In a new court filing, the former child actress Raquel Lee alleges she was repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted by a Disney worker during production of The Poof Point, a 2001 Disney Channel original movie. The suit, which doesn’t name the perpetrator, accuses the studio of negligence.
Lee, who was 14 years old at the time, claims that a “middle-aged, male employee who was involved in the filming of the movie” groomed and then assaulted her, first on multiple occasions in his room at a hotel where the cast and crew were staying during production in Salt Lake City and then later on a flight back to Los Angeles. In addition, the alleged assailant “regularly whispered sexually explicit and harassing comments” into her ear while on set and “used hugs to get close to her.”
The complaint contends that this misconduct was done “in plain view of the cast and crew and could be heard by the sound technicians managing the cast’s microphones” — yet “no one at Disney intervened.” The filing also asserts that the man “regularly made sexually explicit jokes and commentary on the set” around minors, including “sexually explicit comments about” Lee’s body. (In addition, she was allegedly allowed to be separated from her on-set guardian “for the vast majority of each day.”)
