Sophia Michaels
The woman who accused Tiffany Haddish and Aries Spears of coercing her and her younger brother to appear in sexually explicit comedy skits has filed a request to drop her lawsuit against the two comedians, NBC New reports.
The anonymous woman, going by Jane Doe, filed court documents asking the judge to dismiss the case without prejudice, so it can’t be brought again. No reason was given for the withdraw request, according to the first page of the filing, which was obtained by NBC News.
Doe also issued a statement saying, “My family and I have known Tiffany Haddish for many years — and we now know that she would never harm me or my brother or help anyone else do anything that could harm us. We wish Tiffany the best and are glad that we can all put this behind us.”
Doe did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment, nor did lawyers for Haddish and Aries.
Doe, now 22, filed her lawsuit earlier this month on behalf of herself and her younger brother. She claimed Haddish and Spears groomed her and her brother when they were 14 and seven-years-old, respectively. The suit claimed Haddish and Spears compelled them to take part in separate, sexually suggestive video shoots without a parent or guardian present in 2013 and 2014, leaving them both with “severe emotional damage.”
The suit claimed that Haddish was a “longtime family friend” of Doe’s mother, and that the comedian recruited the 14-year-old to appear in an apparent parody of a Subway commercial while Doe was attending a comedy camp at the Laugh Factory in 2013. Doe claimed she was shown a video of a man and a woman “making sexual noises” as they ate a sandwich “in a matter that simulated the act of fellatio.” Doe then claimed Haddish and Spears encouraged her to mimic the commercial by pantomiming fellatio.
In 2014, the suit claimed, Haddish and Spears featured Doe’s brother in a five-minute skit called “Through a Pedophiles Eyes” that was uploaded (then deleted from) Funny or Die. The skit involved Spears leering at the seven-year-old John Doe through peepholes.
In response to the initial lawsuit, Haddish’s lawyer, Andrew Brettler, said in a statement, “Plaintiff’s mother, [name redacted], has been trying to assert these bogus claims against Ms. Haddish for several years. 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.”
