The Los Angeles Police Department has opened an investigation into a rape accusation against “Gossip Girl” star Ed Westwick, after Westwick’s accuser, actress Kristina Cohen, filed a police report with the department Tuesday, Deadline reports.
According to Deadline, the report states, “Suspect forced victim to have intercourse inside his residence … three years ago.”
Westwick denied the accusation via social media earlier Tuesday.
“I do not know this woman,” Westwick said Tuesday in a statement on Twitter. “I have never forced myself in any manner, on any woman. I certainly have never committed rape.”
https://twitter.com/EdWestwick/status/927940546382913536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fvariety.com%2F2017%2Ftv%2Fnews%2Fed-westwick-rape-kristina-cohen-1202608732%2F
In a Facebook post on Monday, Cohen wrote that Westwick forced himself on her three years ago, sexually assaulting her while she was napping at his house.
“I was woken up abruptly by Ed on top of me, his fingers entering my body,” Cohen wrote.
“I told him to stop, but he was strong,” she continued. “I fought him off as hard as I could but he grabbed my face in his hands, shaking me, telling me he wanted to f— me. I was paralyzed, terrified. I couldn’t speak, I could no longer move. He held me down and raped me.”
Cohen called the experience a “nightmare,” and said that the producer she was dating at the time, who introduced her to Westwick and took her to the actor’s house, placed blame on her. Cohen said she was told that she could “forget about an acting career” if she said anything.
“And for the longest time, I believed him. I didn’t want to be ‘that girl,’” she wrote. “I now realize the ways in which these men in power prey on women, and how this tactic is used so frequently in our industry, and surely, in many others.”
Cohen said she hopes that her coming forward “will help others to know that they are not alone, that they are not to blame, and it is not their fault.”
“Just as the other women and men coming forward have helped me to realize the same,” she wrote. “I hope that my stories and the stories of others help to reset and realign the toxic environments and power imbalances that have created these monsters.”