Model DROPS lawsuit against Silicon Valley millionaire 'mentor' after her bombshell claims he raped
- raquelcamila999
- Apr 29, 2022
- 3 min read
Vogue model accused Joseph Lonsdale of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit
The case’s lurid details and serious accusations shocked Silicon Valley
She claimed she was raped repeatedly and assaults would include strangling and hair pulling
Lonsdale ‘deliberately deprived her of food, threw her against walls and would not let her buy tampons’
Clougherty also claimed that Lonsdale told her women need to be raped to learn respect
Lawsuit added that he used ‘gaslighting,’ isolation, sleep deprivation and guilt to manipulate her
Lonsdale denied claims and said it was attempt to destroy his reputation
She has now dropped all the accusations she made against Lonsdale
His ban from Stanford University has now been lifted due to ‘new evidence’
A model who accused prominent U.S. venture capitalist Joseph Lonsdale of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit has dropped all of her legal claims against him, according to a court filing on Monday.
The case shocked Silicon Valley, in part because of its lurid details, which included accusations of rape during holidays to London and Rome.
Lonsdale, who had denied plaintiff Elise Clougherty’s allegations, also dropped counterclaims against her, including defamation, and each side will bear their own costs and expenses.
Clougherty, who started dating Lonsdale in 2012 while she was a Stanford University student and he was her mentor, accused him of sexual assault and related charges in a lawsuit filed in January.
Court papers described ‘a sexually, emotionally, and physically abusive relationship,’ in which she claimed to be assaulted on a regular basis.
She said Lonsdale deliberately deprived her of food, threw her against walls, and told her women need to be raped to learn respect.
The ordeal, Clougherty says, left her suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Lonsdale denied the charges, accusing Clougherty of defamation and emotional distress as part of a ‘vicious and vengeful campaign’ that sought to destroy his reputation.
Amid his counter-claim, Lonsdale also set up a website with pictures of ‘loving’ emails from Clougherty that he claimed showed their intimacy was consensual.
The pair met in 2011 at a bar in New York when Clougherty was in her second year of study at the Northern California school, and Lonsdale had just set up Formation 8.
A year later, Lonsdale, himself a 2003 Stanford graduate, became Clougherty’s official mentor in an entrepreneurship elective run by the university.
They started dating and stayed together for a year.
According to Clougherty, who had been seeking at least $75,000 in damages, Lonsdale used his ‘leverage’ to ensure he would be her mentor in the entrepreneurship elective in February 2012.
That month, she claims, he invited her to his home in Los Altos, California, where he ‘repeatedly forced [her] to have sexual contact without her consent.’
A month later, when Clougherty was on a vacation with her family in Spain, Lonsdale asked her to meet him in London and Rome, insisting they would stay in separate rooms, she says.
When she arrived, however, he insisted that she stay in his room and ‘forcefully raped’ her throughout the trip.
Clougherty’s suit, published by TechCrunch, demanded damages from Lonsdale and his firm Formation 8, which she accuses of ‘negligent supervision’.
It states: ‘Throughout this period, Mr. Lonsdale repeatedly commented to Ms. Clougherty that women needed to be raped to learn to be loyal and that they really enjoyed being raped more than they let on.
‘In addition to shaking her violently during sexual assaults, he also began strangling her, slapping her, scratching her, yanking her by the hair so hard that he would lift her torso off the bed, and slamming her body against the walls and bedboards.’
She added that he ‘deprived her of both food and sleep by scheduling late evening and early morning activities, delaying meals, not ordering her enough food and other such tactics.’
‘He often would not let her buy tampons and seemed to relish getting her blood everywhere – on her clothing, bed sheets, hotel furniture, car and bus seats, and elsewhere.’
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