A group of teenagers has settled a lawsuit with the mother of a popular YouTube star over allegations of sexual abuse and retaliation, according to an attorney representing them.
In January 2022, the teenagers filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Court against Tiffany Smith, 41, the mother of online phenom Piper Rockel. They were accused of multiple counts of sexual assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and that she tried to destroy their YouTube careers after the incident. They stopped working with their daughter.
Each of the 11 plaintiffs was a member of the eponymous Piper Squad, a group dedicated to producing the various short videos that appear on Rockel’s YouTube channel.
In a statement published in X on Tuesday, plaintiff attorney Matt Sarelson said the matter had been resolved and called it “the most complex and high-profile case of my career.” .
The civil suit alleges Smith uttered a series of horrifying words while supervising her daughter’s content creation machine.
At one point, Smith allegedly made a comment about the size of the girl’s breasts. On another occasion, he allegedly called two boys who were holding hands with two girls “horny bastards.” And, in a particularly disturbing claim, she allegedly explained that she was mailing her daughter’s dirty underwear to someone because “old people like to smell like this.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Smith bragged about walking the fine line between sexual content and child exploitation, claiming she was a YouTube “madam” or “pimp” and “producing child pornography.” ” is also said to have been said.
“This allegation is extremely disturbing,” Sarelson told Law&Crime’s Anjunette Levy last year. Five of the children have some kind of claim for actual battery, but all 11 have similar allegations of abuse — comments. “It’s important to understand what’s in these videos. These kids are scripted to have fake boyfriends and fake girlfriends and interact with other kids. So this The allegations in the lawsuit, as you know, certainly include a lot of inappropriate language and comments about my clients’ genitals, their sexual histories, their sexual acts, but these are children as young as 9 years old. So they essentially didn’t exist.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Smith showed one of the children a popular pornographic website. In one instance, Rockel’s mother discussed sex toys with the teens and even asked one boy if his testicles had drooped.
One girl claimed Smith rubbed her exposed thighs, moved his hand close to her vagina, repeatedly slapped her buttocks and poked her in the back with his fingers through her clothes.
According to the complaint, after the plaintiffs left the show, Smith, Rockel, and Smith’s live-in boyfriend Hunter Hill, who directed many of the videos, went after their YouTube channels. It is said that
“My youth was stripped away from me at a young age because of Tiffany Lockel,” one of the plaintiffs said in a statement to Law&Crime. “This lawsuit was never about money. It was about making sure no other child could do what she did to me.”
Each plaintiff initially sought damages of $2 million.
Due to the confidential terms of the agreement, the public may never know what the teens received in the settlement.
Angela Sharbino, a parent of one of the plaintiffs, said, “We didn’t bring this lawsuit to change the industry, but to raise awareness that there can be predators in any field. “I filed this lawsuit,” he said. “This was about holding accountable those who harmed our children.”
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs described a toxic work environment in which they were forced to do inappropriate material and suffered psychological abuse. The lawsuit alleges that Smith led children, among other things, to believe that their self-worth was tied to their performance, while inhibiting their autonomy and dissent.
“I want to publicly commend these 11 children. They are smart and brave,” Sarelson said. “What they went through was grotesque, and I look forward to watching them grow as young adults.”
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