The legal team representing Guns N’ Roses vocalist Axl Rose have filed a motion to have the sexual assault lawsuit filed against him last year dismissed. Ex-Penthouse model Sheila Kennedy filed suit against the hard rock icon late last year over an incident which allegedly took place in a NY hotel room back in 1989.
That suit was filed amid the window of last year’s adult survivors act, which allowed alleged victims of sexual assault to file suit against their attackers without being constrained by the standard statute of limitations.
In her suit, Kennedy alleged that Rose physically and sexually abused her, leaving her with PTSD-like symptoms, as well as anxiety and depression. In her suit, she listed assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and gender-motivated violence as causes of action.
In court documents newly obtained by Radar, Rose‘s legal team deny Kennedy‘s claims, with his lawyer citing passages published in Kennedy‘s own 2016 memoir, ‘No One’s Pet‘, as well as past interviews. Rose‘s lawyer stated the following in regards to that:
“In her 2016 self-authored memoir, No One’s Pet, Kennedy described the alleged incident in the Complaint as consensual sex, and specifically noted: ‘I was okay with this. I had wanted to be with him since the minute I’d first laid eyes on him, and now I was getting him.'”
A separate interview was also referenced:
“In an interview for the 2021 documentary Look Away, Kennedy described the alleged sexual encounter this way: “[i]t was consented”; Rose was “not trying to hurt me”; and Rose acted “gently.” Kennedy reiterated: “It was okay. He was fine. … I did not consider it rape. It was consensual.”
Rose‘s laywer further stated:
“Despite having made clear and definitive statements, both before and after the height of the ‘Me Too’ movement, that her alleged sexual encounter with Rose was consensual, her position has now shifted. The belief that the statute of limitations had re-opened and that she could profit from claiming—for the first time, nearly 35 years later—that the incident had not in fact been consensual, was apparently too great an opportunity to pass up, and so she filed this false Complaint a mere two days before its expiration.”
Rose‘s lawyer is asking for the case to be dismissed with Kennedy and her lawyers to be sanctioned for, “engaging in frivolous conduct, making materially false statements, engaging in conduct undertaken primarily to harass and maliciously injure Defendant, and failing to conduct reasonable inquiry and diligence.”
