Woman sues The Tell creator sued by girl claiming she stole her tales of sexual abuse for best-seller | EUROtoday

A girl has sued creator and enterprise capitalist Amy Griffin over her bestselling 2025 memoir The Tell.

She claims that Griffin’s descriptions of childhood sexual abuse within the e-book have been stolen from her expertise.

The plaintiff identifies herself solely as Jane Doe within the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. An lawyer for Griffin referred to as the go well with “absurd” and “meritless.”

In The Tellrevealed a 12 months in the past, Griffin writes that present process remedy utilizing the psychedelic drug MDMA uncovered beforehand buried childhood recollections of being sexually abused by a trainer at her center college in Amarillo, Texas, within the Eighties.

“I knew that these memories were real,” Griffin writes within the e-book. “My body knew what had happened to me.”

The memoir was an Oprah’s Book Club choice and was additionally touted by Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiff says the descriptions match her personal sexual assaults by a special trainer at a faculty dance and in a faculty toilet. The lawsuit says Griffin had cause to know concerning the abuse.

“The Tell constitutes neither a genuine nor harmless memoir,” the lawsuit says, alleging Griffin engaged in intrusion, invasion of privateness, publication of personal info, negligence and infliction of emotional misery. It seeks damages to be decided at trial.

The lawsuit additionally names Griffin’s publishers and a ghostwriter as defendants.

The New York Times revealed a narrative in September elevating questions concerning the e-book. It included individuals who expressed doubts concerning the reliability of the recollections. The story additionally identified monetary ties between Griffin and the distinguished individuals who helped promote the e-book.

The plaintiff first realized of the existence of the memoir when the Times reached out to her throughout its reporting.

“She immediately recognized that the character of Claudia appeared to be based on herself,” the lawsuit says. “She further recognized that a number of stories attributed to the memories of Defendant GRIFFIN that supposedly resurfaced during MDMA therapy were actually her own real life past experiences.”

Griffin’s lawyer, Thomas A. Clare, stated in an e-mail: “We look forward to exposing these meritless claims in court, as well as the deeply flawed New York Times reporting that is at the center of it.”

“Just like the New York Times manufactured a false narrative about Amy Griffin and ‘The Tell,’ it also engineered the premise for this absurd lawsuit,” Clare stated.

“After two New York Times reporters instigated this whole situation by bringing the book to her attention, the Plaintiff made her own choice to publicize her narrative to a global audience.” He added, “For its part, the Times took full advantage, publicizing this inaccurate narrative despite receiving many red-flag warnings.”

Danielle Rhoades Ha, a Times spokeswoman, stated in response, “We’re confident in the accuracy of our reporting.”

The lawsuit says that when the plaintiff was assaulted on the college dance, she was sporting a gown she had borrowed from Griffin.

The lawsuit says the abuse would have been obvious to some individuals on the dance due to how she left and the way she returned. It additionally says the gown was returned to Griffin with bodily fluids from the assault. The plaintiff additionally stated she requested Jesus for forgiveness for the assault at a church youth group assembly that Griffin attended.

The lawsuit says she met with Griffin for the primary time in many years at a California espresso store in 2019, a gathering that’s recounted within the e-book. But the lady stated she didn’t focus on her sexual assaults in the course of the assembly.

The plaintiff says she did describe the abuse intimately to a expertise agent who referred to as her later about her life story. According to the lawsuit, the agent instructed the plaintiff he realized about her and her tales by way of an unidentified third occasion.

The lawsuit says the agent stopped contact when she started asking him too many probing questions on him, and that particulars from the conversations “found their way into The Tell.”