LAST UPDATE | 4 Oct

COUNTRY SINGER GARTH Brooks has denied rape accusations against him as he returned to his Las Vegas concert residency late last night.

A woman who says she worked as a hair and make-up stylist for Brooks has alleged in a lawsuit that he raped her in a hotel in 2019.

In a statement to People magazine, the 62-year-old denied the allegations, which also include repeated unwanted sexual advances, exposing himself and groping.

“I have been hassled to no end with threats, lies, and tragic tales of what my future would be if I did not write a check for many millions of dollars,” Brooks said, adding his team had filed suit against the woman for extortion and defamation.

“It has been like having a loaded gun waved in my face,” he said. “I trust the system, I do not fear the truth, and I am not the man they have painted me to be.”

In an Instagram post centered on his concert, Brooks wrote that “If there was ever a night that I really needed this, TONIGHT was that night!” alongside an image of The Colosseum at Caesars Palace where he’s set to continue a residency through early 2025. 

Jane Roe

The woman making the allegatons does not use her name and goes by Jane Roe in the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The woman says in the lawsuit she had worked for Brooks’ wife, country singer Trisha Yearwood, since 1999 and had started also working for Brooks in 2017.

She said the assault occurred when she travelled from Nashville to Los Angeles with Brooks, who was performing with soul singer Sam Moore at a Grammy Awards tribute to Moore in October 2019.

Brooks normally travelled with an entourage but the two were alone on his private jet and he booked just one hotel suite for both of them, the lawsuit says.

The woman alleges that in the suite, he appeared naked in the doorway to the bedroom and raped her.

The suit against Brooks, which demands unspecified damages, says the accuser was so traumatised by an attack in May 2019 that she later considered suicide.

“Brooks appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, completely naked,” details the suit of the alleged assault.

“He stood there and flexed his muscles. (She) immediately had a sick feeling in her stomach, knowing she was trapped in the room alone with Brooks, with no one to help.”

The suit says he then proceeded as though nothing had happened and expected her to do his hair and make-up immediately after.

She alleges that earlier in 2019, when she was at Brooks’s home, he had appeared naked in front of her, grabbed her hands and put them on his genitals.

The lawsuit says Brooks filed his own pre-emptive lawsuit in federal court in Mississippi last month in which both he and the woman were anonymous.

In court filings in that case, the plaintiff, going by John Doe, said the allegations were “wholly untrue”, and he first learned of them in July when she threatened to publicly sue him unless he gave her millions of dollars.

He asked a judge to stop the woman from “intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation and false light invasion of privacy”.

The woman’s suit also says Brooks exposed himself to her many other times, talked about sexual fantasies with her and sent her explicit text messages.

She says she was forced to keep working for him because of financial hardship, which he knew about and took advantage of.

Oklahoma-born Brooks, 62, was the biggest star in country music of the 1990s, with hits including Friends In Low Places and The Thunder Rolls. He married fellow country star Yearwood in 2005.

With reporing from AFP and Press Association