The former boyfriend of a Real Housewives of New York star has been accused of raping a woman on the beach in the Hamptons in 2001.
Garth Wakeford, a South African personal trainer, dated reality TV star Luann de Lesseps from August 2020 to April 2021.
Wakeford is now accused, in a suit filed last week, of raping an intoxicated Sarah Maslin Nir in 2001, when she was 18 and he was 31.
Wakeford at the time was working as a bouncer in a Hamptons nightclub.
Maslin Nir is now a breaking news journalist at The New York Times, and filed her suit under New York’s year-long Adult Survivors Act, which allowed people to bring cases which would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. Other high-profile men to be hit with lawsuits last week accusing them of sexual assault include Eric Adams, Diddy, Axl Rose and Jamie Foxx.
Maslin Nir claims, in documents obtained by The New York Post, that she was attacked by Wakeford after visiting the bar where he worked. She is suing for alleged battery and false imprisonment.
Garth Wakeford, a South African personal trainer, is accused of raping a woman in 2001, when he was 31. He denies the allegations
Maslin Nir had just graduated from high school when she and her friends went to Stephen Talkhouse, a popular music venue in Amagansett which remains open.
Maslin Nir said that Wakeford, who worked there, knew the group were underage but ‘allowed them to enter the venue without showing identification’.
She claims he ‘instructed the bartender to serve Nir numerous drinks ‘on him.”