Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose Responds to Sexual Assault Lawsuit

Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose has responded to the ongoing sexual assault lawsuit brought against him in November.

Former model Sheila Kennedy’s allegations relate to an 1989 encounter in a hotel room. She claims the Guns N’ Roses frontman forcibly sexually assaulted her after being verbally abusive in an incident that involved two others.

In a new filing, seen by Radar Online, Rose’s representatives are now citing two examples where Kennedy publicly stated that the encounter was consensual.

“In her 2016 self-authored memoir, No One’s Pet, Kennedy described the alleged incident in the Complaint as consensual sex,” Rose’s attorneys write, “and specifically noted: ‘I was okay with this. I had wanted to be with him since the minute I’d first laid eyes on him, and now I was getting him.’”

Later, “in an interview for the 2021 documentary Look Away, Kennedy described the alleged sexual encounter this way: ‘It was consented,’” Rose’s lawyers added. “She said Rose was ‘not trying to hurt me’ and Rose acted ‘gently,’” before reiterating: ‘It was okay. He was fine. … I did not consider it rape. It was consensual.’”

The attorneys point to a change in the law for sparking this new allegation. Now, they say Kennedy is attempting to “rewrite history. … Prior to the passage of New York’s Adult Survivors Act (the ‘ASA’), there was no financial motivation for Kennedy to do more than embellish the details of her alleged interaction with Rose. The ASA appears to have changed Kennedy’s calculus.”

Now, “despite having made clear and definitive statements, both before and after the height of the ‘Me Too’ movement, that her alleged sexual encounter with Rose was consensual, her position has now shifted.”

In the original lawsuit, Kennedy contends she has endured "lifelong emotional, physical, psychological and financial impacts" as a result of the alleged incident.

Axl Rose Asks for Dismissal

Rose’s lawyers argue that “the belief that the statute of limitations had re-opened and that she could profit from claiming – for the first time, nearly 35 years later – that the incident had not in fact been consensual, was apparently too great an opportunity to pass up – and so she filed this false Complaint a mere two days before its expiration.”

READ MORE: Steven Tyler Sexual Assault Case Dismissed

They’re asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed and for sanctions to be imposed on Kennedy for “engaging in frivolous conduct, making materially false statements, engaging in conduct undertaken primarily to harass and maliciously injure Defendant, and failing to conduct reasonable inquiry and diligence.”

This suit is being heard in the New York Supreme Court.

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