Motley Crüe’s Tommy Lee Accused of Sexual Assault

Rocker Tommy Lee is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2003 while in the cockpit of a helicopter, according to a new lawsuit. It is alleged that the drummer of Motley Crue assaulted the unnamed woman, “forcibly groping, kissing and penetrating her with his fingers, and attempting to force her to perform oral copulation,” per documents obtained by TMZ.

In the lawsuit, filed Friday and obtained by Rolling Stone, the woman using the pseudonym Jane Doe was a teller at a bank where Lee’s private pilot, David Martz, was visiting. She says she met Martz in 2002. As the two developed a friendship, Martz occasionally offered her rides in his helicopter, and in February 2003, Doe accepted.

The sightseeing trip promised over San Diego by Martz was instead a 40-minute ride to Los Angeles, with Lee along for the ride. “Within a matter of minutes of being airborne, Martz pulled out alcohol he had stored in the helicopter and began to mix drinks,” read the suit (as reported by Rolling Stone), which alleged that Lee and Martz were also smoking cannabis and using cocaine while they were airborne. The lawsuit claims that Doe did not participate.

In the documents, Doe claims that Lee convinced her to join him in the cockpit to see the view but that instead, he sexually assaulted her as Martz “merely watched.” In her account, Tommy hugged her in Los Angeles and departed, after which the pilot silently flew her back to San Diego.

In the aftermath of the alleged sexual assault, the woman experienced “great shock, distress, humiliation, shame and guilt,” TMZ reported. She claimed she didn’t report the incident at the time because she thought the police would not believe her. In the years since she has become convinced that Martz and Lee “had a history of engaging in indecent and illegal conduct on Martz’s helicopter.” 

Her complaint names Mr Lee as well as Mayhem Touring, Tommy Lee Inc., A Natural High Helicopters, and Social Helicopters as defendants in the suit, seeking damages for “sexual assault, gender violence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence.”

A fatal crash in Santa Barbara claimed Martz’s life in 2015. In the days preceding his death, the Los Angeles Times reported that he “was facing a fourth revocation” of his pilot’s license. According to The Daily Beast, before his death, Martz had lost his pilot’s license three times, including after having oral sex with an adult film star while he was operating his helicopter in 2009.

This is the latest in a long history of claims against Lee. He faced battery charges for a confrontation outside the Viper Room nightclub in 1996, and in 1998, he was jailed after pleading no contest to domestic violence charges brought by his wife at the time, Pamela Anderson. In the following year, he turned himself in to officials in North Carolina, where he had been wanted since 1997 on felony rioting charges and three misdemeanor charges.