Chris Brown Files Defamation Complaint Against Rape Accuser

By Elsa Keslassy

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – A lawyer for Chris Brown says he has filed a defamation complaint with the Paris prosecutor against the young woman who accused the singer of rape. A judicial source confirmed Friday that the complaint, which is a criminal instead of civil matter, had been filed.

Raphael Chiche, Brown’s attorney, had tweeted Thursday evening that the “Paris prosecutor has taken in the complaint filed by for slanderous denunciation.” Contacted by Variety, the Paris prosecutor’s office declined to comment. Such complaints are not a matter of public record in France.

Brown was accused by an unidentified 24-year-old woman of assaulting her on the night of Jan. 15-16 in his suite at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Paris. Brown was arrested Monday on suspicion of aggravated rape and drug infractions and detained with two other men, reportedly the singer’s bodyguard and another friend, before being released Tuesday evening, according to a judicial source.

The source said Friday that an investigation into the alleged incident is still ongoing.

Chiche had tweeted that Brown was “denying vigorously the accusations that were made against him” and that “no legal action had been taken against him.” The lawyer told Reuters France that Brown was filing a complaint against the young woman, whose identity has not been released, and said that the singer denies “any sexual intercourse, consensual or not, with the accuser.”

Chiche, who also represents Rédoine Faïd, a French gangster and serial jailbreaker, told Reuters that Brown had filed the complaint against the rape accuser to “shed light on the conditions which led [the young woman] to sue him, but also her motives.”