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UPDATED, 1:58 PM: Paula Abdul has broken her silence on Nigel Lythgoe’s scolding response on March 5 to her sexual assault allegations against him. So, you think you can dance co-creator and judge.
“Sir, Lythgoe’s response to Ms. Abdul’s complaint is classic victim shaming,” read a statement from the Grammy winner’s lawyers today.
“These are the defenses that many women like Ms. Abdul have had to adopt to deal with men who abuse their power,” the statement adds of texts and tweets that Lythgoe sprinkled throughout her presentation earlier this week to show the good relationship he and Abdul had. during some of the same periods in which she alleges he assaulted her.
Abdul also shows in the statement that she also has text messages, which show embarrassing communications from american idol producer Lythgoe – as you can see below:
While Lythgoe’s response cherry-picks years of messages with Abdul to try to discredit her claims, what her selections fail to show are the numerous instances of overt sexual harassment that she forced Abdul to tolerate. On March 8, 2014, Mr. Lythgoe wrote to Ms. Abdul: “When you return to Los Angeles, please make love to me! Slowly and with love! When Mrs Abdul did not respond, Mr Lythgoe proclaimed: “Then I will take that as a YES!” On April 10, 2014, he wrote similarly, in response to a message from Ms. Abdul about SYTYCD auditions in Las Vegas: “I’ll go if you promise me a big wet kiss! With tongues! Is a little butt patting asking too much? In July 2014, Mr. Lythgoe even admitted to Ms. Abdul the inappropriateness of her behavior: “you love me like a relative, I love you like a girlfriend. Could he easily be your fucking cousin? Ha ha.” There are several cases of this type of verbal attacks against Ms. Abdul, which are proof of the frequent abusive behavior to which Ms. Abdul was subjected during her stay in american idol and SYTYCD.
In late 2023, Abdul filed a complaint with the Los Angeles Superior Court alleging that his Idol boss and colleague SYTYCD The judge attacked her in the early years of the once-hit show and again in 2015. In an official response filed yesterday seeking to have Abdul’s lawsuit dismissed, Lythgoe attacked. In declaring her innocence, she declared that the so-called “well-documented fabulist” Abdul had presented a dossier full of “lies” and “far-fetched and baseless accusations.”
Similar allegations are found in allegations of sexual assault by four other women who have filed lawsuits against Lythgoe in the past two months, including on Tuesday after Abdul’s response was filed.
Along with Abdul, two of those accusers are represented by the firm Johnson & Johnson.
PREVIOUSLY, MARCH 5 AM: Nigel Lythgoe called Paula Abdul “erratic” when the former american idol The judge accused him of sexual assault late last year. Today, seeking to have Abdul’s complaint “dismissed in its entirety with prejudice,” the veteran competition show producer made it official with a presentation of his own.
“Lythgoe will continue to promote the dissemination of the truth, confirming that Abdul is not a victim of sexual assault by Lythgoe, but rather that it is Lythgoe who has been the victim of Abdul’s egregious lies,” he stated in a response filed Tuesday. in Los Angeles Superior Court in response to the Grammy winner’s accusations.
In the face of several other recent allegations of sexual assault, the So, you think you can dance The student was accused on December 29 by his co-star Abdul of an incident in Idol’s first seasons and attacking her again in 2015 in a meeting during season 12 of SYTYCD. At her jury trial seeking a complaint, Abdul also alleged that Lythgoe then cruelly taunted her by telling her that one of her assaults had expired. Additionally, Abdul says he saw Lythgoe assault one of her assistants at a Las Vegas hotel. Idol filming.
Read Nigel Lythgoe’s court-filed response to Paula Abdul’s sexual assault allegations here.
In a document of his own, filled with alleged fawning texts from Abdul to Lythgoe, the producer points the finger at Abdul’s mental health, modern morals and increasing ticket sales as the true root causes of his literal and figurative complaint. :
In light of the indisputable facts summarized above showing how Abdul truly felt about Lythgoe during and after the time she now alleges the abuse occurred, Abdul’s wild and baseless accusations strain credulity. After all, it was Lythgoe who fought to get Abdul included in projects like American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, despite industry hesitancy about working with Abdul, in part because of the reputation he developed. due to his drug-fueled work. erratic behavior. Based on the above, Abdul’s lawsuit can only be explained as a ploy to gain long-lost relevance and fame and/or to make unjustified profits ahead of his announced “Magic Summer” 2024 tour.
Unfortunately for Lythgoe, the current climate has turned the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty on its head. Within minutes, Abdul’s false accusations had a life-changing impact on Lythgoe. With little or no respect for the truth, without a fair trial and without Lythgoe having the opportunity to tell her version of events and demonstrate the falsity of hers, her life, her loved ones. of her and her reputation. she suffered substantial damage.
Worse, Abdul’s tactical campaign of deception through the telling of grotesque and defamatory falsehoods was strategically designed to weaponize the weather against Lythgoe. With fabricated accusations dating back more than 20 years, while leaning on those the system was created to protect, Abdul has abused the legal process for his own personal and selfish benefits. This is also intolerable.
“Abdul’s lies are underscored by her conduct and statements during and after the time she alleges the abuse occurred,” adds the filing from the firm Elkins Kalt Weintraub Reuben Gartside LLP. Curiously, referencing Abdul’s father’s admission to the ICU, the artist “volunteering for Avon’s Brest Cancer Foundation, and fairly generic PR tweets (“what happens in Vegas stays in Las Vegas”) on SYTYCD, the material in Lythgoe’s response calls Abdul’s claims “lies.”
In fact, he says the actor, admittedly sometimes eccentric, is “a well-documented fabulist, with a long history of telling crazy stories that are not tied to reality and are designed primarily to attract attention and make Abdul look like the victim.” of a terrible misfortune”.
Plane crashes seem to be one of those fictitious misfortunes in Lythgoe’s opinion.
During his time on American Idol, Abdul appeared on a television show and revealed for the first time that, in 1992, he had survived a plane crash. There is no record of this accident. The alleged details about this alleged accident have changed countless times over the years, but in each case, Abdul’s representations of that alleged plane crash have been implausible, to say the least.
To begin with, there is no record of the alleged plane crash. In an interview, Abdul explained that he was able to keep the story a secret thanks to confidentiality agreements and because “there was no Internet at the time.” In another interview he explained that at the time of the accident “there were no computers.”
Of course, it is highly unlikely that there is no record of a plane crash in the middle of a cornfield with two prominent newlywed celebrities on board (Abdul and her now ex-husband Emilio Estevez), other bloodied passengers, and an unconscious pilot, as Abdul claimed. which was the case. All aircraft equipped with instrumentation are required to submit a flight plan that includes takeoff and landing times and have a flight route approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Flights are tracked by FAA radar. Any flight disappearance from FAA radar triggers a search and rescue response. More clearly, when a flight is late or off course, Air Traffic Control uses radio communication to ask the pilot for an explanation and responds accordingly, including with search and rescue and mandatory incident/accident reporting by the FAA to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The FAA reports all incidents and accidents to the NTSB. The fact that none of those required reports and records exist is proof that Abdul simply made up the story about the accident.
Lawyers for Abdul Johnson & Johnson “had no comment” today on Lythgoe’s response to their client’s lawsuit. Now the subject of three sexual assault allegations, including that of Abdul, SYTYCD Co-creator, head judge and EP Lythgoe left the Fox dance competition series in January.