A lawyer for Smokey Robinson said late Wednesday that the sexual assault allegations against the Motown singer were “vile” and “false” and that a lawsuit filed by the four women making the accusations was an attempt to extract millions of dollars from him.
The women worked as Mr. Robinson’s housekeepers, and their lawsuit accuses him of abusing them dozens of times. The suit, which identifies the women only as Jane Does 1 through 4, says Mr. Robinson raped them repeatedly while his wife, Frances, who is a co-defendant, turned a blind eye.
In a statement provided to The New York Times, Mr. Robinson’s lawyer,Christopher Frost, called the suit “an ugly method of trying to extract money from an 85-year-old American icon.”
“We ask anyone following this case to reserve judgment as the evidence comes to light and all the actual facts of the case unfold,” Mr. Frost said.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday in Superior Court in Los Angeles, says that three of the women feared reporting Mr. Robinson to the authorities because of their immigration status. “As low-wage workers in vulnerable positions, they lacked the resources and options necessary to protect themselves from sexual assaults throughout their tenure as employees for the Robinsons,” their lawyer, John Harris, said on Tuesday.
The lawsuit goes into graphic detail about the abuse claims.
Mr. Robinson, it alleges, would drop off his wife at a nail salon and rush home to assault one of the women while she was alone in the Robinsons’ house in Chatsworth, a Los Angeles neighborhood.
