Los Angeles Clippers player James Harden is being sued for negligence after a woman said she was sexually assaulted at his home in Houston. In the lawsuit obtained by the Cut, the woman, Marisa Watley, alleged Harden’s nephew raped her while she was unconscious at a New Year’s party thrown by Harden earlier this year.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in a Texas court, Watley attended the party with two friends in the early hours of January 1. There, Harden’s nephew, Justice Armani Blackburn, allegedly offered Watley and two of her friends a drink from a bottle. After drinking a small amount of it, Watley said her memory became “extremely hazy” and she eventually passed out, according to the lawsuit.
The next thing Watley said she remembers is being “shocked into consciousness” as a man — whom she later realized was Blackburn — was having “aggressive sex with her” on a bed, according to the lawsuit. Still “not fully awake” and “in a dreamlike state,” Watley allegedly heard Blackburn asking if she was “on birth control” and saying he wanted to ejaculate inside her. “Ms. Watley recalls saying only ‘no, no, no’ repeatedly,” the lawsuit states.
After the alleged assault ended and Watley had “only barely regained consciousness,” the lawsuit says, a security guard entered the room and ordered her to leave Harden’s house. While exiting, Watley said she saw an unidentified woman “still passed out on the couch.”
Per the suit, Watley’s two friends — who the lawsuit states also “passed out and lost consciousness shortly after drinking from Mr. Blackburn’s bottle” — were also kicked out of the home, and allegedly saw Harden driving through the front gates shortly after they were removed. After realizing they could not find Watley, she says, her friends asked a guard to let them back in, but the guard told them there were “no more women in the house.”
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Watley is seeking more than $100,000 in damages and is also calling for the case to be brought to trial. In addition to accusing Blackburn of sexual assault, the suit accuses the security guards and Harden himself of negligence, saying the athlete “is vicariously liable for the conduct of the security guards in his employ.”
“Had the security guards acted sooner, had they listened to a single one of the concerns raised to them in the hours before Ms. Watley was raped, Mr. Harden’s security could have prevented this nightmare from occurring,” the lawsuit states.
Since the alleged assault, Watley said she “has been struggling to recover mentally” and now speaks with a heavy stutter due to “severe trauma.”
In a statement shared by her lawyers, Watley said she hopes her complaint “pushes security employees generally to act more responsibly when women are in danger.”
“Since New Year’s Day, when I reported the rape by Mr. Blackburn to the police, I have remained puzzled by how Mr. Harden’s security behaved that day,” she said. “It is painful to imagine that this all could have been stopped in time.”
The Cut has reached out to Blackburn and a representative for Harden and will update this post if we hear back.
