Katy Perry Denies Dr. Luke Raped Her in Unsealed Deposition
In a deposition excerpt unsealed on Monday, Katy Perry shot down a rumor that she was raped by Dr. Luke. The document was released as part of the producer’s defamation suit against Kesha, who has accused him of raping her.
Dr. Luke’s attorneys have also accused Kesha of circulating an allegation that he raped Perry. In her deposition, Perry adamantly denied the rumor.
“Did Dr. Luke ever rape you?” an attorney asked.
“No,” Perry replied.
“Did Dr. Luke ever sexually assault you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Did he ever give you a roofie?”
“No.”
“Did you have a sexual relationship with Dr. Luke at all?”
“No.”
“A romantic relationship?”
“No.”
According to the suit, Kesha sent a text message to Lady Gaga in February 2016 in which she claimed that Dr. Luke had raped Perry. A separate deposition of Lady Gaga was also partially released on Monday, in which she discussed hearing the rumor from John Janick, the CEO and chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M Records. Lady Gaga said she was with Kesha at the time, and Janick was showing support for Kesha.
“He said something like I heard he raped Katy, too,” Lady Gaga testified.
In her deposition, Perry said she has heard of Janick, but does not know him and never made any sort of sexual allegation to him about Dr. Luke.
“I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd,” Perry testified.
Almost all of the depositions of the two stars was kept under seal. Dr. Luke’s attorneys are accusing Kesha of cooking up a false rape allegation as part of a concerted campaign to ruin his career and extricate her from her contract.
One of the documents released on Monday was a Sunshine Sachs press plan, dated October 10, 2014, in which the publicity firm discusses preparations for the filing of Kesha’s lawsuit against Dr. Luke.
“Our goal is to help extricate Client K from her current professional relationship with Person L by inciting a deluge of negative media attention and public pressure on the basis of the horrific personal abuses presented in the lawsuit,” the document states.
The plan discusses disclosing the lawsuit first to TMZ, and pushing talking points off the record “to ensure our story is being told as completely and as favorably for Client K as possible.”
In emails, Kesha’s representatives, Vector Management’s Jack Rovner and Ken Levitan, discuss a plan to “ruin” Dr. Luke and “take down his business” and dub the press campaign a “jihad.”
Dr. Luke’s attorneys issued a statement Monday arguing that the publicity campaign largely succeeded.
“The false narrative Kesha created about being raped became widely accepted, damaging Dr. Luke’s reputation irreparably,” his attorneys stated. “There is nothing worse than abuse and sexual assault. Dr. Luke supports any woman or man who seeks to address sexual abuse in the legal system. That is not what happened here. It is also horrendous to falsely accuse someone of a heinous act.”
Variety has reached out to reps for Kesha for comment.
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