Celebrity chef Todd English is being sued by a woman who claims he sexually assaulted and abused her in 2015. Kelly Forman, who filed her lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court, also included Todd’s former girlfriend Wenjie Song in the allegations. The suit was originally filed in November 2023 but amended last week.

Mr. English strongly denies the allegations of the plaintiff, which his attorney Bryan Sullivan characterized as a “frivolous money grab.”

Court documents filed by Ms. Forman, who has a traumatic brain injury that occurred in a separate equestrian incident prior to the alleged abuse, claims that was drugged and woke up the next day with “severe burns and permanent nerve damage.” The plaintiff claims Mr. English and Ms. Song drugged and assaulted her in April 2015.

The suit alleges that after Ms. Forman attended a dinner party at a loft with the defendants, Ms. Song “insisted” on going out to have drinks with her afterward. Ms. Forman claims they took her to a strip club where the “flashing lights and loud music from the strip club triggered Ms. Forman’s brain trauma and caused her to have a migraine.” The plaintiff said in court documents she was “totally debilitated by pain and went back to the loft to sleep.”

Court documents allege that “English and Song piled into bed with her. Song then climbed on top of English and began kissing him and touching him sexually, clearly trying to engage in group sex with Ms. Forman, Ms. Forman expressed that she was too tired to interact with them and fell asleep.” The next morning, Ms. Forman claims in the suit, she realized she felt “disoriented” and then after she returned home discovered she was “horrifically abused.”

The allegations of abuse include being forcibly kissed by the celebrity chef; alleged attempts by both Mr. English and Ms. Song for her to have sex with them in spite of her protests, and that she woke up the next day feeling drugged, with third-degree burns and a “vaginal tear” that she could not recall happening. Included in the lawsuit are numerous photos of her alleged injuries.

Physicians confirmed Ms. Song did have third-degree burns, and the court documents allege this severe abuse was inflicted on her while she was drugged and unconscious. The plaintiff also said she is now suffering from emotional and physical trauma.

Ms. Forman claims she woke up “with six gaping holes in her left forearm” when she woke up, with no memories of the night before, when she had been with Mr. English and Ms. Stone. She presented photos of her foreman in the lawsuit.

Chef Todd English is a world-renowned celebrity worth over $18 million and known for numerous hot restaurants such as Olives in New York City, Jade in Bali, the famous Euro-inspired food hall at the Plaza Hotel, and many more. He is the star of PBS food shows and the author of best-selling books. He is also the winner of the James Beard Foundation’s illustrious National Rising Star Chef (1991) and was named Best Chef in the Northeast in 1994.

The allegations by the plaintiff of being drugged and made unconscious, and then abused, are reminiscent of a new global legal niche, as a first-of-its-kind rape trial is underway in France. There, a 71-year-old husband admitted in court to drugging his wife of fifty years for over ten years, then inviting many dozens of men to visit and rape her while she was unconscious in her own bed. Thousands of women in France, Europe and the US have launched a new protest movement regarding violence against women.

Unlike the French drugged-wife rape trial, there are no known videos documenting Ms. Forman’s alleged abuse.

However, the lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff visited her neurologist after the incident, who said that due to the intensity of her numerous severe burns, and her not waking up from the pain or remembering getting the burns, she must have been “intensely drugged to the point of losing consciousness.”