal complaint.
In the below Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, filed Friday, Kylie Bell charges that Snoop (real name: Calvin Broadus) and several associates raped her in the entertainer's dressing room following a January 2003 taping of ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live." Bell, who won a 2002 Emmy for her work on HBO's "Six Feet Under," claims that she was left incapacitated after drinking what a Snoop associate told her was champagne. According to the complaint, after Bell, 36, was drugged, she was sexually assaulted by Broadus and four cronies. In addition to the rapper, Bell, who is seeking $25 million in combined damages, has named ABC, Kimmel's show, and the Walt Disney Company as defendants.
She alleges that the network is partly liable for the attacks because, during the week Broadus co-hosted the Kimmel program, his dressing room was stocked with "large quantities" of champagne and marijuana (Bell also claims to have seen Broadus "snorting cocaine powder" on the final night of his Kimmel gig, which came during the show's first week on ABC).
The morning after the incident, Bell claims that she told family members about the sexual assault, but was advised not to make a police report due to Broadus's supposed street gang affiliation. Four months later, according to the complaint, Bell contacted the Kimmel program "and told them that she had been sexually assaulted at the show" and was contacting the police.
In short order, Bell claims, she began having her living expenses paid through an ABC investment subsidiary. After those network payouts ceased, Broadus began paying Bell's expenses while the rapper's lawyers opened negotiations with the woman's attorneys. According to Bell's complaint, the two sides entered into mediation last October, but "were unable to settle the dispute at the financial amount recommended by the mediator."
However, on January 6--nearly a month after Broadus filed his extortion complaint against the woman and her lawyers--counsel for both sides "agreed to a settlement of this matter, at a figure less than the figure recommended by the mediator," according to Bell's lawsuit. But that apparent deal cratered on January 18, the complaint states, when Broadus's insurance company refused to "pay a portion of the compensation previously promised" by the rapper's legal team.
Ten days later, Bell filed her lawsuit, claiming that the alleged attack caused "serious emotional distress and anxiety," left her under the care of a therapist and psychiatrist, and resulted in a September 2003 psychiatric hospitalization.
- The Smoking Gun
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