MUSICIAN SUES, ACCUSES EX-GRAMMYS LEADER OF RAPE
The former head of the Grammy Awards was sued Wednesday by a woman who said he drugged and raped her in a New York hotel room in 2018.
The suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, accuses Neil Portnow, who stepped down as CEO of the Recording Academy in 2019, of sexual battery, and accuses the academy — the nonprofit group behind the Grammys — of negligence.
The suit does not name the woman, but it describes her as an instrumentalist from outside the United States who once performed at Carnegie Hall. The court papers include redacted correspondence she had with the academy in 2018 regarding her complaint.
The case harks back to a tumultuous period in the Grammys’ recent history, when Portnow left the institution after saying that women in music should “step up” to get greater recognition in the industry. His successor, Deborah Dugan, was abruptly terminated in what she called retaliation for accusing the organization of a range of abuses, including a cover-up related to the allegation made in the new suit. Those incidents shook the Recording Academy and the wider music industry, but the woman who accused Portnow had been publicly silent until now.
In a statement, a representative of Portnow called the allegations false, and said they were “the product of the plaintiff ’s imagination.”
The Recording Academy said in its own statement: “We continue to believe the claims to be without merit and intend to vigorously defend the Academy in this lawsuit.”
On Wednesday, Portnow’s representative said that after the woman’s initial accusation, he “immediately enlisted the Academy’s HR Department to review the nonsensical text messages and emails that he made immediately available. An outside independent investigation, led by top-tier lawyers, reviewed all relevant texts, emails, interviewed witnesses and found absolutely no proof to support any of the allegations.”
But the woman’s complaint this week said that she was never interviewed as part of any academy investigation. Portnow left the Grammys in July 2019, at the conclusion of his employment contract.