A former teen model accused David Copperfield of sexual assault on Wednesday, saying the world-renowned magician drugged and attacked her in 1988, when she was 17 years old.
Brittney Lewis told the Wrap she first met Copperfield at a modeling competition in Japan, which he helped judge. Soon after, she said, he invited her to see him perform in California, where they stayed in adjacent hotel rooms. After his show, the magician—who was 32 at the time—allegedly took Lewis to a bar and poured something into her drink. Lewis said she then blacked out and vaguely remembered being placed in a cab before she came to in her hotel room—with Copperfield on top of her.
“I remember my clothes being taken off,” she told the Wrap. “He was kissing my face and then I remember him starting to go down on my body with his face, and then, as soon as he started going down, I just completely blacked out.”
Lewis added that Copperfield came into her room the next day and assured her that "nothing happened because I was underage," allegedly promising, "I didn’t enter you." Lewis said she flew home that day after Copperfield had her write a letter affirming she was OK, and never saw him again.
Copperfield did not explicitly address Lewis's allegations in the article, but did issue a statement on Twitter Wednesday that seemed to allude to an allegation against him dating back to 2007, when a woman named Lacey Carroll accused him of sexual assault. The FBI investigated that claim but never filed charges against Copperfield, who insisted he was innocent. In 2010, Carroll was charged for making a false assault accusation against another man, a crime she eventually copped to.
Lewis told the Wrap she didn't plan to take legal action against Copperfield. In any event, the statute of limitations for the incident has expired, one legal expert told the outlet, because Lewis reported it to the FBI in 2007 after hearing about the Carroll case. That report started a one-year clock for criminal or civil charges over Lewis's own allegation.
In his statement, Copperfield claimed to support #MeToo, but also labeled "false accusers" a "true disservice to those who have been victims of sexual assault."
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, a strong majority of sexual assaults have historically gone unreported, and most research suggests false accusations are exceedingly rare.
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