Producer arrested on rape charges
Hollywood producer David Guillod surrendered to authorities in Santa Barbara County on Monday after a three-year investigation culminated in his being charged with the rape or sexual assault of four women.
Guillod, 53, a high-profile Hollywood talent manager, is facing multiple felony charges, including rape, kidnap to commit rape and rape of a drugged victim in connection with four alleged attacks in May 2012, December 2014 and January 2015.
An executive producer of the movies “Atomic Blonde” and Netflix’s “Extraction,” he was accompanied by his attorney, Philip Cohen, when he turned himself in to Santa Barbara County sheriff ’s investigators Monday.
Guillod ran Primary Wave Entertainment, a talent agency, until 2017, when actress Jessica Barth, a leading voice in the #MeToo movement, accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her five years before.
Guillod, of Sherman Oaks, is charged with sexually assaulting a woman in Los Angeles in May 2012. He is also accused of raping an employee for a management firm he operated during a December 2014 wine country retreat in Santa Barbara County. The woman received a $60,000 payment and was required to sign a nondisclosure agreement before leaving the company, according to sources familiar with the allegations.
She, however, reported Guillod’s alleged attack to Los Angeles police in 2017 after other women reported being sexually assaulted by him.
Guillod’s third and fourth alleged attacks, in January 2015, involve a woman from Santa Barbara County and one from Los Angeles County, according to sources. Authorities did not identify the women who said Guillod attacked them.
Prosecutors charged Guillod with sexual penetration of an unconscious or unaware victim, sexual penetration of a drugged victim, oral copulation of an intoxicated victim, and oral copulation of an unconscious or unaware victim in connection with the alleged attack on May 21, 2012.
For the alleged attack on Dec. 14, 2014, he was charged with kidnapping to commit robbery or rape, rape of a drugged victim and rape by fraud.
For the alleged attack on Jan. 30, 2015, he was charged with two counts of rape by fraud and two counts of rape of a drugged victim.
And in the alleged attack on Jan. 31, 2015, Guillod was charged with one count of rape of an unconscious person and one count of rape of a person prevented from resisting due to an intoxicating, anesthetic or controlled substance.
Guillod surrendered at the Santa Barbara Sheriff ’s Office headquarters and was booked on the charges and held in lieu of $3-million bail, sheriff ’s officials said.
After Barth in October 2017 publicly accused Guillod of drugging and raping her in 2012, Guillod stepped down as chief executive of Primary Wave Entertainment. Barth had first reported her allegations in 2012 to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Barth has previously said she dropped pursuing the attack with authorities. But in the wake of the #MeToo movement in the fall of 2017, Barth returned to the LAPD and asked officials to pursue the investigation. Barth was also among the dozens of women in the movie industry to be subject to inappropriate and in many cases criminal behavior by convicted rapist and producer Harvey Weinstein.
According to Barth’s public account, she went to dinner with Guillod and another woman and she remembers feeling drowsy at the table. She said she woke up “at home with six hickeys on my neck. I was horrified. I was completely and utterly confused and I was sick to my stomach.”
According to law enforcement sources, she told several other people about the incident.
“For the past eight years, Mr. Guillod has denied these allegations, and for the past eight years, Mr. Guillod has fully cooperated with all aspects of law enforcement’s investigation. We find the unification of the cases filed through the Santa Barbara D.A.’s office and the timing suspicious,” Cohen, Guillod’s attorney, said in a statement.
Cohen on Monday claimed that “evidence has been collected over the course of this investigation disputing these charges.”
Among the claims Cohen made was that DNA has come back negative in the Los Angeles case; witnesses have come forward in support of Guillod’s account of events and numerous text messages and emails obtained by the defense tell a story very different than that which is being alleged. His lawyer said that Guillod has passed five independent polygraph examinations. Such tests are not usable in criminal courts.
“Mr. Guillod has been vilified for eight years without being afforded the opportunity to examine under oath his accusers. Justice is rarely swift and often does not come easy; but Mr. Guillod very much looks forward to clearing his name in the appropriate forum,” Cohen said in his statement.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said in a statement that prosecutors have been working closely with law enforcement and prosecutors in Santa Barbara on the investigation since March 2018.
At least three women have received settlements in connection with Guillod’s alleged actions from his prior companies, according to sources not authorized to discuss the payouts.