Snoop Accused Of Sex Assault

JANUARY 30--Weeks after Snoop Dogg filed a preemptive lawsuit claiming he was the target of an extortion scheme hatched by a woman claiming to have been sexually assaulted by the rapper and his posse, the alleged victim, an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, has responded with her own blistering legal complaint.

In a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, filed Friday, Kylie Bell charges that Snoop (real name: Calvin Broadus) and several associates raped her in the entertainer's dressing room following a January 2003 taping of ABC's 'Jimmy Kimmel Live.' Bell, who won a 2002 Emmy for her work on HBO's 'Six Feet Under,' claims that she was left incapacitated after drinking what a Snoop associate told her was champagne.

According to the complaint, after Bell, 36, was drugged, she was sexually assaulted by Broadus and four cronies. In addition to the rapper, Bell, who is seeking $25 million in combined damages, has named ABC, Kimmel's show, and the Walt Disney Company as defendants. She alleges that the network is partly liable for the attacks because, during the week Broadus co-hosted the Kimmel program, his dressing room was stocked with 'large quantities' of champagne and marijuana (Bell also claims to have seen Broadus 'snorting cocaine powder' on the final night of his Kimmel gig, which came during the show's first week on ABC).

The morning after the incident, Bell claims that she told family members about the sexual assault, but was advised not to make a police report due to Broadus's supposed street gang affiliation. Four months later, according to the complaint, Bell contacted the Kimmel program 'and told them that she had been sexually assaulted at the show' and was contacting the police. In short order, Bell claims, she began having her living expenses paid through an ABC investment subsidiary. After those network payouts ceased, Broadus began paying Bell's expenses while the rapper's lawyers opened negotiations with the woman's attorneys.

According to Bell's complaint, the two sides entered into mediation last October, but 'were unable to settle the dispute at the financial amount recommended by the mediator.' However, on January 6--nearly a month after Broadus filed his extortion complaint against the woman and her lawyers--counsel for both sides 'agreed to a settlement of this matter, at a figure less than the figure recommended by the mediator,' according to Bell's lawsuit.

But that apparent deal cratered on January 18, the complaint states, when Broadus's insurance company refused to 'pay a portion of the compensation previously promised' by the rapper's legal team. Ten days later, Bell filed her lawsuit, claiming that the alleged attack caused 'serious emotional distress and anxiety,' left her under the care of a therapist and psychiatrist, and resulted in a September 2003 psychiatric hospitalization. (12 pages)