MAMA ROARS
Swift’s kin: I know that man groped her
TAYLOR SWIFT’S mother looked at her daughter’s accused groper dead in the eye Wednesday and declared that he was the man who preyed on the pop star.
“I heard it from my daughter’s mouth. I do not have to ask anyone else,” Andrea Swift told rival attorney Gabriel McFarland from the witness stand.
She then pointed her finger at David Mueller, 55, and shot him an icy stare. The courtroom turned pin-drop silent.
“He sexually assaulted her,” Andrea Swift said. “Right there. That guy.”
The exchange marked the most dramatic moment of the civil trial in Denver Federal Court. The case hinges on a preconcert photo op at the Pepsi Center in June 2013.
Mueller was kicked out of the concert after Swift accused him of grabbing her rear end and canned by radio station KYGO two days later.
He fired the first legal salvo — claiming in his $3 million suit that the false accusation cost him his job at the country music station.
Swift retaliated with a suit of her own, insisting that Mueller grabbed her derrière during the brief photo op.
The pop sensation was 23 at the time. He was 51.
After taking the stand in the afternoon, Andrea Swift recalled the moment she found out about the pervy encounter.
“I walked into her dressing room and she said to me, ‘Mom, a guy just grabbed my ass at the meet and greet. I do not know who he was.’”
“She was shaken, embarrassed, and horribly humiliated, because he grabbed her bare ass,” Andrea added.
The news nearly reduced Mama Swift to tears.
“I was upset to the extent that I wanted to vomit and cry at the same time,” she testified.
Of the thousands of pictures Swift has taken with fans, her mother said she had never seen one like the one taken with Mueller and his girlfriend the night of the show.
The picture shows Swift leaning away from Mueller whose right hand appears to be hovering near her rear end.
“I saw it in her eyes. I know that face better than anyone,” Andrew Swift said. “She was pulling away and had a frozen smile on her face. I would just look at it and I was sickened.”
Andrea said she opted to report the incident to Mueller’s radio station rather than the police because she didn’t want to force her daughter to relive the moment “over and over again.”
“I absolutely did want him to be fired,” Andrea told the jury. “He committed sexual assault on my daughter.”
Earlier in the day, Mueller squirmed on the stand as Swift’s attorney Douglas Baldridge pointed out the photo and demanded he explain his hand positioning.
“Awkward is the best way to describe the photo,” Mueller said. Mueller testified on Tuesday that he may have brushed against her “rib cage or ribs” with a closed fist, but he adamantly denied touching her tuchus.
“If anyone touched her rear she has the right to not like that,” he said Wednesday.
Staring at the photo, Mueller conceded, “I do not know where my hand went.”
Dressed in a black jacket over a white dress, Swift’s eyes rarely left her adversary during his grilling. The “Shake It Off” singer is expected to take the stand later in the trial.