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A former model has accused Axl Rose of sexually assaulting her more than 30 years ago in New York, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York Supreme Court and obtained by Rolling Stone.
Sheila Kennedy, a former Penthouse model and 1983 Pet of the Year, claimed in the lawsuit that she met the Guns N’ Roses frontman at a nightclub in New York in 1989 when she was about 26 years old. The night they met, Kennedy claimed he violently sexually assaulted her in his hotel room.
Kennedy claimed in the lawsuit that a friend invited Kennedy to a nightclub to try to meet the band. Kennedy spoke to Rose at the club and he eventually invited her to a party at his hotel, she claimed.
Kennedy’s friend was not invited because Rose allegedly said she was “not hot enough,” according to the suit, and Kennedy apologized to the friend and went back to Rose’s hotel with him, along with fellow model and future MTV host Riki Rachtman. (Rachtman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
In Rose’s hotel room, Rose supplied guests with cocaine, champagne and other alcohol, according to the lawsuit. After Kennedy went to the bathroom, Rose allegedly waited outside the door, and as she walked out, Rose “pushed Kennedy against the wall and kissed her.”
“Kennedy found Rose attractive and had no objection to this encounter. She was willing to sleep with him if things progressed,” the lawsuit states. However, she says she did not consent to the alleged sexual encounter with Rose, which was scheduled to take place later that evening. (A representative for Rose did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Later in the party, when only Rose, Rachtman, the other model and Kennedy were in the room, Rose began having sex with the other model, the suit says. Kennedy claimed she was uncomfortable and claimed that “Rose was aggressive in a way that seemed painful to the model.” Kennedy further claimed that Rose “encouraged group sex” but that she had no interest in it and left the room with Rachtman left to return to his hotel room.
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After leaving Rose’s room, she heard the sound of breaking glass. “She also heard Rose yelling at the model, allegedly saying, ‘You’re a fucking whore.’ Get out of here.” When Rachtman heard the noise, he reportedly told Kennedy that “it’s going to get bad.”
Kennedy claims Rose then walked down the hall to Rachtman’s room, saw Kennedy and asked, “What the hell are you doing here?” Rose then allegedly pushed Kennedy to the floor. “While Kennedy was on the floor, Rose grabbed her by her hair and dragged her across the suite back to his bedroom,” the lawsuit said, adding that her knees were bleeding after scraping on the carpet. When they got to his room, the suit claimed, Rose threw her onto her stomach on the bed, grabbed her tights and tied her hands behind her back.
“Kennedy lay on the bed with his hands tied behind his back, bleeding, vulnerable and alone with Rose while in a sexual, volatile rage,” the lawsuit said. “Kennedy had just witnessed Rose having violent sex with another woman. He dragged Kennedy into his bedroom like a caveman and acted with uncontrolled rage. Rose had physically stopped her from leaving. Kennedy was trapped.” Rose then forcibly penetrated Kennedy’s anus with his penis, the lawsuit said.
“He treated her like property for the sole purpose of his sexual pleasure,” the lawsuit says. “He didn’t use a condom. Kennedy did not agree and felt overwhelmed. She felt like she had no way out and was forced to give in. She believed Rose would physically attack her or worse if she said no or tried to push him away. She understood that the safest course of action was to lie in bed and wait for Rose to finish attacking her.”
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The lawsuit alleges that after the alleged incident, Kennedy experienced post-traumatic symptoms when she heard Rose’s name or Guns N’ Roses’ music. She further claims that she has suffered from anxiety and depression since the alleged assault and that the trauma has affected her career. The lawsuit cited assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and gender-based violence as causes of action and asked the court to award unspecified damages.
Rose herself has been accused of domestic and sexual violence several times in the past. The lawsuit itself describes a “history of abuse” when describing Rose and points to several other allegations of sexual and domestic violence from the past few decades. The lawsuit involved allegations of abuse by Rose’s former partners Erin Everly and Stephanie Seymour, detailed in a 1994 People magazine article. (Everly sued Rose in Los Angeles civil court that year for abuse and later settled the claims out of court.)
The lawsuit isn’t the first time Kennedy has shared these details about her alleged experience with Rose. She writes about the allegations in her 2016 autobiography “No One’s Pet” and further recalls the allegations in “Look Away,” the 2021 documentary about sexual misconduct in the music industry.
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The lawsuit was filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a law that removes the statute of limitations for sexual misconduct claims in civil lawsuits. The statute will be closed again this week. Since the window reopened, women have made allegations against several high-profile music industry figures, including Steven Tyler, LA Reid, former Recording Academy CEO Neil Portnow, publishing executive Kenny MacPherson and late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun.
Sheila Kennedy vs. W. Axl Rose