Neil Portnow, the former head of the Grammy Awards, has been sued by a woman alleging that he drugged and raped her in a New York hotel in 2018.
According to the New York Times, the lawsuit was filed anonymously in New York State Supreme Court on Wednesday to protect the accuser’s privacy. She is described as an instrumentalist who is not from the United States and has performed at Carnegie Hall.
Portnow served as the chairman and CEO of the Recording Academy, which oversees the Grammy Awards, from 2002 to 2019.
Jeffrey R. Anderson, the attorney for the accuser, told the New York Times, “[Portnow] does a disservice to every woman and every musician who is being oppressed by him and others. This is not just about Neil Portnow and not just about the Recording Academy, but about the culture in the music and entertainment industry and its doublespeak about rape and abuse.”
The Recording Academy issued a statement to the NYT saying, “We continue to believe the claims to be without merit and intend to vigorously defend the Academy in this lawsuit.”
A representative for Mr. Portnow called the allegations “completely false” in a statement provided to EW, adding that they are a “product of the Plaintiff’s imagination and undoubtedly motivated by Mr. Portnow’s refusal to comply with the Plaintiff’s outrageous demands for money and assistance in obtaining a residence visa for her.”
Representatives for the accuser and the Recording Academy did not immediately respond to EW’s request for comment.
The lawsuit alleges that after meeting at an Academy event in January 2018, Portnow and his accuser convened at the Kitano Hotel in Manhattan in June of the same year. The former head of the academy allegedly served the woman a glass of wine, but he did not drink himself, and soon after partaking in the drink, the accuser “began to feel woozy,” per the New York Times.
The suit alleges that Portnow said “I have been thinking about you for a very long time” to the woman — and told her that no taxis were available to take her home — before she lost consciousness. Portnow allegedly raped the accuser that night, as she regained consciousness several times and found him assaulting her. The suit also says that Portnow ignored the accuser’s multiple attempts to contact him after the incident, and that the accuser filed a police report naming her attacker, but that the district attorney’s office did not opt to prosecute him.
“A series of erratic, bizarre text messages and e-mails to both Mr. Portnow and the Recording Academy from the Plaintiff had already persuaded numerous previous Plaintiff’s lawyers who resigned, as well as a police agency, that her claims were baseless,” the statement from Portnow’s representative says. “The latest incarnation offers a ‘new and improved’ story, padding it with even more outrageous and untrue allegations. More than 5 years later, Mr. Portnow remains consistent in his refusal to assist the Plaintiff in her absurd demands that he help her in procuring a United States permanent resident visa, marry her, make children with her, support her musical career, or pay her millions of dollars so that she would not bring her frivolous lawsuit.”
The statement also says that Portnow immediately consulted with the academy’s human resources department, and that an independent investigation “found absolutely no proof to support any of the allegations.”
Portnow came under significant criticism near the end of his tenure with the academy, when he made controversial comments about women in the music industry at the height of the Time’s Up movement. “Women who have the creativity in their hearts and souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, producers, and want to be part of the industry on the executive level… [They need] to step up because I think they would be welcome,” he said in 2018.
The accuser’s allegations were previously publicized in 2020, when Portnow’s successor, Deborah Dugan, claimed that the sexual assault incident indeed occurred in 2018, and that it was the actual reason Portnow left his post.
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