According to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, comedians Tiffany Haddish and Aries Spears have been accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl and her 7-year-old brother. The now-22-year-old Jane Doe filed the lawsuit on behalf of herself and her brother, alleging that Haddish and Spears encouraged the siblings to act in sexually suggestive ways on camera.
According to the lawsuit, Haddish was allegedly a “longtime family friend” of the plaintiffs’ mother and, according to sources, in 2013, when Jane Doe was 14, Haddish brought her to a taping of a sexually suggestive Subway commercial. The suit claims Haddish said the commercial would “facilitate Jane Doe in getting on television and be featured in the teen’s film reel.”
During the taping, Haddish allegedly told Jane Doe how to engage in “inappropriate sexual behaviors following the viewing of an older guy and lady in a film.”
The lawsuit charges that two incidents of sexual abuse of minors took place in Los Angeles, involving the entertainers. Jane Doe says she was pressured to mimic fellatio for a video in 2013. The lawsuit also alleges that John Doe was coerced to appear in a sexually suggestive video in his underwear and that the 2014 film featured both Haddish and Spears.
Another claim alleges Haddish offered to film clips of John Doe for an audition reel for Nickelodeon the next summer. She allegedly took him to a secluded recording studio on the pretext of filming an audition, but no Nickelodeon officials were present. Instead, Tiffany Haddish and Spears allegedly encouraged John Doe to engage in sexually suggestive behavior on camera.
The video, “Through a Pedophile’s Eyes,” made its way onto the comedy video website Funny Or Die and elsewhere on the web. In response, a spokesperson for Funny Or Die issued a statement saying that the company “found this video absolutely disgusting and would never produce such content.” The spokesperson went on to say that Funny Or Die was not involved with the video’s conceptualization, development, funding, or production and that it was removed from the site as soon as the company became aware of its existence.
In a statement shared with everybody via email, Andrew Brettler, Tiffany Haddish‘s attorney, dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims against his client as baseless. Brettler said that the plaintiffs’ mother has been trying to discredit Haddish with these accusations for several years.
The plaintiffs are suing for unspecified damages. Haddish’s lawyer told Insider that the allegations are “completely false” and “designed solely to extort money from my client.” Spears’ lawyer told People that his client denies all the allegations and “looks forward to having his day in court.”
