‘Consensual’: Axl Rose Demands Sanctions Against Penthouse Model Suing Him For Alleged 1989 Sexual Assault
Rose is fighting back in court.
Mar. 6 2024, Published 12:52 p.m. ET
Axl Rose asked a court to dismiss the bombshell sexual assault lawsuit brought by a former Penthouse Pet of the Year — and called her out for previously speaking fondly about him.
According to court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com, Rose denied all allegations of wrongdoing in Sheila Kennedy’s suit.
Kennedy said the alleged assault happened in 1989.
As we previously reported, last year, the legendary rockstar was sued by model and actress Sheila Kennedy.
Kennedy was Penthouse’s Pet of the Year in 1983.
Rose said Kennedy changed her story.
In her lawsuit, filed in a New York court, Kennedy claimed the Guns N’ Roses frontman sexually assaulted her at a 1989 party.
Axl said Kennedy, “has herself repeatedly acknowledged” that Axl “never sexually assaulted her” — despite now making the claims in the lawsuit.
His lawyer wrote, “In her 2016 self-authored memoir, No One’s Pet, Kennedy described the alleged incident in the Complaint as consensual sex, 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.”
He added, “In an interview for the 2021 documentary Look Away, Kennedy described the alleged sexual encounter this way: “[i]t was consented”; Rose was “not trying to hurt me”; and Rose acted “gently.” Kennedy reiterated: “It was okay. He was fine. ... I did not consider it rape. It was consensual.”
Kennedy filed her bombshell lawsuit late last year.
Axl said Kennedy, with her lawsuit, attempts to “rewrite history.” He accused her of changing her story due to New York’s Adult Survivors Act that allowed victims to bring lawsuits past the statue of limitations during a certain time frame.
The rockstar’s lawyer said, “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.”
He added, “The ASA appears to have changed Kennedy’s calculus.”
The lawyer criticized Kennedy. He wrote, “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. 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.”
Axl asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed and for the court to impose sanctions against Kennedy and her lawyers 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.”
Axl denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, in her lawsuit, Kennedy said she met Axl at a club in New York. Kennedy said they went to a private party at his hotel room.
She claimed the rockstar provided “cocaine, champagne, and alcohol to his guests in the suite.”
Kennedy said as she walked out of the hotel room’s bathroom, Rose was waiting for her.
The suit said, “He pushed Kennedy against the wall and kissed her. Kennedy found Rose attractive and did not mind this encounter. She was open to sleeping with him if things progressed and if they continued to find each other attractive.”
Eventually, she claimed to have ended up in a room with just her, Rose, another female model and another friend of Rose.
Kennedy claimed she saw Rose have aggressive sex with the female model. She said she ran to another room with Axl’s friend.
Kennedy said the assault happened in a hotel suite.
The model claimed the rockstar got upset with the other model and kicked her out of the suite. Kennedy said Axl saw her and then dragged her by her hair to the bedroom.
She claimed he tied her up and sexually assaulted her. The former Penthouse Pet of the Year claimed she did not consent.
“Rose made no attempt to ask for or check that Kennedy was consenting. He treated her like property used solely for his sexual pleasure. He did not use a condom,” her suit read. “Kennedy did not consent and felt overpowered. She felt she had no escape or exit and was compelled to acquiesce. She believed [Axl] would physically attack her, or worse, if she said no or attempted to push him away. She understood that the safest thing to do was to lie in bed and wait for Rose to finish assaulting her.
Kennedy’s suit said the alleged abuse caused her lifelong emotional, physical, psychological and financial harm to her life.
Her lawyer explained, “Kennedy has experienced symptoms akin to post-traumatic stress disorder whenever she hears Rose’s name or the music of Guns N’ Roses. Other sexual encounters have drawn her right back to the night that Rose had assaulted her. When confronted with these memories, Kennedy has experienced intense physical and emotional distress.”
The lawsuit demanded unspecified damages.