Derrick Rose loses motion, will face trial in civil gang-rape suit
A federal judge on Wednesday denied Derrick Rose’s motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit alleging he and two other men drugged a woman, broke into her apartment and raped her, meaning the case against the New York Knicks point guard will proceed to trial.
Court documents published Friday by Daniel Werly of The White Bronco show that Rose’s motion for summary judgment in the case, filed on June 20, was denied by U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald due to substantial disagreements on the most important facts of the case between the versions forwarded by Rose and his fellow defendants — Ryan Allen, the younger brother of Memphis Grizzlies guard Tony Allen, and Randall Hampton, “Rose’s best friend since grammar school,” identified in a December 2014 New York Times story as his manager — and the woman who first filed the civil complaint against the three defendants in Los Angeles County Superior Court last August, identified in court documents only as “Jane Doe.”
“The record presents a genuine dispute of material fact as to the central issue in this action: whether Plaintiff consented to sexual intercourse with Defendants in early morning of August 27, 2013,” Fitzgerald wrote in his judgment. “Because the jury and not the Court must resolve this central issue, summary judgment is improper. ”
In the original civil complaint, Jane Doe alleged that then-Chicago Bulls guard Rose — with whom she had allegedly had a sexual relationship from late 2011 until July 2013 — Allen and Hampton placed a drug in her drink during a night out, and that she was in an “incapacitated state of consciousness” when they allegedly “gang raped” her, according to Patrick M. O’Connell of the Chicago Tribune:
The 31-page lawsuit offers explicit details of the couple’s sexual relationship, portraying Rose as pushing the woman to engage in sexual encounters she was uncomfortable with, including with friends. That pressure, according to the lawsuit, contributed to the couple’s breakup. […]
The woman claims the sexual assault happened after the group attended a party at a home in Beverly Hills, Calif. After drinking tequila at the party, the woman alleges in the lawsuit, she left in a taxi with a friend. Rose, Hampton and Allen allegedly later drove to her home and sexually assaulted her. […]
In the weeks after August 2013, the woman, who worked as an administrator for a property management company, said she became paranoid that Rose was monitoring her phone calls, according to the lawsuit.
But the suit does say she was reluctant to report the incident for fear of retaliation and because she had been in a consensual relationship with Rose. Trauma from the alleged assault led to emotional turmoil for the woman, according to the lawsuit, and she lost her job.
Jane Doe is seeking $21.5 million in damages in the suit, which was first filed in state court and later transferred to federal court.
Rose’s attorney, Lisa Cohen, responded with a statement granting that Rose and Jane Doe had engaged “in a non-exclusive, consensual sexual relationship with the plaintiff for over two years,” but calling the gang-rape allegations “completely false and without any factual basis” and casting the case as “nothing more than a desperate attempt to shake down a highly respected and successful athlete.”
In a subsequent court filing, another attorney for Rose, Mark D. Baute, disputed the claim that the sexual contact during the incident in question was non-consensual, according to The Associated Press:
In Baute’s filing on behalf of Rose, the 2011 NBA MVP denies the allegations and says the woman “consented to the actions she now claims were non-consensual.”
“The Plaintiff consented to sexual interaction with more than one co-defendant on more than one occasion, consented to sexual interactions on the day in question, and invited the defendants to her apartment and buzzed them in through security and opened the apartment door to welcome them, and then consented to additional group activities later that evening,” it reads.
Rose’s filing also says the woman “became upset a few weeks or months later because she felt she should be reimbursed for one of the sex toys she purchased and used during the day and night in question.” She also became upset with Rose for not being responsive enough to her text messages, according to the court document.
Since the lawsuit was filed last year, Rose has maintained his innocence.
“I am not going to comment other than to say — I know the truth, and am confident I will be proven innocent,” Rose said in a statement.
“It’s not true,” Rose told reporters at the opening of the Bulls’ 2015 training camp. “I can’t let one incident that’s not true affect the way that I live, and I’m not going to let it.”
In May, Rose filed a motion calling for Jane Doe’s parents to be deposed so that his attorneys could “question the plaintiff’s parents about her ‘traditional, religious upbringing,'” and asking the court “to force Doe to reveal her identity,” claiming “she has waived her privacy rights by putting her emotional condition at issue.” Doe’s attorneys balked at that, arguing that “being forced to reveal her identity could prohibit future rape victims from coming out against their celebrity attackers.”
Rose went one-for-two on that motion, according to Marisa Kabas of Fusion:
In the end, Rose’s request was both allowed and denied: The judge found no compelling reason to publicly release the woman’s real name, which also means that Rose’s defense will not be able to use her social media as evidence of her “sexual” nature at trial. He did, however, allow the disclosure of her name within the realm of the discovery, or fact-finding, process. This means that third party eyewitnesses, including people present at Rose’s house that night and other people familiar with their prior relationship, will be privy to her identity for the sake of understanding what exactly happened that night.
The Bulls traded Rose to the Knicks on June 22 along with forward Justin Holiday and a 2017 second-round draft pick in exchange for center Robin Lopez, point guards Jose Calderona and Jerian Grant. Rose is expected to be the Knicks’ starting point guard for the upcoming season. If the case is not settled out of court before, his trial is scheduled to start Oct. 4 in Los Angeles, a date that will likely fall in the middle of Knicks training camp.
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