Why was a ‘Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ star sued over sexual assault claims?
“Vanderpump Villa” star Marciano Brunette filed a lawsuit against “Mormon Wives” star Demi Engemann and the show producer.
The Hulu reality show “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” follows a group of Mormon mothers as they’ve risen to fame on TikTok, with plotlines revolving around who’s in and who’s out in the group they’ve dubbed “MomTok.”
But Season 3 took a more serious turn when it focused on one of the stars, Demi Engemann, accusing another reality star, Marciano Brunette, of sexual assault. Engemann said that while appearing on “Vanderpump Villa,” the reality show Brunette is on, he touched her against her consent. She repeated this accusation multiple times across social media and in interviews, calling Brunette a sexual predator and saying she suspected others would come forward.
Brunette responded by filing a lawsuit against Engemann and Jeff Jenkins Productions, a producer of the show, saying Engemann reframed a consensual encounter as sexual assault after receiving backlash for her conduct on “Vanderpump Villa” and that Jeff Jenkins Productions “amplified the same accusations for profit.”
The lawsuit follows in the wake of others filed by celebrities accused of sexual misconduct, such as when actor Johnny Depp sued fellow performer and ex-wife Amber Heard over an op-ed she wrote claiming she was a survivor of domestic abuse. Similarly, actor and director Justin Baldoni filed a countersuit against his co-star Blake Lively after she accused him of sexual harassment and launching a smear campaign against her during the release of their film “It Ends with Us.”
Filing a suit is a known tactic among abusers, said Hayat Bearat, associate clinical professor of law and director of the Domestic Violence Institute at Northeastern University. After the rise of the #MeToo movement in 2017, more survivors became empowered to come forward with their stories, but many use the legal system to their advantage as one way to silence those who accuse them of abuse. And while many of these lawsuits end up being thrown out, the cultural impact they have can intimidate people from speaking out about abuse.
“It’s very much intended to be a pathway to get a gag order to prevent someone from being able to speak out about the abuse they’ve experienced,” said Bearat, adding that some of her clients have been prevented from naming their abusers due to retaliatory lawsuits filed when they spoke out. “When more people are coming forward, abusers are more likely to try and grasp at anything they can to silence survivors. If more survivors are silenced by this, it’ll have the same trickle-down effect, which is what they want. They want the #MeToo momentum to stop.”
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These lawsuits, in addition to trying to silence survivors, can also be used to seek financial compensation, Bearat added. Some of the accused might also take this approach simply to upset or intimidate the person accusing them of misconduct.
Brunette’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Utah where “Mormon Wives” is filmed, requests not only a to-be-determined amount of damages, but an injunction that prevents the defendants from repeating the claims against him.
“Unequivocally, the statements of Engemann, amplified by production are false,” his attorneys wrote in the lawsuit. “They accuse Marciano of criminal sexual conduct he did not commit. They were published broadly, republished repeatedly, and framed to harden into ‘truth’ in the minds of viewers. The damage has been immediate and severe, including lost professional opportunities, harassment by strangers and lasting harm to Marciano’s reputation.”
In the grand scheme of assault cases, Carlos Cuevas, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University, said these types of cases are uncommon though as many survivors do not speak out about their experience. High-profile cases involving celebrities may only have happened because the accused can claim defamation.
“Sexual violence is hugely underreported,” he said. “The percentage that come forward in any kind of scenario is a minuscule fraction of the actual cases of sexual assault that exist. It’s not going to be common practice because of the reality of sexual assault disclosure.”
In order to protect survivors, Bearat said, she advises individuals to speak up under a pseudonym.
However, these very public lawsuits can prevent survivors from speaking up.
“There’s a lot of reasons survivors worry about coming forward and retaliation is one, particularly when the perpetrator has more influence, power and money than the person experiencing the abuse,” said Liz Speakman, executive director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. “It’s been a concern for a long time. It’s (part of) a bigger theme where perpetrators are going to keep upping the ante when they’re held accountable. They’re going to keep fighting back, pushing back and delegitimizing the survivor’s story in whatever way they can.”
