Alleging rape and other abuse over the period from 2007 to 2024, four former housekeepers of Smokey Robinson and Frances Robinson are suing the Motown legend and his spouse for $50 million in a sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment, labor violations, and gender violence lawsuit.
“JD1 began working for Defendants as their housekeeper at their Chatsworth residence on January 3, 2023 until February 2024, when she was forced to resign due to Defendant Smokey Robinson’s repeated sexual assaults and sexual harassment against her,” says Jane Doe 1, who claims the first rape by octogenarian Robinson happened in March 2023. In descriptive terms, Jane Doe 1 alleges in the 27-page filing that the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Famer “would roughly penetrate her vagina with his fingers, orally copulate her and proceed to penetrate her vagina with his erect penis causing her great pain.”
Filed today in LA Superior Court, the 16-claim civil action alleges that the ‘Cruisin’ singer individually raped the quartet of women in his homes in Las Vegas, Chatsworth, and Bell Canyon in Ventura County over the years. From Robinson taking a shower before the assaults, and putting a towel on the bed to prevent stains, the tales from Jane Doe 1, Jane Doe 2, Jane Doe 3, and Jane Doe 4 are remarkably similar in the worst of ways.
“Defendant Smokey Robinson enjoyed ejaculating in her vagina without using a condom,” Jane Doe 1 states the suit from the LA firm of Harris and Hayden. “JD1 would protest and resist his sexual assaults but to no avail. In a desperate attempt to get him to stop his sexual assaults, she would proclaim ‘you’re married’,’ to which he would casually ignore.”
All of the plaintiffs accuse Frances Robinson, who has been married to the now 85-year-old Kennedy Center Honoree since 2002 of creating a “hostile work environment” with screaming at staffers and skimping on their rightful pay. The four women also say that Frances Robinson “failed to take the appropriate corrective action to prevent Defendant Smokey Robinson’s deviant misconduct against JD2, despite having full knowledge of his prior acts of sexual misconduct, having settled cases with other women that suffered and experienced similar sexual assaults perpetuated by him”
Reps for Robinson did not respond to request for comment from Deadline on the suit and its claims.
However, anticipating those who will attempt to reject her claims by falling back on why the women didn’t do something earlier to stop Robinson’s alleged assaults, JD1 took the offense in today’s suit.
Like the other three women who are her co-plaintidffdfs, says she “was unwilling to report Defendant’s Smokey Robinson’s unlawful acts to the authorities due to her fear of losing her livelihood, familial reprisal, public embarrassment, shame and humiliation to her and her family, the possible adverse effect on her immigration status, as well as being threatened and intimidated by Defendant Smokey Robinson’s well-recognized celebrity status and his influential friends and associates.”
