The main soccer agent Jonathan Barnett is being sued in an American courtroom over allegations of human trafficking, torture and rape.
In a civil grievance filed in a California district courtroom it's alleged that Barnett “trafficked” the lady from Australia to the UK in 2017, “tortured” her for six years by retaining her as a “intercourse slave” and sexually assaulted her, together with by rape, greater than 39 instances, in addition to making “repeated threats to her life and the lives of her minor youngsters”.
Barnett's former employer, the Hollywood expertise group Artistic Artists Company, faces allegations in the identical grievance that it “used its staff and emissaries to help Barnett in retaining” the complainant as his “intercourse slave”.
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Barnett and CAA deny all of the allegations. “The claims made in [the] grievance towards me don't have any foundation in actuality and are unfaithful,” Barnett mentioned in a press release via his attorneys. “We are going to vigorously defend this lawsuit via the suitable authorized course of. I'm trying ahead to being fully vindicated and exonerated.”
Barnett was a number one sports activities agent for greater than 4 many years earlier than he retired final yr. The 75-year-old is greatest recognized for brokering Gareth Bale's world file £85.3m switch from Tottenham to Actual Madrid in 2013 however has additionally represented a bunch of different prime gamers together with Jack Grealish and Ivan Toney.
Within the grievance an nameless lady known as Jane Doe alleges that Barnett “owned her” as a “intercourse slave” for six years, subjecting her to alleged violent and abusive behaviour that was lined up by his employers.
“This can be a case about institutional abuse on the highest degree,” the grievance reads. “This case is about how one of many world's strongest males in sports activities brazenly saved a intercourse slave for years, with the help of his staff, accountants, emissaries, and members of the family, and used his cash and energy to keep up coercive management over her and hold her in worry for her life and the lives of her youngsters.”
The grievance says CAA “knew or ought to have recognized” that he was “retaining a intercourse slave”. CAA mentioned it first discovered of the allegations in January 2024 and Barnett left the corporate the next month. The corporate strongly denies any prior data of the complaints towards him.
“Whereas the grievance makes an attempt to attach these allegations to CAA's enterprise, Ms. Doe has by no means been an worker, marketing consultant, or contractor of CAA, ICM, or Stellar, nor has she ever had any enterprise connection to CAA, ICM, or Stellar,” it mentioned in a press release.
Within the grievance Doe says she first met Barnett within the mid-Nineties via a good friend earlier than reconnecting in 2017 when he despatched her a personal message on LinkedIn saying “one thing to the impact of, ‘Good pic'.” It says they organized to fulfill quickly after when she was visiting the UK from her residence in Australia, and he or she claims that he urged her to maneuver together with her teenage youngsters to London to work for him, providing to pay for her lodging and faculty charges for her two youngsters.
After transferring to London, Doe alleges, Barnett raped her of their first assembly at a central London resort, telling her that he “owned” her and would kill her if she reported him. The grievance goes on to element additional alleged abusive behaviour by Barnett, together with punishment beatings and tying her up in a single day with out meals or water.
The grievance additionally alleges that CAA made substantial funds to Doe on a number of events between 2017 and 2023, and used its staff help Barnett. “On condition that Ms Doe was not a CAA Stellar athlete or sports activities agent, this conduct ought to have raised quite a few purple flags for Defendants to inquire into the character of those funds and the connection the corporate needed to the individuals they have been tasked with aiding,” it says.
Barnett shaped the Stellar Group in 1992, with the previous West Indies cricketer Brian Lara amongst its first shoppers, earlier than promoting it to the Hollywood expertise company ICM Companions in 2020. ICM was later swallowed by its bigger rival CAA, in a deal accomplished in 2022 that introduced collectively two of the world's largest companies.
Barnett and CAA have 20 days to answer the allegations by submitting to the courtroom.
