Hollywood director Rob Cohen has been accused of sexually assaulting a 28-year-old woman during a 2015 meeting that had been set up to discuss collaborating on a TV pilot.
HuffPost reported that the woman, called Jane, come forward with the claim against Cohen, now 70, who has denied it through his lawyer, Marty Singer.
Jane said that four years ago, Cohen had invited her to a business meeting in Manhattan to talk about working together on a TV pilot.
A woman called Jane has come forward with allegations that Hollywood director Rob Cohen (pictured in 2018) sexually assaulted her during a business meeting in 2015
At the time, Jane was pursuing a consulting role on the pilot alongside Cohen’s daughter, Valkyrie Weather. Cohen, the director of hits like 2001’s Fast and the Furious and 2002’s xXx, had offered to use his Hollywood contacts to help shop around the pilot.
According to Jane, Cohen picked a cigar lounge for the meeting locale and ordered a drink for her, even though she hadn’t requested one. They then continued the meeting at a restaurant near the hotel where he was staying.
At the restaurant, Jane said, Cohen ordered a carafe of wine and encouraged her to have more to drink.
During the meeting, Jane said that Cohen had flirted with her and told her details about his sex life, although she hadn’t asked about it. She said she ignored Cohen’s comments because she needed the pilot money and was excited about the career opportunity.
Among the other things she remembered about the evening was starting to feel ‘fuzzy,’ being alone with Cohen at the restaurant because the other diners had left, Cohen leaning over to kiss her on the cheek and going to another bar with him.
Cohen is famous for having directed hit movies Fast and the Furious and xXx. He is pictured here (second from right) with xXx stars (L to R) Vin Diesel, Asia Argento and Samuel L. Jackson
Cohen (left, pictured with Vin Diesel) denied Jane’s claims through his lawyer, Marty Singer
Jane said that Cohen had encouraged her to drink throughout the meeting and that at the end of the evening, she woke up naked in his hotel room bed. Cohen (in white) is pictured here with Stealth stars (L to R) Josh Lucas, Jamie Foxx and Jessica Biel
Cohen directed The Fast and the Furious, starring Vin Diesel (left) and Paul Walker (right)
She said her next memory was regaining consciousness in a bed in Cohen’s hotel room. She said she was naked and that Cohen’s face was in her crotch and that he had inserted his fingers inside her – neither of his acts being activities that she had consented to.
She said she jumped out of bed, went to the bathroom and threw up.
When she stumbled back to the bed, she said that Cohen tried to have sex with her, but that he stopped when she told him to stop.
Despite being a social drinker during that period of her life, Jane said that she did not remember drinking enough alcohol to black out or lose consciousness and that the incident ‘did not feel like being very drunk.’
Jane returned to her then-boyfriend’s home via taxi at about 1.30am.
When contacted with a detailed list of questions about the alleged assault, Singer, Cohen’s lawyer, sent HuffPost a 13-page denial letter.
‘The proposed Story is an outrageous defamatory hit piece, making extraordinarily offensive assertions that my client engaged in heinous sexual misconduct, criminal wrongdoing, and other inappropriate behavior, which are vehemently disputed and denied by my client,’ Singer wrote, according to the news website.
He also supposedly cautioned HuffPost against ‘publishing this Story in an effort to feed the “Me Too” media frenzy with this salacious Story.’
Two people close to Jane confirmed to the news site that she told them about the alleged assault immediately after it occurred and also mentioned it again about a year afterwards.
Jane also shared medical records with HuffPost, showing that she had gone to a clinic seeking treatment as a sexual assault victim within weeks of her meeting with Cohen and that she was still in contact and working with her alleged assaulter.
Jane said that she came forward after reading Valkyrie Weather’s public accusation that her father, Cohen, had molested her while a toddler. Weather is pictured as a child with Cohen (left) and in a recent image (right)
Jane and Weather were working together on the TV pilot that Jane had met with Cohen (pictured in 2015) to discuss on the night when the alleged sexual assault took place
Jane said that she continued to work with Cohen because she wanted the TV pilot to go forward and that she hoped that the alleged incident was a one-time mistake made by a man from a prior generation who was unfamiliar with the importance of obtaining consent in sexual situations.
Emails exchanged between Jane and Cohen’s daughter, Weather, confirmed that Cohen was working on the TV pilot with them. A representative at a major TV network told HuffPost that she discussed the pilot with Cohen.
Through Singer, Cohen said that he remembered meeting Jane at a bar to discuss the TV project in 2015, but denied that Jane was unconscious in his hotel room or that he sexually assaulted her. Cohen said that Jane left as soon as their meeting ended.
Two and a half years later, Jane said that she confronted Cohen about the alleged assault, following the October 2017 exposes on Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct.
In November 2017, Jane said she sent a text to Cohen about what happened, noting that ‘The night we met, you really hurt me and f**ked me up. hearing all this s**t about harvey is really hard and i can’t stop thinking about what you did.’
She also wrote that she wasn’t ‘tyina be in the news or anything’ and that the only thing she wanted from Cohen was an apology.
About an hour after she sent the message, Cohen replied: ‘I’m so sorry to hear this’ and asked to speak with her on the phone the next day. During the call, Jane said that Cohen apologized for the pain he’d caused her, but made it seem like the alleged assault was a misunderstanding between two inebriated people.
Singer said that Cohen ‘recalls receiving an odd text or email from [Jane] inferring that she had been taken advantage of, which my client understood to be a complaint that she had never gotten paid for consulting on the defunct project.’
Singer also stated that Cohen: ‘categorically disputes that [Jane] said anything to him during that call about any alleged sexual assault.’
Jane said she is going public with her story now because her one-time collaborator, Valkyrie Weather, who is Cohen’s daughter, has been public about accusations Cohen of having molested her when she was a toddler.
Weather, 32, who is transgender, made the claim on various social media platforms in February, stating that she was coming forward about her alleged assault because she believed that Cohen had abused other people as well.
Cohen denied Weather’s allegations in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter at the time, calling them ‘categorically untrue.’
After Jane read Weather’s account of her alleged childhood abuse, she reached out to Weather to tell her that she had also been an alleged Cohen victim.
When she sent Weather a Facebook message in early 2019, Jane said that she had no intention of going public with her own story, but that she is doing so now as a way of showing support for Weather.