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Country star Jimmie Allen says he’s the ‘victim’ after $1.8M judgment in sexual assault lawsuit
Jimmie Allen is maintaining his innocence and insisting he is the "victim" after a federal judge ordered the country star to pay nearly $1.8 million to a woman who accused him of sexual assault.
The 41-year-old singer faced two separate civil sexual assault and abuse lawsuits from two women in 2023. During an interview with Fox News Digital, Allen spoke candidly about the allegations that derailed his career, maintaining that his sexual encounters with both women who sued him were consensual while acknowledging that he was unfaithful to his then-wife, Alexis Gale.
When asked what he would say to his accusers today, Allen said he has forgiven both women but admitted that he struggled with being unable to publicly defend himself without being accused of blaming alleged victims.
"I wanted to just get on social media and call them liars and things like that," Allen said. "But it was interesting when I thought about it, someone said, 'No, well, you'll be a victim blamer and stuff like that.'"
"But I was like, 'I'm the victim here,'" he continued. "So they can say this about me, these horrible things about me and try to ruin and destroy everything that I worked my butt off for. But I can't say that they're lying."
In May 2023, the first woman, Jane Doe 1, who worked as the country singer's day-to-day manager, filed a lawsuit against Allen, in which she accused him of raping her in 2021 and subsequently sexually harassing her over the next 18 months.
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The second woman sued Allen in June 2023, accusing the "Big In A Small Town" singer of sexually assaulting her while she visited him at a Las Vegas hotel in the summer of 2022 while he was in Sin City for a bowling tournament. Jane Doe 2 claimed Allen had also recorded the encounter without her permission.
Allen denied both women's allegations and filed counterclaims against them in July 2023, accusing his former manager of defamation and other claims and accusing Jane Doe 2 of unlawfully taking his cellphone following their encounter.
In August 2025, Allen was found liable by default rather than following a trial in which a jury weighed the competing accounts.
The following June, a federal judge ordered Allen to pay Jane Doe 2 $1,790,541 in compensatory and punitive damages.
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While speaking with Fox News Digital, Allen said that he does not intend to simply accept the judgment.
"I'm pursuing options because I – me as a man and as a father and as the son and brother of real sexual assault victims – I cannot in good conscience do that," he said. "And that's why I feel like as a man and as a father, it is my job to fight it and find and chase whatever other options I can."
Allen did not specify what legal action he intended to pursue. Fox News Digital reached out to his current attorney, Ted Anastasiou, for comment.
The default ruling followed a series of missed deadlines and court orders. According to court records, Allen and his touring company failed to meet discovery requirements, attend court-ordered mediation and obtain new counsel within deadlines set by the court.
Allen claimed that much of the breakdown was due to his former attorney, Alandis Brassel, becoming seriously ill while representing him. The singer told Fox News Digital that Brassel was a solo practitioner and claimed that he had difficulty reaching his lawyer while he was sick.
"I'm not in contact with the court. He is," Allen recalled. "So during that time, we missed a deadline."
Allen said Brassel later informed the court about his illness but claimed the judge "didn't care."
"So the judge dropped my countersuit, and they awarded Jane Doe 2 default judgment because I missed the deadline," he said.
However, court records detail multiple missed deadlines and failures to comply with court orders.
The Grammy Award nominee acknowledged that there was at least one deadline during that period of time that he believed he could have met himself.
"I have no problem taking responsibility," Allen said. "I could have, you know, maybe done more. Absolutely."
"The other ones, I should have been more, I guess, involved with the court, but I've never been in a situation like this," he continued. "I didn't know even how to connect with the court. I didn't know if I could speak to the court without my lawyer because he was the one that was handling it."
Anastasiou later became Allen's legal representation. After the default ruling, Anastasiou similarly blamed Allen's "prior counsel's repeated failures to comply with discovery obligations and court orders" and said his client intended to seek to set aside the judgment.
"This ruling was not based on the merits of the allegations. Mr. Allen has consistently and unequivocally maintained his innocence, and he firmly denies these accusations," Anastasiou told People magazine in August 2025.
"As with earlier accusations brought on the same baseless grounds, this case is equally meritless," he continued. "The default judgment reflects the shortcomings of prior representation, not any wrongdoing by Mr. Allen. It is well-established that a client should not be penalized for the failures of their attorney, and Mr. Allen should not be deprived of his right to a fair defense."
Fox News Digital was unable to reach Brassel for comment.
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According to her lawsuit, Jane Doe 2 met Allen on a flight to Nashville in May 2022 and the two remained in contact over the following months before meeting in Las Vegas.
Jane Doe 2 alleged that she willingly joined Allen in his hotel room and initially consented to having sex with him, but repeatedly told the singer that she was not on birth control and did not want him to ejaculate inside her. According to the complaint, Allen agreed but later disregarded her requests to stop and instead ejaculated inside her.
She also alleged that Allen secretly recorded their sexual encounter without her knowledge or consent. According to the lawsuit, Allen had asked her to remain on the hotel room's balcony after they arrived while he went inside, which she believed was because he was planning a surprise. Jane Doe 2 alleged that Allen instead used the opportunity to position his cellphone to later record them.
Jane Doe 2 alleged that after Allen fell asleep, she discovered the phone recording them, stopped the recording and deleted the video. According to the complaint, she was unable to permanently delete the footage without Allen's passcode and took the phone with her when she left the hotel room before later turning it over to police.
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Allen disputed Jane Doe 2's account, maintaining that their encounter was consensual and that she knew she was being recorded. He said that they were together on the balcony when he explicitly told her he wanted to record and asked permission. While speaking with Fox News Digital, he described their alleged conversation regarding the recording.
"She said, ‘You were recording us without my permission.’ I said, 'Oh, no, no.' I said, 'We were on the balcony.' And I have all this in texts that we were on the balcony. I told you, 'I'm recording, is it OK?' And I don't ever hide my camera, ever. Ever. It's not my thing,'" he told Fox News Digital.
Allen has maintained since 2023 that Jane Doe consented to the recording.
The singer claimed to Fox News Digital that the recording depicts him "passing out."
"In the video, you can see me passing out," he claimed. "You can see me black out, like pass out."
Allen further claimed the recording shows Jane Doe 2 continuing to engage in sexual activity with him after he passed out, later getting dressed, returning to bed and rubbing his back before approaching the camera and turning it off.
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Elizabeth Fegan, an attorney who represented both Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, blasted Allen's claims in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"Mr. Allen's attempt to portray himself as the victim is as outrageous as it is offensive to the women who have come forward to report his sexual misconduct," Fegan said. "Two women have accused Mr. Allen of sexual abuse. Rather than accepting responsibility for his actions, he has repeatedly denied their accounts, sought to discredit them, and now attempts to rewrite the facts through the media, all while evading his financial obligations to the women who sought justice through the courts."
"Let there be no ambiguity: Jane Doe 2 never consented to being recorded," she continued. "Mr. Allen's continued insistence otherwise does not change her account or the Court's findings. Nor do his self-serving descriptions of selected portions of the recording establish consent to its creation. His attempt to shift attention to her behavior is yet another effort to blame the woman whose rights he violated."
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"The real victim here is the woman whose privacy, bodily autonomy, and trust were violated and who has endured years of trauma and litigation seeking accountability," Fegan added. "Mr. Allen has had ample opportunity to tell his story in court. He chose not to do so. He should stop attacking the women who came forward and start taking responsibility for his conduct."
While speaking with Fox News Digital, Allen also addressed the allegations made by his former day-to-day manager, whose 2023 lawsuit first thrust the country singer into the scandal.
Jane Doe 1, who worked as Allen's day-to-day manager, accused the singer of repeatedly sexually harassing and assaulting her over an approximately 18-month period while she was employed by his management company.
In her lawsuit, Jane Doe 1 alleged that Allen first sexually assaulted her in March 2021 after a work trip to Los Angeles, where he was filming an appearance on "American Idol." She claimed that after having several drinks at a business dinner, she woke up naked in her hotel room with Allen beside her and had no memory of what happened after dinner. According to the complaint, she was bleeding and in pain and Allen insisted that she take Plan B.
Jane Doe 1 alleged that Allen continued to sexually harass and assault her afterward, including by touching her without her consent and forcing her to engage in sexual acts despite her objections. She claimed she repeatedly told Allen "no," pushed him away and tried to avoid being alone with him, but feared that resisting him could jeopardize her career because she was responsible for managing him.
While speaking with Fox News Digital, Allen vehemently denied Jane Doe 1's allegations but acknowledged that the two had a sexual relationship, which he characterized as a consensual affair that continued on and off for approximately a year and a half.
"What I want people to understand about those allegations is one, they're not true," he claimed.
"I had an affair off and on for like a year and a half with my day-to-day manager," Allen said. "And it started, then we would cut it off, and it would start, and then we will cut it off. And it slowly became one of the things where I was like, I know what I was doing was wrong, but I was afraid to end it because I didn't really know exactly how to end without one, hurting her, right, and without hurting myself. Because it's one of those things where it's like you spend so much time, go, go, go, go, go on the road. And, you know, we were around each other a lot. We were adults that made a decision."
While speaking with Fox News Digital, Allen accepted responsibility for having the extramarital relationship but denied Jane Doe 1's characterization of it as sexual abuse.
"If I would have never cheated on my wife, I wouldn't have been in that situation anyway," he said. "And that's the part that I take accountability for."
Allen and his former manager reached a settlement in 2024 in which they agreed to dismiss their respective claims against each other. Jane Doe 1's attorney said at the time that she continued to stand by her sexual assault allegations against Allen and had agreed to settle to avoid reliving the alleged abuse at trial.
While Allen maintained he never sexually assaulted either woman, he told Fox News Digital he does not consider himself blameless for the circumstances that led to the scandal.
"Did I cheat on my wife? Yes. Did I apologize to my wife? Yes. Did I owe my wife an apology? Absolutely," he said. "And I'm not going to put the blame on my life on those two individuals. Yes, they might've fabricated a story, but I still slept with them and I put myself in that position."
While speaking with Fox News Digital, Allen recalled the impact that the allegations had on his personal and professional life.
The singer said that he would tell his accusers that they "made life really hard for my kids."
Allen and Gale, who share daughters Naomi and Zara and son Cohen, initially separated and filed for divorce in April 2023, shortly before the first sexual assault lawsuit was filed against the singer. They simultaneously announced that Gale was pregnant with their third child, Cohen.
In a May 2023 Instagram post, Allen apologized to Gale for having an affair and acknowledged that his choices brought shame and humiliation to his family.
Gale gave birth to Cohen in September 2023 and the following month, Allen's representative said the divorce had not been completed and that the couple had decided to "work on things" and were still together.
The former couple's divorce was ultimately finalized in October 2024.
Allen told Fox News Digital that the "hardest conversation" that he had was with Gale. He admitted that he failed to even warn his then-wife before the first lawsuit became public.
"I handled that completely wrong," Allen said.
Allen said the fallout also affected his oldest son, Aadyn, whom he shares with a previous partner. He recalled struggling to explain why some of his son's friends stopped speaking to him or inviting him to parties after the allegations against his father became public.
The singer also recalled how his thriving career collapsed amid the scandal and worried about how he would continue providing for his children.
"Everything I've worked for is just gone," he said. "Record label gone, management gone, bookings gone, PR gone, endorsement deals gone."
He said that his mounting fears sent him into an increasingly dark place and eventually led him to contemplate taking his own life.
"Two years ago, I was riding around my truck at like three in the morning and I had my gun in my lap and I was trying to decide, do I want to live or not?" he told Fox News Digital.
Allen said he eventually sought help, turning to therapy and spending time in rehabilitation as he worked to get his mental health back on track.
He recalled that his struggles had begun well before the allegations became public. As Allen's career took off, the singer said he began taking pills to stay awake and others to keep himself in a good mood while trying to meet the demands of touring, his record label, radio, his family and fans.
Allen said that by 2021 and 2022, he felt like he was on a "train" going "a thousand miles an hour," knowing he needed to get off but unsure how.
"I would say in 2023, when that lawsuit came out, I felt like that was God derailing the train," he said. "One, it hurt because of what was being said about me. But at the same time, it literally saved my life."
"My doctor said if I had kept going, I'd have been dead in six months," Allen continued.
Allen told Fox News Digital that getting help also forced him to reconsider his relationship with music, which he admitted he had grown to hate at the height of his struggles.
However, Allen said that as he worked to rebuild his life, he also began rediscovering the love of music that he had lost.
Allen told Fox News Digital that while some relationships disappeared amid the controversy, he was surprised by the support he received from others in the entertainment industry.
"Dolly Parton being one of them," he said. "She called me, and she told me she loves me. She said, ‘Jimmie, I know who you are.’ She said, ‘Try to just keep yourself surrounded by people that love you.’"
Allen recalled Jelly Roll, Darius Rucker, Kathie Lee Gifford and Kid Rock were among others who reached out to him.
Kid Rock's support eventually extended beyond words of encouragement. The "Freedom Was a Highway" singer recently collaborated with Kid Rock on his Christian album "Halfway to Jesus," marking another step in Allen's return to recording music.
Allen recalled Kid Rock telling him, "'As Christians, we're quick to ask for forgiveness but don't want to give it.'"
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The musician is also working on several projects of his own, including Christian and gospel music as well as country and R&B material. He said his approach to his career has changed dramatically from the relentless pursuit of success that he described before the allegations surfaced.
"It's not about winning Grammys or CMAs or number one records," he said. "It's about doing what I love."
When asked whether he believes Nashville is ready to give him another chance, Allen explained being accepted back into the country music establishment was not his priority.
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"I haven't even thought about it," he said. "That's not even really a part of my mindset."
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"I don't feel like anybody owes me an apology," Allen added. "I'm not holding a grudge towards people that don't want to work with me."
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"I feel like it's just my job just to, you know, stay resilient like I've always been."
