The owner of the New York Knicks basketball team pressured a massage therapist into sex and then set her up for a “vicious” assault by the convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, a lawsuit filed in California on Tuesday alleged.
James Dolan – a friend and former business associate of the disgraced Hollywood producer Weinstein – trafficked the woman, Kellye Croft, then aged 27, “for purposes of sex induced by force, fraud, or coercion”, according to federal court papers filed in California.
The alleged abuse occurred when Dolan’s band, JD & the Straight Shot, were on tour supporting the Eagles, who had hired Croft in 2013 to be the group’s official masseuse.
Dolan, the lawsuit claims, “summoned” Croft to his room on multiple occasions during the tour and “pressured” her into unwanted sex. The alleged rape by Weinstein took place in a Los Angeles hotel room the following year during a meeting Croft says was orchestrated by Dolan.
Dolan was briefly a board member of the Weinstein Company.
“She needs the world to know: James Dolan unlawfully trafficked her for his own sexual gratification and knew about Weinstein’s predatory behavior well before he published his musical mistruths,” the lawsuit states, referring to Dolan’s 2018 song I Should’ve Known, written about his relationship with Weinstein.
Lyrics in the track include the line: “I should’ve known, I should’ve thrown myself across his tracks, stopped him from these vile attacks.”
In a statement to the Guardian from his lawyer Danya Perry, the 68-year-old Dolan denied the claims.
“There is absolutely no merit to any of the allegations … Kellye Croft and James Dolan had a friendship,” the statement said.
“The references to Harvey Weinstein are simply meant to inflame and appear to be plagiarized from prior cases against Mr Weinstein.
“Mr Dolan always believed Ms Croft to be a good person and is surprised she would agree to these claims. Bottom line: this is not a he said/she said matter and there is compelling evidence to back up our position. We look forward to proving that in court.”
Croft, now 38, says in the lawsuit that she had no idea who Dolan was when he first booked her for a massage appointment during the tour. But she said she later learned he was “a significant funder of the tour, which allowed him to place his mediocre band as the opening act”.
She said she first became aware of his power when she discovered she was working not only for the Eagles – and specifically the band’s founding member Glenn Frey – but also Dolan.
“Dolan expected Ms Croft to have sexual interactions with him during the tour, and she spent her time either isolated by herself or waiting for instructions from Dolan,” the lawsuit states.
“At times, Dolan acted romantically toward Ms Croft, pretending that he had brought her to California for something more than merely satisfying his desire to have a sex-fueled ‘rock star’ experience on the road.
“Ms Croft’s youthful naivete led her to believe, at the time, that Dolan actually cared about her.”
The alleged assault by Weinstein followed the tour, when the Eagles were playing a residency at the Los Angeles forum in 2014, and Dolan paid for her to travel back to the city.
Weinstein invited Croft to his hotel room, asked her to try on various clothes, then chased her to her own room and raped her when she refused, the lawsuit claims.
Dolan, whose company Madison Square Garden Sports also owns the New York Rangers ice hockey team, was a close friend of Weinstein. And Dolan was a director of the Weinstein Company for about a year before it was dissolved in 2018.
He was named in a class-action lawsuit filed against Weinstein by six women in 2017, claiming he “knew of Weinstein’s pattern and practice of predatory sexual conduct toward women from his personal relationship with Weinstein and his position as a director of [the Weinstein Company]”.
Weinstein agreed to a $17.1m settlement in 2021, and Dolan as well as other Weinstein associates were absolved of responsibility for enabling him.
Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years for rape and sexual assault after a lengthy trial in New York in 2020. And he received an additional 16 years in February last year for three counts of rape and sexual assault against a single victim, a European model and actor who testified anonymously.
