Comedians Tiffany Haddish and Aries Spears are accused of grooming and molesting a 14-year-old girl and her 7-year-old brother in a lawsuit filed Monday.
The plaintiffs, identified only as Jane and John Doe, now 22 and 15 respectively, accused Haddish and Spears of coercing them into sexually suggestive acts on camera while both were underage, according to the Daily Beast. The two plaintiffs’ mother told the outlet she had met Haddish through comedy. The pair became close during their respective divorces.
“We were both going through a divorce,” the mother told the Daily Beast. “Messy, messy, messy, messy divorces … We just got really, really super, super close.” The lawsuit states Haddish called the family for birthday and Christmas celebrations, and regularly checked in regardless of whether she was busy with filming.
In summer 2013, Haddish was a guest speaker at a comedy camp Jane attended, the Daily Beast continued. Around that time, Jane was allegedly told that Haddish had the “perfect role for her” in a commercial. Neither Jane nor her mother was aware of the details, stating that only Haddish and Spears knew the plot, according to the suit.
Haddish and Spears allegedly asked Jane to watch a recording of a group of college students arguing over a Subway sandwich. But the scene quickly devolved into a more suggestive story, showing the coeds “moaning and making sexual noises as they both ate the sandwich in a manner that simulated the act of fellatio,” according to the suit. Spears then allegedly told Jane to mimic the act seen on screen, “including the noises precisely like what she heard throughout the video.”
Marvel Star, Husband Convicted Of Sex With 13-Year-Old Girl https://t.co/eRJeXqWzyg
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The suit states that Jane fell silent and became “nervous and disgusted” until Haddish returned to the room. “Haddish verbally explained what was expected of Plaintiff Jane Doe and then showed Plaintiff Jane Doe how to give fellatio, including movements, noises, moaning, and groaning,” the lawsuit alleges. “At that point,” Jane told the outlet, “I knew a hundred percent what they wanted out of me.”
“I tried to mimic what they wanted me to mimic, but it still came out just super uncomfortable,” Jane continued in her statements to the Daily Beast. “I knew when I left the booth that I didn’t complete what they wanted me to do.”
Haddish paid Jane $100 before sending her home, according to the suit. Jane shrugged off the incident and didn’t tell her mother, she told the Daily Beast. Roughly a year later, Haddish approached Jane’s younger brother for another video, which she allegedly claimed was a sizzle reel for Nickelodeon, according to the suit.
John ended up participating in a Funny or Die skit titled “Through a Pedophile’s Eyes,” according to the outlet. Funny or Die told the Daily Beast that, “Funny Or Die found this video absolutely disgusting and would never produce such content. We were not involved with the conceptualization, development, funding, or production of this video. It was uploaded to the site as user-generated content and was removed in 2018 immediately after becoming aware of its existence.”
Both siblings say they attended the shoot at Spears’ home, where they were separated into different rooms — Jane on the couch downstairs and John upstairs to film, according to the report. The Daily Beast reviewed the video, claiming it shows Haddish playing the boy’s mother and Spears, the pedophile. John is only in his underwear for most of the video, according to the outlet.
The footage zooms in on various parts of John’s body while he plays, the outlet continued. Various scenes included spraying John with baby oil John and having him play with a train set in a way that could be interpreted as phallic masturbation. Another scene shows Spears smoking a cigarette while looking at the naked boy in a bathtub, the Daily Beast reported.
John called his mother crying after the shoot, according to the outlet. When she demanded the footage, Spears allegedly told her that her son had been uncooperative, so everything had been erased, the report continued. Years later, the website Bossip published a story referencing the skit, which alerted the children’s mother of the situation, according to the report.
The suit lists eight different causes of action, accusing both Spears and Haddish of intentional infliction of emotional distress, gross negligence, sexual harassment, sexual battery, and sexual abuse of a minor. Haddish is further accused of negligent supervision/failure to warn, breach of fiduciary duty, and constructive fraud. The family is seeking general and special damages, along with “any appropriate statutory damages.” (RELATED: ‘Home Alone’ Star Under Investigation For Alleged Rape)
An attorney for Spears told Page Six that “he isn’t going to fall for any shakedown.” Haddish’s attorney stated that the “Plaintiff’s mother, Trizah Morris, has been trying to assert these bogus claims against Ms. Haddish for several years,” the outlet noted. “Every attorney who has initially taken on her case — and there were several — ultimately dropped the matter once it became clear that the claims were meritless and Ms. Haddish would not be shaken down.”