Kesha performing in L.A. earlier this month. (Getty)
Last Friday Manhattan Supreme Court judge Shirley Kornreich handed down a controversial ruling against Kesha Rose Sebert. The singer has been trying to nullify her recording contract with Sony so she would no longer have ties to producer Luke Gottwald (a.k.a. Dr. Luke), who has allegedly been a destructive force in her life for the past decade. She has said, "I know I cannot work with Dr. Luke. I physically cannot. I don’t feel safe in any way.”
The allegations are serious, and if true make Dr. Luke another Bill Cosby. Unfortunately, Sony is more invested in Dr. Luke's future and career than Kesha's, and the system is set up to protect Sony and Dr. Luke, not Kesha. The Hollywood Reporter broke down the suit's disturbing allegations:
Kesha details how she signed up with Dr. Luke's music production company in 2005 and came under the thumb of a producer whose "despicable conduct" included bragging how he liked to get girls drunk and have sex with them and blackmailing his pregnant wife into getting an abortion by not speaking to her for six months and threatening to leave.
The most incendiary allegations revolve around sexual abuse — specifically, how Dr. Luke allegedly forced her to snort illegal drugs and gave her "sober pills," which Kesha says were really a form of gamma-hydroxybutyrate, more commonly known as the date rape drug.
On one occasion, the lawsuit reports, "Ms. Sebert took the pills and woke up the following afternoon, naked in Dr. Luke's bed, sore and sick, with no memory of how she got there. Ms. Sebert immediately called her mother and made a 'fresh complaint,' telling her that she was naked in Dr. Luke's hotel room, she did not know where the clothes were, that Dr. Luke had raped her, and that she needed to go to the emergency room."
Dr. Luke allegedly told Kesha he would ruin her career if she told anyone about this, and it's unfortunate that Judge Kornreich has made his threats a reality through her ruling. Here was her reasoning for not letting Kesha out of the contract, via Buzzfeed:
"Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Shirley Werner Kornreich said releasing Kesha from the contract under Sony would cause irreparable harm since the singer would no longer have to fulfill her contractual obligation to make six more albums with Dr. Luke for the record label."
Like most victims of sexual assault, Kesha doesn't have videotape documenting her rape, or any hard evidence against Dr. Luke. So the burden of proof falls on her, and not him—this is the unfortunate reality many women face when they are brave enough to speak up. And now Lena Dunham has penned a passionate piece for her Lenny newsletter, speaking up alongside Kesha, and all women, saying the singer's case "highlights the way that the American legal system continues to hurt women by failing to protect them from the men they identify as their abusers." You can, and should, read the full thing here, but here's an excerpt:
Sony could make this go away. But instead the company has chosen to engage in a protracted legal battle to protect Gottwald’s stake in Kesha’s future. Although the company insists that Kesha and Gottwald never need to be in a room together and that he will allow her to record without his direct involvement, they are minimizing what Kesha says regarding how Gottwald’s continued involvement in her career would affect her physical well-being and psychological safety.
So let me spell it out for them. Imagine someone really hurt you, physically and emotionally. Scared you and abused you, threatened your family. The judge says that you don’t have to see them again, BUT they still own your house. So they can decide when to turn the heat on and off, whether they’ll pay the telephone bill or fix the roof when it leaks. After everything you’ve been through, do you feel safe living in that house? Do you trust them to protect you?
That explanation is really for the judge, Shirley Kornreich, who questioned why — if they could be physically separated as Sony has promised — Kesha could not continue to work for Gottwald. After all, she said, it’s not appropriate to “decimate a contract that was heavily negotiated.” Guess what else is heavily negotiated? The human contract that says we will not hurt one another physically and emotionally. In fact, it’s so obvious that we usually don’t add it to our corporate documents.
The fact is, Kesha will never have a doctor’s note. She will never have a videotape that shows us that Gottwald threatened and shamed her, and she will never be able to prove, beyond the power of her testimony, that she is unsafe doing business with this man. And no, none of this was in her contract. But what man, what company endeavors to keep a woman saddled with someone who she says has caused her years of trauma, shame, and fear?
Since the ruling, Kesha has received support from others in the business, including Fiona Apple, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga. And Jack Antonoff tweeted his support as well, offering to release some not-very-legal tracks with her ("if you want to make something together & then leak it for everyone I'm around").
She has more court dates ahead of her, but Vanity Fair points out that, "even if she wins her case, no recording artist has ever successfully voided a contract as a result of a sexual-abuse lawsuit against the agreement’s other parties." So currently, Kesha has few options: work on another album for Sony under the watch of her alleged abuser, produce her own music illegally, or stop working.
