- Share this article on Facebook
- Share this article on Twitter
- Share this article on Flipboard
- Share this article on Email
- Show additional share options
- Share this article on Linkedin
- Share this article on Pinit
- Share this article on Reddit
- Share this article on Tumblr
- Share this article on Whatsapp
- Share this article on Print
- Share this article on Comment
Alki David is being sued by an anonymous woman who claims he raped her in April 2019 when she worked for him, an allegation the billionaire “vehemently denies.”
On Wednesday, a Jane Doe sued David along with his companies Hologram USA, FilmOn.TV and Swissx Labs after filling a complaint in October 2019 for discrimination and harassment with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
According to her complaint, Doe is a “religious, timid and trusting” 33-year-old woman who works in the entertainment industry as a promoter, marketer and model. She says while she worked for David she watched him mock, scare and belittle his female employees and believes it was intended to “desensitize them into accepting his misbehavior as normal.”
Related Stories
“While Plaintiff was unsettled by AD’s juvenile antics, she assumed he was misguidedly trying to live up to his public persona as an eccentric billionaire bad-boy,” states the complaint. “Plaintiff was indeed lulled into believing that AD acted in the herein described manner solely for shock and/or entertainment value, since he was often, if not always, filming himself for social media.”
She worked for him for about a year before she was laid off in November 2016 “due to financial difficulties,” according to the complaint. In September 2018, she was rehired as a brand ambassador for Swissx, a CBD startup.
Doe says David pressured her to try CBD oil to become familiar with the product and after it kicked in, when she was “feeling somewhat inebriated and disoriented,” he began masturbating and tried to force her to assist. She went home, and still felt “dazed” the next day. So she believes the oil contained intoxicants, not just CBD.
She “reluctantly agreed” to keep the job after her supervisor assured her David was “a harmless prankster.” Doe was laid off again a couple of months later and says she was offered and “badgered” into accepting a new job, which she started in late March of 2019. She was working 50 hours a week for Swissx handling things like scheduling employees, purchasing supplies, negotiating contracts and promoting the brand. Doe says David was respectful toward her but inappropriate toward other female employees.
During an April 21, 2019, meeting at his theater on Hollywood Boulevard, which started with a discussion of business matters as they walked through the building with his Doberman Pinscher, Doe says David led her into a small, dark room that held the computer servers. She says he shut the door, pinned her up against it and raped her while she was “frozen with fear and believed that resistance might provoke an escalation of violence, or cause AD’s dog to attack.”
According to the complaint, it ended because a colleague in the building started calling for David prompting him and his dog to leave the room.
Doe says she told her co-workers she was quitting and they begged her to stay because David was “habitually late” in paying them and she was the only person who could ensure they got paid. They got paid by July 2019, and Doe says when she confronted David about her own late pay he refused to pay and terminated her.
She’s suing for sexual assault and battery, false imprisonment, sexual harassment and retaliation, among other claims.
Last year, three separate L.A. juries awarded damages to women who sued David for varying levels of misconduct — including one judgment worth $58 million — all of which he’s appealing.
Through a rep, David sent The Hollywood Reporter a statement in response to the complaint. “This Jane Doe routine is bullshit,” he said. “This so-called complaint is a leak in order to use the media as a tool for extortion. This [woman] stalked me for years. I deny these allegations vehemently. Publishing them amounts to defamation and very soon I will show this is part of the entire web of fraudulent cases led by [Lisa] Bloom and [Gloria] Allred.”
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day