Smokey Robinson sued for $50 million as ex-employees allege sexual assault, failure to pay overtime

Four erstwhile employees person sued Motown fable Smokey Robinson and his wife, alleging the vocalist sexually assaulted them connected aggregate occasions and failed to wage them decently for hours worked portion claiming that Frances Robinson berated them.

According to the ailment filed May 6 successful Los Angeles County Superior Court, the Robinsons are accused of negligence, intersexual artillery and intersexual assault, mendacious imprisonment, intentional and negligent infliction of affectional distress, sex violence, and hostile enactment environment, successful summation to a big of labour violations related to wages, breaks, repast periods, and vacation and overtime pay.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys did not instantly respond Tuesday to The Times’ requests for comment. A erstwhile publicist for the vocalist said she was not presently moving for Smokey Robinson; his endowment cause did not respond instantly to The Times’ petition for comment.

The women are suing nether the pseudonyms Jane Doe 1 done 4 owed to the intersexual misconduct allegations, including rape, that are leveled against the 85-year-old singer, the suit says. Three are erstwhile housekeepers and 1 was the singer’s idiosyncratic assistant, navigator and hairdresser, per tribunal documents reviewed by The Times.

All 4 women allege successful the suit that Robinson summoned them to assorted places astatine his homes successful Chatsworth, Ventura County’s Bell Canyon and Las Vegas erstwhile his woman wasn’t around. Sometimes emerging bare from a shower, helium forced them to person assorted types of enactment with them — vaginal, oral and integer — implicit a fig of years, the suit says.

They impeach Frances Robinson of “regularly screaming ... successful a hostile manner, utilizing ethnically pejorative words and language” toward them and accidental successful the documents that she knew what her hubby was doing and failed to rein him in.

One plaintiff was “unwilling to study ... Smokey Robinson’s unlawful acts to the authorities owed to her fearfulness of losing her livelihood, familial reprisal, nationalist embarrassment, shame and humiliation to her and her family, the imaginable adverse effect connected her migration status, arsenic good arsenic being threatened and intimidated by Defendant Smokey Robinson’s well-recognized personage presumption and his influential friends and associates,” the suit says.

That sentiment, with oregon without the migration issue, was echoed by the different plaintiffs.

All 4 plaintiffs accidental they worked 10 hours a day, six days a week for the Robinsons but were not paid minimum wage oregon overtime. They besides worked holidays without receiving a vacation rate, the suit says. The housekeepers made betwixt $10 and $18 an hr portion the adjunct made $15 an hr earlier getting a rise to $20 an hour.

Jane Doe 1 worked for the Robinsons from January 2023 until February 2024. Jane Doe 2 worked from May 2014 to February 2020. Jane Doe 3 worked from February 2012 to April 2024. Jane Doe 4 worked from October 2006 to April 2024.

Minimum wage successful California was $6.75 per hr successful 2006 and increased gradually implicit the years. In 2024, it was $16 per hr for those not moving for ample fast-food chains.

The plaintiffs accidental successful the suit that they discontinue due to the fact that of the alleged intersexual misconduct and hostile enactment environment.

In summation to ineligible fees and tribunal costs, the suit seeks wide damages of “not little than $50 million” connected astir of the charges positive punitive damages to beryllium determined astatine trial.