UPDATED November 1 10:59 p.m. ET: Brett Ratner is suing a woman who is alleging that he raped her for defamation, TMZ reports. The woman, Melanie Kohler, made the allegations in a Facebook post, writing that "Brett Ratner raped me." She also called Ratner "a rapist on at least one night in Hollywood about 12 years ago" and wrote that he "preyed on me as a drunk girl [and] forced himself upon me."
Deadline is reporting Brett Ratner as saying that he will be "stepping away" from Warner Bros amid allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. His short statement reads: "In light of the allegations being made, I am choosing to personally step away from all Warner Bros.- related activities. I don’t want to have any possible negative impact to the studio until these personal issues are resolved."
Read the original story below.
The Los Angeles Times has published a report on filmmaker Brett Ratner with accusations from six different women (including Natasha Henstridge and Olivia Munn) detailing acts of sexual harassment/misconduct that he is alleged to have committed.
In one excerpt, Henstridge said Ratner forced her to perform oral sex:
Natasha Henstridge was watching a movie on Brett Ratner’s couch when she fell asleep. She was a 19-year-old fashion model; he was an up-and-coming music video director in his early 20s. They had been hanging out in front of the TV with friends at his New York apartment.
Munn shared her own disturbing experience with Ratner:
Not long after Munn arrived on the Santa Monica set in 2004, she said, she was asked to drop some food off in Ratner's trailer as a favor. She said she was assured that the director would not be there.
Katharine Towne also revealed Ratner's actions during her encounter:
Actress Katharine Towne also described an aggressive come-on by Ratner that left her so uncomfortable that she said she still vividly remembers the incident years later. She said she met the director in L.A. around 2005 at a party in a movie star’s home, where he made unwanted advances. Ratner, she said, was persistent, “making it evident that he had one motive” — to sleep with her.
Through his attorney, Ratner denied the allegations.
However, Ratner was not the only Hollywood name to face sexual misconduct claims (which has become sort of a daily thing) on Wednesday, as Dustin Hoffman also had some allegations tossed his way in a lengthy guest colum on The Hollywood Reporter. That guest column was written by Anna Graham Hunter, who says a then 48-year-old Hoffman groped her on the set of1985's TV movie production of Death of a Salesman when she was 17. She also says he "talked about sex to me and in front of me."
Hoffman put out a statement saying, "Anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am."
You can read the entire THR column on Hoffman here. And you can read the LA Times report on Ratner here.
