According to court documents acquired by Entertainment Weekly, comedians Tiffany Haddish and Aries Spears are now facing accusations of “intentional infliction of emotional distress, gross negligence, sexual battery, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse of a minor.”
A 22-year-old woman going by the alias Jane Doe filed a suit at the Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday (30 August) alleging that the two comedians forced her and her 15-year-old brother, using the alias John Doe, to conduct inappropriate deeds on camera when they were both minors.
In addition to the aforementioned accusations, Haddish has been accused of “negligent supervision/failure to warn, breach of fiduciary duty, and constructive fraud.”
According to the lawsuit, Haddish and Spears reportedly persuaded the siblings to engage in sexually provocative behaviours on video while they were underage in two different instances.
The report states that John was seven years old and Jane was fourteen when the harassment occurred.
In separate statements on Thursday (1 September), reps for Haddish and Spears refuted the allegations, with Haddish’s lawyer Andrew Brettler claiming in a statement that the plaintiff’s mother “has been trying to assert these bogus claims against Haddish for several years.”
Adding, “Every attorney who has initially taken on her case – and there were several – ultimately dropped the matter once it became clear that the claims were meritless and Haddish would not be shaken down. Now, [the plaintiff’s mother] has her adult daughter representing herself in this lawsuit. The two of them will together face the consequences of pursuing this frivolous action.”
According to Spears’ lawyer Debra Opri, her client “isn’t going to fall for any shakedown.”
The lawsuit claims that the siblings initially met Haddish when they were much younger and that they referred to her as “Aunty Tiff.” Jane and John allegedly also filmed a sketch with both comedians in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
Per the older sibling, Haddish appeared as a guest speaker for a comedy camp she attended, where the comic sought her and asked her to be in a commercial.
The court documents claim that the comedian’s showed Jane a video in which a man and woman shared a sandwich while “moaning and making sexual noises,” simulating the act of fellatio, after which Spears allegedly instructed Jane “to mimic what she had seen on the screen, including the noises precisely like what she heard throughout the video.”
Jane reportedly recalled being “nervous and disgusted” at the time, and the complaint stated that Haddish “verbally explained what was expected of Plaintiff Jane Doe and then showed Plaintiff Jane Doe how to give fellatio, including movements, noises, moaning, and groaning.”
Additionally, the lawsuit claimed that the comedians had hired John for a different movie a year later, which they allegedly released on FunnyorDie.com titiled, “Through a Pedophile’s Eyes.”
Per the filing, Spears played the role of a paedophile in the film, which included shots of him applying oil on John’s back and other suggestive sexual activities. According to the complaint, “[John] called his mother crying, saying he did not want to film anymore” once filming was over.
The filing added that, Jane “feels constant remorse knowing that she was only a few feet away when Spears was molesting her 7-year-old little brother in the other room.”
In a statement to The Daily Beast, a rep for Funny or Die refuted any claims of involvement, saying that they “found this video absolutely disgusting and would never produce such content,” and that they “were not involved with the conceptualisation, development, funding, or production of this video. It was uploaded to the site as user-generated content and was removed in 2018 immediately after becoming aware of its existence.”
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