After Garth Brooks was accused of rape and different sexual misconduct in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Thursday (Oct. 3), the nation star has responded and insists he’s “not the man they have painted me to be.”

The allegations come from an unnamed girl who claims Brooks sexually assaulted her whereas she labored for him as a hairstylist and make-up artist beginning in 2017 after working for his spouse, fellow nation star Trisha Yearwood, since 1999. In the lawsuit, the Jane Roe accuser says Brooks raped her throughout a May 2019 keep in an L.A. lodge room and in addition uncovered her to “other appalling sexual conduct” throughout that very same 12 months.

Thursday’s lawsuit additionally introduced to mild an earlier go well with filed final month in Mississippi federal courtroom by an nameless “celebrity” plaintiff in an effort to preserve an accuser from going public with sexual abuse allegations and referring to them as “ongoing attempted extortion.”

In an announcement despatched late Thursday to Billboard, Brooks denies the sexual assault allegations — saying the threats and accusations “felt like having a loaded gun waved in my face” — and confirms that he was behind final month’s thriller Mississippi submitting, which he says was accomplished anonymously “for the sake of families on both sides.”

“For the last two months, I have been hassled to no end with threats, lies, and tragic tales of what my future would be if I did not write a check for many millions of dollars,” Brooks started his assertion. “It has been like having a loaded gun waved in my face. Hush cash, regardless of how a lot or how little, continues to be hush cash. In my thoughts, which means I’m admitting to habits I’m incapable of—ugly acts no human ought to ever do to one other. We filed go well with in opposition to this particular person practically a month in the past to converse out in opposition to extortion and defamation of character. We filed it anonymously for the sake of households on each side.

“I want to play music tonight,” Brooks concluded, referencing his scheduled live performance Thursday night at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace as a part of his ongoing Las Vegas residency. “I want to continue our good deeds going forward. It breaks my heart these wonderful things are in question now. I trust the system, I do not fear the truth, and I am not the man they have painted me to be.”