Axl Rose Files to Have 1989 Sexual Assault Case Dismissed
Months after a lawsuit was filed against Axl Rose regarding an alleged 1989 sexual assault, his legal team is working to have the case thrown out of court and dismissed. His lawyers deny the claims of former Penthouse model Sheila Kennedy, who said she was physically, verbally, and sexually abused by Rose in a New York City hotel room roughly 35 years ago.
Rather than go through the gruesome details of Kennedy’s allegations, you can read them in full in our previous article on the matter. Needless to say, it’s a rough read. However, in legal documents first obtained by RadarOnline, Rose’s legal team make the claim that Kennedy’s recollection of that night are false and that they directly contradict past descriptions of that night.
In one example, the legal team presented Kennedy’s own recollection of the event in her 2016 memoir No One’s Pet.
“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.’”‘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.’”
The filing also pointed out past interviews where she mentioned her apparent tryst with the vocalist was consensual and that she “did not consider it rape.”
“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.”
Though so much time had elapsed between the apparent encounter and her filing the lawsuit late last year, New York has a piece of legislation called the New York’s Adult Survivors Act that gives survivors of sexual assault significantly more time to file lawsuits past the normal statute of limitations.
According to Kennedy’s original complaint, she claims she suffers from PTSD-like symptoms whenever she hears Guns N’ Roses music or hears Rose’s name. Her lawsuit also claims that she’s been dealing with anxiety and depression for more than 30 years as a result of the sexual assault and that’s resulted in negative outcomes in her career.
The suit is listing the charges as “assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and gender-motivated violence.” Kennedy is asking the court to help her determine and recover unspecified damages as a result of the incident.
Rose’s lawyers allege that due to the New York’s Adult Survivor’s Act, Kennedy allegedly saw she could make a pretty penny by filing a lawsuit against Rose. As such, they claim this is nothing more than a money grab at the expense of Rose’s personal and professional reputation.
“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.”
If the court sides with Rose’s legal team, they would ask that Kennedy and her lawyers get hit with sanctions 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.”
Only time will tell before we know what the outcome of this will be.
