One of the stars of the MTV reality show Rich Girls has filed a federal lawsuit against an entertainment lawyer, claiming he raped her when she was a 19-year-old virgin.
Jaime Gleicher, who is now a 37-year-old social worker, is using the one-year window created by the Adult Survivors Act to go after Roger Haber almost two decades after the incident.
Haber denies the allegations.
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“Mr. Haber categorically denies the baseless allegations in the complaint and looks forward to the actual facts coming to light in the litigation,” his attorney, Carrie Cohen, told the New York Post, which first reported the lawsuit.
The complaint says that Gleicher—who co-starred with Tommy Hilfiger’s daughter in the MTV show—was a freshman at Barnard College when she met Haber at a nightclub. She accepted an invitation to go to his Tribeca apartment with him, one of her friends, and the friend’s boyfriend, who was a client.
In the suit, Gleicher alleges that Haber gave the three guests cocaine and then put the moves on her when they were alone in the apartment. She says she told Gleicher she would not have sex with him but woke up with him penetrating her.
“Ms. Gleicher immediately started begging Mr. Haber to stop, explaining that she did not want to have sexual intercourse with him. Mr. Haber, however, continued to rape Ms. Gleicher, completely ignoring her pleas for him to stop,” the complaint says.
Gleicher claims she got away and locked herself in the bathroom, but that when she opened the door, Haber was blocking her and told her, “You don’t get to leave until you finish me off.”
The lawyer, she alleges, forced her to perform oral sex before she left.
According to the suit, Gleicher has plenty of corroboration: She says she told her mother and psychiatrist of the assault, and the shrink provided notes backing that up. In addition she went to the hospital, which performed a rape kit, but she decided not to involve police.
“She was terrified that she would forever be identified and shamed as a victim of rape and that her writing career would be ruined as a result. She was worried that Mr. Haber would say that she had led him on and ultimately consented, pointing to the cocaine he used with her, her friend, and her friend’s boyfriend that night,” the complaint says. “She also understood that Mr. Haber wielded significant influence in the entertainment industry that she was hoping to enter and thus chose the path of silence for many years.”
The suit says Gleicher was so traumatized that she developed a cocaine addiction and an eating disorder, and she began cutting herself. The alleged rape derailed her career and affected her ability to have romantic relationships, according to the complaint.
