MTV Settles Rape Lawsuit With Real World Alum After Implying She Asked for It
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MTV has reached an out-of-court settlement on a lawsuit brought by Tonya Cooley, who alleged that she was raped by her Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins castmates while producers watched and kept the cameras rolling. Details of the settlement have not been made public, but earlier this year MTV’s parent company, Viacom, responded to Cooley’s complaint by saying, “[Cooley] failed to avoid the injuries of which she complains. [She] was frequently intoxicated, rowdy, combative, flirtatious and on multiple occasions intentionally exposed her bare breasts and genitalia to other contestants.” So they don’t deny that a sexual assault happened; rather, she had it coming.
Cooley was originally a castmate on The Real World: Chicago, which aired in 2002. Before being cast on the show, she had been a foster child who had never found a permanent home before eventually aging out of the system. Having appeared on over a dozen different reality shows between 2002 and 2009, Cooley was one of the first people to create a career out of reality television, which has effectively ended after her stint on The Ruins, where the alleged rape occurred.
In the complaint filed on October 27, 2011—which names MTV, Bunim-Murray Productions, and The Challenge castmates Kenneth Santucci and Evan Starkman—Cooley alleged she was a victim of sexual harassment, discrimination, wrongful termination, and sexual battery. According to the complaint, Santucci and Starkman “took another male participant’s toothbrush and rubbed the toothbrush around [Cooley]’s genitals, including rubbing her labia and inserting the toothbrush into plaintiff’s vagina” while she was passed out drunk. She says that producers were aware of what happened and more than likely watched it on monitors while it was going on. But they did not stop it, nor did they reprimand Santucci or Starkman. They did, however, replace the toothbrush. They never informed Cooley of what happened. She reportedly learned about the incident after the fact from other female cast members.
The complaint says that production “condoned, encouraged, and ratified” inappropriate behavior of the male cast members toward female cast members and provided copious amounts of alcohol and little food to get “participants to engage in scandalous behavior that would increase viewer ratings.”
And Cooley definitely took advantage of the free booze. Her heavy drinking was a plot point during the show. She was often shown disheveled and falling down drunk. But Cooley was very open about her problem with alcohol and her own emotional instability, saying, “Drinking for me is just to disappear and to forget that all these people are out to get me and they don’t like me.”
One scene from the show is clearly part of the incident mentioned in the sexual battery complaint. According to the legal document, the cast members had all been drinking by the pool when one of the male cast members removed Cooley’s bikini top and threw it in a tree. Cooley left the pool area to return to her bedroom, where she alleges that Santucci and Starkman continued to “harass and torment” her, squirting lotion onto her head and throwing baby powder in her face as she was telling them not to touch her. All of this was filmed and can be seen in the video to the left.
According to Cooley, just after this, she passed out on the floor. She later learned that Santucci and Starkman slapped her in the face several times to try and wake her up. When they could not, they inserted a toothbrush into her vagina. From the complaint:
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