Kesha in 2011, the year she denied in a deposition that Dr. Luke had ever roofied her. Photo via Wikimedia Commons
If you hang out with enough people in the entertainment industry, you’ll hear countless stories about child sex rings and sexual assault. Generally, people in the industry have refused to speak out publicly about these phenomenon from fear of retaliation—until now. This year, we’ve seen several high-profile accusations of unsavory behavior in the entertainment world: There’s a new documentary about X-Men franchise director Bryan Singer’s connection to a Hollywood pedophile ring; several women have stepped forward to describe the times Bill Cosby allegedly drugged and raped them; and yesterday morning on the Howard Stern Show, Lady Gaga claimed that she was raped when she was 19 by an unnamed record producer.
Pop star Kesha has been lobbing her own allegations of sexual assault and battery via lawsuit against the legendary producer Dr. Luke, who helped her create some of her biggest hits. After Gaga’s alleged sexual assault became public knowledge, Kesha’s attorney Mark Geragos—who also represented Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson—went on a tweet spree in which he claimed that Gaga’s unnamed pop producer rapist was Dr. Luke.
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The new accusation from Geragos falls in line with the very public war Kesha and her lawyer have been waging against Dr. Luke for the past three months. In October, Kesha filed a lawsuit and asked to be removed from her contract with the producer. In the lawsuit, the singer alleges that since she was 18, Luke has sexually abused her and forced her to take drugs. At one point, she says she woke up naked in Luke’s bed after he gave her what he called “sober pills.” She also claims she developed an eating disorder because Luke would call her things like a “a fat fucking refrigerator.”
Both Gaga and Luke’s representatives denied Geragos most recent accusations to TMZ. “It’s absolutely not true,” Gaga’s rep said. Luke’s rep echoed this statement: “Mark Geragos’s statement is completely false and defamatory. Luke met Lady Gaga twice for less than half an hour total in those two meetings combined,” they said. “He has never been alone with her and never touched her. Neither meeting was in that time frame reported.”
Geragos then called bullshit on Gaga and Luke to TMZ, promising he would depose Gaga and three “not as famous” women in Kesha’s lawsuit against the pop doctor.
However, many questions have also been raised around Geragos and Kesha’s lawsuit. In October, the Los Angeles Times described how Luke has countersued Kesha and including quotes from the producer’s camp that claimed the singer, her manager, and her mother—the songwriter Pebe Sebert, who has penned hits for Dolly Parton and Pitbull—have tried to extort Luke to get Kesha out of her recording and publishing contract with him.
“Kesha’s lawsuit is a spectacular and outrageous fiction that will go down in flames,” Luke’s lawyer Christine Lepara told the Times. “As the truth emerges, this sad and misguided smear campaign will only hurt Kesha. This is hardly the first time that Kesha and her mother have threatened Luke with an extortionist scheme to ruin his reputation publicly unless he let her out of her contract.”
Statements made by Kesha in a 2011 deposition from a previous lawsuit between her and her former managers at Das Communications raise even more questions around her accusations against Luke. In the deposition, Kesha is quoted as denying Luke ever drugged or assaulted her—a lawyer asks her if Luke ever gave her a roofie and she says, “No.”
Then the attorney asks Kesha, “Did you ever tell your mother that you woke up in a hotel room in [Luke’s] bed and don’t recall what happened that night?”
“I don’t remember,” Kesha says.
Later in the same deposition, the attorney asks Kesha if Luke does drugs: “I don’t know if he does drugs,” she says.
The stories of Gaga and the countless other who’ve come forward demonstrate (if anyone doubted the fact) that there are a lot of perverts in the entertainment industry. Right now, however, it’s certainly not clear that Luke is one of them.
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