16 separate women have accused magician David Copperfield of sexual misconduct; more than half of them claim to have been young when they had contact with the performer.
The charges were published by the U.S. bureau of the Guardian newspaper following an extensive investigation that lasted years and covered claims made between the late 1980s and 2014.
The 67-year-old Copperfield is accused of drugging, sexually assaulting, and molesting people.
Numerous women assert that Copperfield promised to assist them in launching a modeling or entertainment career. Over 50% of the claimants claimed to have encountered Copperfield during one of his performances.
To date, Copperfield has refuted every accusation made against him. Copperfield “never acted inappropriately with anyone, let alone anyone underage,” according to the illusionist’s attorneys, who spoke with the Guardian. According to his attorneys, the magician exhibits “kindness, shyness, and treatment of men and women with respect.”
The attorneys argued that the idea that Copperfield had ever inappropriately touched a woman was “not only completely false but entirely implausible.”
In response to claims that he drugged women, Copperfield’s attorneys stated that narcotics are “not a part of his world.”
Lawyers for Copperfield pointed out that he has never been accused of a crime.
In 2018, Brittney Lewis, one of the women who was part of the Guardian’s inquiry, went public with her charges against Copperfield. When she was seventeen in 1988, she said he had drugged her and then sexually attacked her.
When Lewis brought up the accusations in public in 2018, the magician refuted them.
Two additional unidentified women have now told the Guardian that Copperfield drugged and sexually abused them as well. The women, who are acquaintances, claimed that following one of Copperfield’s 1993 performances, they went out for drinks. They “blacked out” in his hotel room, they told the newspaper, unable to consent to having sex with him.
Four other women said that during Copperfield’s stage shows, he either touched them inappropriately or forced them into sexual interactions. At the time of the said encounters, three out of the four women were teenagers. One woman said that as her family was watching from the audience, Copperfield had inappropriately groped her breasts while she was 15 years old.
Another unnamed lady told the Guardian that in 1991, she met Copperfield during a show when she was 15 years old as well. After years of correspondence, the lady claims the illusionist “groomed” her, saying he once sent her a card saying, “In 2 years I will be back,” when she was just 16 years old. The woman claimed that it was the first time she had ever had consensual intercourse with Copperfield when she was eighteen.
The woman and Copperfield had a four-year consensual relationship, according to Copperfield’s attorneys, who refuted any allegations that he groomed her.
One of the allegations of groping against Copperfield originated in Canada and was related to a 1996 performance in Hamilton, Ontario. At the age of seventeen, the accuser stated, Copperfield asked her to appear on stage. In front of the crowd, he is accused of touching her inappropriately “between the anus and the vagina.” In 2018, she made a police report.
When Fallon Thornton, 38, went on stage during a 2014 performance at the MGM Grand casino-hotel, she claimed that Copperfield had pinched her breast. Thornton reported the incident to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Police records for the alleged incident were obtained by The Guardian, and they stated that the case was closed for “insufficient evidence.”
There have been other allegations of sexual misconduct against Copperfield, including those made by these 16 women, which his attorneys described as “many false claims.”
According to The Guardian, their in-depth reporting was informed by over 100 interviews in addition to court and police documents.
“Anyone who knows David Copperfield will tell you that he is not at all like the recent accusations made by one newspaper. According to the statement, David has a history of jeopardizing his profession to defend women against abusive individuals. “The majority of these historical charges have been leveled previously, and they are all just as untrue today as they were back then. David has not received the “evidence” that these fraudulent charges purport to be based upon, despite his request for it. In contrast, every time US law enforcement has looked into these kinds of cases, they have done a thorough investigation and discovered that there is really no case to answer.
“The Guardian’s portrayal is not who David is, and he continues to support anyone who has suffered any kind of abuse or discrimination,” the statement goes on. False allegations must end if the campaign is to be successful. David will discuss the situation with his legal counsel and take any necessary action in response to these baseless and libelous accusations.
A number of high-profile people’s names, including that of infamous banker Jeffrey Epstein, were linked to Copperfield in January’s records. In a 2016 deposition for a defamation case against Ghislaine Maxwell, one of Epstein’s victims mentioned Copperfield and claimed to have met the magician while he entertained at a banquet.
The fact that Copperfield’s name appears in Epstein-related documents does not necessarily indicate that he has broken any laws. Copperfield had “no knowledge or belief that anything improper was going on” with Epstein, according to his attorneys.
Regarding Epstein’s transgressions, Copperfield did not frequently interact with Epstein, according to his attorneys, who also claimed that “like the rest of the world, he learned about it from the press.”
